In my lifetime I’ve seen big changes in what women and poc can accomplish. The Me too movement meant a lot to many women who had put up with abuse and terrible men in their lifetime. I hope that the Noma situation will shine a light on restaurant work and make things better. To say that a chef assaulting his employees is fine and human nature and being terrible is preordained is very depressing.
We eat out at “fine dining” place maybe 4 or 5 times a year mainly celebrating birthdays and anniversary. I’ve sat through a few tasting menus and found them not to my liking. Don’t eat dessert so that’s a waste and prefer a La carte menus. Also who wants to sit for 3 hours…Anyway love my multicultural order at the counter Mexican and Thai and smashburger places in Santa Barbara.
What she is writing about also exists in almost every industry. Nobody treats these top named chefs as gods, except people who work in fine dining or that privileged set of clientele who frequent those places. And this bad behavior shouldn’t be tolerated by any one working along side these so called elite members - whether it’s crazy Elon telling their staff they have to sleep in the office to prove their productivity to famous musicians and actors mistreating PAs and non-actor staff (too many of these stories to keep count), etc. Being a bad boss is a bad boss.
There is a huge difference in setting rigorous standards (e.g., those chefs who have to make tamagoyaki for X number of years before they can even touch sushi ) and acting like a jackass by belittling them or physically attacking them because they haven’t met your standard. It’s idolizing them when they’ve achieved fame/notoriety or fortune and buying into thought that dehumanization is needed to build excellence is not only a them problem, but an “us” problem with the fans and public who idolize these people.
What has the Noma pop up and its price to do with the ICE raids or the wildfires. Should a restaurant like Somni in LA also close because it is also fine dining and the overall price is in the same range as Noma. She is mixing up things which in itself are important but aren’t related to each other and aren’t a good argument for the article
On the contrary, not understanding the culture of a place or the state of an industry in the supposed “arts” which are meant to hold a mirror to and elevate society/culture is pretty vacuous. I expected no less from RR. If you need more background on the intersectionality of these issues, ask Marie Antoinette about it. She might explain the connection better than I can.
You are looking back now with the knowledge we have now about the abuse in the kitchen. When the pop up was planned and announced >6 months ago the large majority of chefs in LA were very positive and welcoming towards Noma and RR because he was seen as a chef in his different pop ups who understands and integrates the culture/environment/vibe of the place he visits. It’s always easy and misleading to ignore the feedback of the LA chefs at that time with the most recent development
All of your assumptions with little exception are wrong. Please don’t assume you know what my perspective is since you clearly do not. You keep changing your argument because you don’t have one and just want to defend an elite, exploitive culture by pretending it is beyond reproach and exists in a world where it’s existence is beyond critique culturally. It is not. You speak for all the LA Chefs except the ones that were brave enough to protest. Industry awareness of this hotbed of exploitation was not a secret. It was documented widely and known for years except for people that didn’t want to know or just didn’t care.
Perhaps you can suggest another red herring about an unrelated restaurant that you feel like mentioning pedantically.
You claim I am using some newly discovered information for my posts, which I am not while you offer literally nothing to support your erroneous theories because your claims are unsupportable. Good talk.
The first time it was made public? The second? Or only when it finally became a PR nightmare?
2010 documentary where the behavior is captured on video, 2016 written admission of behavior by a person themselves, 2022 interview deeming them reformed / cured – 2026 is not the “now” for this “revelation”.
Lay people may claim ignorance to the past, but those following these people, their restaurants, their accolades, their food… cannot.
Do you think Will Guidara’s 2016 essay “In Defense of Fine Dining”, published in David Chang’s Lucky Peach Magazine, has been scrubbed completely from the internet by coincidence?
Broad generalizions that make no sense and are not relevant at all are a deflection.
Calling any discussion of solutions for a better way forward useless because humans are just terrible is a deflection.
Deflection allows every atrocity and abuse on the planet to continue – whatever the era and whoever the powerless group being exploited.
No group of people would ever have escaped sub-human treatment if humanity were beyond improvement. Slavery, colonization, women’s rights, and on and on and on.
No, eradicating human abuses requires those with power who have been willing to be complicit with the abusers to stop looking the other way, to stop propping up and protecting the abusers, and to aid those seeking a solution to find one that is better than what’s happening, and is actionable.
In many industries with an apprenticeship aspect, yes, and leads to toxic work environments. Also in families and societies.
However it takes only one person to break a cycle. One boss who realizes they don’t need to ill-treat their subordinates the way they were ill-treated to achieve the same or better results.
I’ve worked in toxic work environments – I’m guessing many people here probably have. It’s a personal choice to propagate that behavior forward – or not – when it’s your turn.
Not all bosses, not all chefs, not all mothers-in-law, and so on.
I think fine dining can be identified by price point, style of service, and style of food – both menu construction / creativity and presentation.
Using those as determinants, I do still dine out at fine dining establishments, but I don’t enjoy tasting menus as much as I once did, so am more likely to choose an a la carte option.
I don’t think expensive and elitist are interchangeable. I also dislike the reverse elitism of blanket criticizing those who choose to spend their (giving them the benefit of the doubt) hard-earned money on an expensive meal.
However, I do know plenty of people who are more concerned with showing that they ate at a Michelin-starred or critics’ / social media darling establishment than what the food tasted like.
And I also know plenty of people eating at inexpensive places who are also not particularly discerning about the food.
Can you guys knock it off with the back and forth, and the seemingly argue for argument sake and dopamine fix. I’d message a moderator but oops…one is involved…so knock it off.
I think there’s a place for “fine dining” but it’s getting weird in the new glided age and its cohort global authoritarianism. Fine dining a la Noma and the abuse somehow mirrors the current events…about power and place. However if that Danish pimp can go down, so can the big players of stupidity, one can hope. But it really never ends…The shittiness expresses itself in many way. Thomas Keller for example is railing against affordable housing in Yountville that could house some of his staff…give me a break. The issue here is his power is going beyond his kitchen and business. If I were to say anything to these types it would - stay in the effin kitchen, enjoy your wealth and power but do not obstruct needed change.
Thomas Keller just accused of exploiting and underpaying his staff.
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
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Often not. But in the circumstance that we are discussing, I think expensive is the very definition of elitist. FWIW, of the places we visit with somewhat regularity, one has a Michelin star and two should have (IMO, of course).
Maybe my knowledge of “expensive dining” is lacking, but it seems as though people are equating “fine dining” with “tasting menu”, rather than “excellently prepared and served food in a genteel setting”.
) and acting like a jackass by belittling them or physically attacking them because they haven’t met your standard. It’s idolizing them when they’ve achieved fame/notoriety or fortune and buying into thought that dehumanization is needed to build excellence is not only a them problem, but an “us” problem with the fans and public who idolize these people.
