New Ho King, open since 1976 in Toronto, has become an unlikely pop-culture battleground after being featured in songs from both rappers.
The last six weeks have seen the long-simmering feud between the Compton, Calif.,-born rapper Kendrick Lamar and the Canadian rapper Drake turn into a full-fledged beef, with confrontations delivered in the form of diss tracks.
But the squabble didn’t boil over until April 30, when Mr. Lamar released “Euphoria,” a six-and-a-half minute dressing down of the “Nice for What” rapper. On Friday, Drake replied to “Euphoria” and another track, “6:16 in L.A.,” with “Family Matters,” which has more than 15 million views on YouTube.
Caught in the middle of this culture-consuming rivalry is New Ho King, an unassuming restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown. The restaurant, which has served dishes like hot-pot grouper and tofu, and sweet-and-sour pork with pineapple to Torontonians for nearly 50 years, was briefly name-checked in “Euphoria.” (“I be at New Ho King eatin’ fried rice with a dip sauce and a blammy, crodie,” Mr. Lamar raps, ending the lyric with a spin on local Toronto slang.)
The mention from Mr. Lamar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper, led to a flood of five-star reviews on Yelp and Google for New Ho King, many of them written by people who had never set foot in the restaurant.
“Never eaten here but it’s getting five stars from me because Kendrick is the GOAT! From California w/ Love,” wrote one Yelp reviewer. (Yelp has since attached an “unusual activity alert” to New Ho King’s page.)
It’s not the only restaurant in the mix. In his “6:16 in LA,” Mr. Lamar mentions the pizza restaurant Lucali, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn: “My visa, passport tatted, I show up in Ibiza, Lucalis dwellings in Brooklyn just to book me some pizza.”
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