> A post shared by segevmoshe (@segevmoshe) on May 2,2018 at 1:04pm PDT
An Israeli celebrity chef is accused of stepping out of line after serving Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dessert out of a metal shoe during a formal dinner with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.
Abe and his wife, Akie Abe, were guests of Netanyahu and his wife, Sara Netanyahu, at their residence when chef Moshe Segev served chocolates in faux footwear.
Many saw the shoes’ use as serving dishes, though perhaps avant-garde, as being in extremely poor taste, since it’s a popular Japanese custom to remove shoes before entering homes, temples and certain restaurants for sanitary reasons.
“There’s no culture in the world in which you put shoes on the table,” Israel’s daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted an unidentified Japanese diplomat as saying, according to a translation by The Washington Post. “What was the distinguished chef thinking? If it was humor, we don’t think it is funny; we were offended on behalf of our prime minister.”
Yediot Aharonot also quoted an unidentified senior Israeli official as calling the object’s choice “insensitive.
