Collateral damage
On cultures of toxicity in restaurants
I recently read an astonishing essay written by a chef who somehow, in light of the most recent abuse allegations leveled at Rene Redzepi, felt the need to remind us all that the world is not black and white: Redzepi’s creative genius and mentorship still matter! You could feel the urgency of this man’s plea in the way his words just jumped off the page, even as you could tell he was a man in struggle with his own ego as he watched his beloved teacher fall from the proverbial pedestal. Aren’t we all sick of this sort of apologia by now?
Some years ago I worked at a restaurant where toxicity was allowed to thrive, and after reading that essay I feel motivated to share a story of my own. I think in all these responses to horrific revelations of abuse we are missing the forest for the trees. Trying to weigh yet another problematic chef’s legacy against their abuses not only decenters the victims, but it totally ignores how their actions create workplaces so toxic that it becomes difficult to say where the line is between victim and bystander. I wasn’t abused at my place of employment - but the toxic workplace culture still caused me real harm.
I don’t know if you can truly imagine what it is like when your miscarriage begins if you have not experienced it yourself. All of those years of being in a relationship with my partner, who was finally ready to have children, culminated in these weeks of joy and hope and deep happiness and excitement.
I first started bleeding in the middle of a closing shift on a packed Saturday night at The Breslin.
When the bleeding starts, you tell yourself that it’s okay, it’s normal, it’s going to be fine. About twenty five percent of women experience some spotting in early pregnancy, but I knew it was too late for implantation. Even as I tried to remain calm and steel myself for whatever would happen, I think most of the time a woman just knows.
I couldn’t get emotional, though, could I? Not as a server on the floor of a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City on a Saturday night. And so I went on autopilot as best as I could and went to tell my manager.
This particular manager was terrified of our chef de cuisine (who was of course in turn terrified of the head chef), who had made it abundantly clear that she did not like or respect her. And so my manager made the decision not to cut me from the floor and allow me to go home (or seek medical treatment, as women are told to do when they begin to bleed during pregnancy).
It’s way too busy. It’s a Saturday night and you are on a closing shift. And so I got moved to a different section and told I had to finish my tables before I would be allowed to leave.
Many women in my position may have just walked out, then and there. But you have to understand that I wanted so badly for those cramps and that blood to not be a miscarriage. And who knows, maybe I also wanted to prove to myself that I could withstand it, to barrel through and finish and not upset the dynamics of everyone else’s Saturday night.
Sitting here, typing this–no longer working in restaurants and the mother of two–I can’t help but think of the people at those tables. Can you imagine eating at a restaurant knowing that your server is in the middle of a miscarriage, somehow managing to smile and anticipate your needs, all the while afraid to leave the floor because she might lose her job? Even as a customer, I’d rather get up and finish her shift for her than allow that to happen.
Helen Rosner, food writer and columnist for The New Yorker, categorized people who jump out of the woodwork to rally behind people like Redzepi in her Instagram stories shortly after the most recent New York Times exposé came out. She wrote:
If you publicly throw your affirmative support behind a news cycle villain–rather than just staying quiet–it’s for at least one of these reasons:
You’re enthralled by power (or afraid of losing access to it) & you’re kissing ass.
You identify more as a potential abuser than as a potential victim, and want to cushion your own self-concept.
You genuinely think the alleged transgressions were acceptable behavior.
You genuinely think the gestures of repair are sufficient.
I was not surprised by the aforementioned chef’s essay, and I’m sure there are more egregious examples out there that also completely sidestep the victims of Redzepi’s abuse. After spending the past few days talking to Max about the article, and then reading that essay (published hours after the announcement that both Amex and Blackbird were pulling their support, mind you) I kept thinking about how so very many opinion pieces that land in the wake of restaurant scandals like this continue to discuss the abuse as though it occurred in a vacuum, like isolated moments in an otherwise golden career full of deep care for the craft. But look at all of the stunning restaurants Redzepi’s mentees went on to create, the apologists whine.
How many of these exposés and think pieces really dive deep into the legacy of abuse? How many journalists follow up with the victims of the “gods of food” to see where they are now?
What about the culture of abuse that must have proliferated (dare I say, fermented) at Noma in the wake of that punch to the chest? The deportation threats? The meat fork stabbing? The group bullying and humiliation exercises?
Are we really meant to believe that the collective aftermath of these incidents didn’t fester, didn’t spread their spores into every nook and cranny of that place?
Yes, the narrative should center Redzepi’s victims first and foremost, and it’s important to recognize that restaurant owners and chefs who abuse members of their staff also create a culture of abuse, humiliation, and disrespect which ripple out to every corner of those spaces. One does not need to be targeted directly to feel the impact of the cultures these folks create.
So where am I in all of this?
I don’t consider myself a victim of abuse in the restaurant where I worked when I had my miscarriage. Although my chef and my owner were also rocked by a New York Times exposé, I never experienced abuse from either of them or any of my fellow employees. Ken never knew about what happened, and April only found out when I told her many years later.
What I will say is that I was a victim of the culture of abuse that thrives at restaurants when chefs like Redzepi are allowed to continue their abuse because others around them make bullshit “creative genius” excuses for them. What else happened at that restaurant that we aren’t hearing about? What happened in the front of house? Are we really supposed to believe that all of the abuse and humiliation stopped at the pass?
It really sucks when you find out that someone you used to look up to, who maybe helped you in a meaningful way when you really needed it, is a perpetrator of abuse. Maybe it even makes you feel a little bit guilty for not seeing through them at the time, or maybe you did see it and ignored it because they were helping you. Unfortunately I think we all go through a version of this at some point in our lives.
But for those of us who continue to own food businesses or work in environments where our coworkers are our family–well, we owe it to ourselves and our entire community to draw a line at physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. Full stop. Why would I want to work for you or eat in your restaurant otherwise?
I ended up leaving The Breslin a few weeks after the NYT article came out. By that time, I was the mother of a toddler, and was working mostly on the events side of things. Most of the people who worked in the restaurant were newer and had not been there during the period of time covered in the article. I left in part because management refused to talk about the article with staff. I tried to speak with four different managers and no one would discuss it with me.
And now, in the wake of this new Redzepi scandal, we’re faced with the same equivocating think pieces, the same false dilemmas and whataboutery. It shouldn’t be this hard for us to do the right thing.
What does this mean, though? First, let’s stop talking about whether or not Redzepi is a bad person or why we must still pay homage to his culinary impact at the same time as we condemn his actions. Even his most fawning defenders accept that the abuse happened, even if they choose not to mention it in their strident pleas on his behalf.
I want to see more conversations about what his victims want. If he really has come a long way in overcoming his anger issues, how has he dealt with those whom he abused? What would they have him do so that they will feel like their needs are met?
How do we normalize empowering employees in the workplace and making a safe environment the absolute baseline as we build a better restaurant culture? My brother-in-law Eli Sussman recently argued in an Instagram video that there should be no Michelin stars or James Beard nominations/awards for restaurants that rely on unpaid internships. Surely this should be a given for any abusive chef or toxic restaurant regardless of how mind-blowing the food tastes. Enough is enough.