Eleven months: That’s how long Sohla and Ham El-Waylly’s Brooklyn restaurant, Hail Mary, lasted. The couple never expected to have to close the doors to their upscale-diner concept in less than a year, but the reality is that running a restaurant is hard, and running a restaurant as a chef of color is even harder.

Ham, who is half-Bolivian and half-Egyptian, and Sohla, a Bengali-American who grew up in California, both went to culinary school. They trained in the French technique. They worked long hours in a number of notable kitchens around the country (Sohla worked at Del Posto and Atera, while Ham cooked at Corton). This is the path of a chef in America; these are the things you have to do if you ever want to open a place of your own. But things are different when you’re not a white chef.

People frequently walked into the restaurant looking for foreign or exotic ingredients because of the couple’s cultural backgrounds.The El-Wayllys went so far as to pacify the most stubborn of customers with small fibs. “Sometimes, depending on the clientele, we just lie and say that there is cumin in our burger because that is what makes them happy, that is what they are looking for,” Sohla said. “They’ll taste the burger after being told that and be like, ‘Yeah! I knew that’s what it was,” even though there was nothing actually in there but salt and pepper,” added Ham.

Despite cooking way more challenging food in the past, the El-Wayllys found the biggest obstacle was trying to cook American staples like burgers and grilled cheese. They constantly faced having to meet people’s expectations for “cultural” twists on the menu. Unfortunately, the media and customers expect a certain amount of “ethnic-ness” from chefs of color—no matter what kind of food they are cooking. But it’s very much a Goldilocks problem. If the food is too white or too brown, it will not sell. It has to be just the right level of “ethnic.”

“Sometimes, depending on the clientele, we just lie and say that there is cumin in our burger because that is what makes them happy.”

Chefs of color in the U.S.—whether they are Asian, Middle Eastern, Latino, or African—struggle to out-cook the assumptions that come with the color of their skin. There are a handful of exceptions. Edward Lee, a Korean-American, made a name for himself cooking Southern food. Marcus Samuelsson, an Ethiopian-born Swedish chef, rose to prominence cooking high-end Scandinavian food. And Mexico native César Ramirez presides over the three-Michelin-starred tasting-menu restaurant Brooklyn Fare. But most face an uphill battle when trying to cook food that isn’t associated with how they look. This is especially the case when chefs of color attempt to find success making “white food,” particularly cuisines that are Eurocentric (like French) or stereotypically American.

White chefs are, of course, allowed to cook white food. But they are also allowed to cook non-white food, too. They are trusted as masters of the cuisines that are not part of their cultural heritages. Chicago’s Rick Bayless was free to fall in love with Mexican cooking, and went on to open nine popular Mexican restaurants throughout the city. New York City’s Ed Schoenfeld has become an established expert in Chinese cooking, while the chef Joe Ng at his restaurant RedFarm remains in the background. And Andy Ricker, who started visiting Southeast Asia as a backpacker, has built a Thai empire across the U.S. and is often called upon as an expert by the food media. This is a phenomenon called “cultural colonialism,” according to Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at NYU. “[White chefs] can be inspired by [a country], having gone there once or twice, maybe three times, learn its repertoire, and bring it back and be inspired.”

But most chefs of color, like the El-Wayllys, learn that this doesn’t go both ways. “Chefs of color do not have bodies that look like people with confidence and power who can go and, within a few weeks, nail down all that culture and then bring it back to here,” Ray said. Instead, chefs of color must prove that they can cook the food of their cultures before they can successfully open restaurants outside of that.