Resurfaced allegations of abuse and an expected protest won’t stop Noma’s sold-out Los Angeles pop-up, which is set to begin on Wednesday evening. A spokesperson for the world-famous Copenhagen restaurant told The Times on Monday that plans for Noma’s 16-week appearance in Silver Lake, with seats priced at $1,500 per guest, will continue as scheduled.
The pop-up, the allegations and a public apology by the restaurant’s celebrity chef and co-founder René Redzepi are dividing the restaurant industry and renewing discussions of systemic imbalance and fair compensation.
A former Noma employee has for weeks posted a series of anonymous messages to Instagram from other workers and interns recounting physical, verbal and emotional abuse sustained in years prior. These accounts were compiled and posted by Jason Ignacio White, who previously helmed Noma’s fermentation lab. White also posts about his own mental health struggles during his years at the Copenhagen restaurant.
A New York Times article on Saturday reported accounts of abuse compiled from interviews with 35 former Noma staff, including instances of humiliation, physical violence and intimidation. According to the New York Times, these incidents occurred between 2009 and 2017.
Redzepi could not be reached for comment, but on Saturday he posted an apology to those he hurt, and underscored that Noma has rectified practices with new initiatives, such as paying interns.
“I cannot change who I was then,” he wrote. “But I take responsibility for it and will keep doing the work to be better.”
Redzepi’s post garnered tens of thousands of responses, including supportive words and heart emojis from some prominent L.A. chefs and restaurants. Less-encouraging comments called for further accountability and reflection.
“I’m a big proponent of: You’re supposed to be better today than you were yesterday,” said Pasta Bar chef-owner Phillip Frankland Lee in an interview.
Frankland Lee operates three L.A. restaurants and commented on Redzepi’s post with clapping emojis. While he said he does not condone the abuse in question, he felt called to support Redzepi’s growth in the years since the allegations first surfaced.
“I think it’s more important to give people the opportunity to reflect, apologize and set a better example,” he said. “People should have the right — and they have the obligation — to speak up, but we also need to, as a society, as people, also applaud people for getting better and doing better.”
Other chefs said the statement came across as P.R. spin.
“I felt like it was a bit canned, that it was specifically designed to deflect any type of legal responsibility,” said Uyên Lê, chef-owner of Bé Ù.
Before opening her Vietnamese restaurant in Silver Lake, Lê worked in labor organizing and research. She said she hopes the discussion of allegations against Noma will help bring systemic change in culture, compensation and whose voices are elevated in the kitchen.
“I hope that we’re actually going to focus on changing the culture and not just going, ‘Oh, this guy has changed — he has mental health issues, but he’s worked on it,’” Lê said Monday. “It’s not about this individual person. It’s about a culture that is rotten and needs to change from the inside out.”
One L.A. chef who worked with Noma abroad expressed shock at the allegations. The chef requested anonymity for fear of public and industry retaliation, but shared that they are trying to square the accounts with the healthy kitchen practices they have seen firsthand at Noma in recent years.
“They’re still an inspiration to me, but we have to do something about it, and I do think that they have been for many years,” the chef said. “I equally empathize with both sides. It doesn’t seem very bright right now, but I feel like the future is bright still.”
On Wednesday, White plans to co-lead a protest of Noma’s L.A. pop-up with worker-advocacy nonprofit One Fair Wage, which is calling for fair compensation within the restaurant industry, such as a proposed $30 wage floor in Los Angeles. Organizers also plan to deliver an open letter to Redzepi regarding the allegations of abuse.
“We respect the right to protest peacefully and agree it is important to talk about the culture and standards in our industry,” a representative for Noma said via email. “Noma has participated in this dialogue for many years and taken strides to improve. We recognize change should have come sooner, and for that we are sorry.”
The resurfaced allegations against Redzepi and Noma have spurred others in the hospitality industry to publicly discuss their own experiences at other restaurants.
Lindsey Danis, a former restaurant worker in the Bay Area, said she had a boss at a bakery where she worked in 2007 who was “very volatile” and “would fly off the handle in screaming meltdowns,” Danis said.
“It felt like she was treating us as if she was a dysfunctional family member and not the way a boss would treat their employees,” Danis said.
When she was in culinary school, an instructor of hers was transparent about his own experiences, explaining that a previous boss used to hit him with sheet pans. Danis said the instructor was trying to “in a way prepare us for the fact that it wasn’t going to be a warm and fuzzy environment.”
And people attracted to work in the industry tend to be “a bit rebellious, a bit nonconformist, a bit eccentric,” and so some take “a bit of pride in the toughness of the work environment,” Danis said.
“The more tough and gritty you are, the more respect you get from other people. And all of that is pretty dysfunctional.”
Danis said she saw examples of kitchens that did not have dysfunction, which encouraged her to remain in the industry before eventually exiting it entirely.
“I do wish as diners we stopped giving people passes for making really good food when they are total d— in the real world,” she said. “We shouldn’t keep going to those restaurants. There are so many other restaurants … so many chefs who are some of the most generous people in the world.”
Ellen Meiser, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo began studying violence in the restaurant industry by chance. She set out to interview 50 kitchen workers about notions of success in the culinary industry, but issues of abuse kept popping up in conversations. Because of Meiser’s past experience working in the restaurant industry herself, the abuse “didn’t even clock to me as being abnormal.”
Hierarchical structures in kitchens and power imbalances help to prop up abuse, she said. Interns in some of the most luxurious restaurants might work long hours for no pay, for the chance to be associated with a high-end chef with a “shiny genius veneer.”
Meiser said several organizations have pushed for accountability in the industry, and while there is more awareness in recent years, the problem has not dissipated. “Awareness is progress,” she said, “but is it solved? Not at all.”
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