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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Amazon.com’s Whole Foods Market sparked social media outrage after its newest store in its 365 grocery chain partnered with an Asian restaurant with the racially charged name of Yellow Fever.

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A Whole Foods Market store is seen in Santa Monica, California, U.S. March 19, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The independently owned and operated eatery - whose name is taken from the slang term for a white man’s sexual attraction to Asian women - is located in the 365 store that opened in Long Beach, California, on Wednesday.

“An Asian ‘bowl’ resto called YELLOW FEVER in the middle of whitest Whole Foods — is this taking back of a racist image or colonized mind?” Columbia University professor and author Marie Myung-Ok Lee, wrote on Twitter.

Whole Foods, which has eight stores in its 365 chain that was launched with a no-frills concept to win over millennials, declined comment.

“Yellow Fever celebrates all things Asian: the food, the culture and the people and our menu reflects that featuring cuisine from Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand and Hawaii,” said Kelly Kim, executive chef and co-founder of Yellow Fever, which also operates two Los Angeles-area restaurants.

“We have been a proud Asian, female-owned business since our founding over four and a half years ago in Torrance, California.”

Kim, who is Korean-American, in previous interviews said she was aware that the name choice would be attention-getting and controversial.

“One night, we just said ‘Yellow Fever!’ and it worked. It’s tongue-in-cheek, kind of shocking, and it’s not exclusive — you can fit all Asian cultures under one roof with a name like this. We just decided to go for it,” Kim told Asian American news site NextShark six months ago.

A year ago she told

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