After apologies, restaurants recover
THE first act of the drama was loud and public: Reporters exposed pervasive sexual harassment at a handful of highprofile restaurant groups around the country. Accused chefs and restaurateurs issued apologies and vowed to step away from daily operations.
The second act is playing out much more quietly, as customers consider whether they should eat at places that once brought joy, and everyone seems to be wondering which chef will be next.
Backstage, the first four prominent restaurant groups caught in sexual harassment scandals are grappling with the thorny complications of just how to extricate themselves from a tarnished partner: John Besh in New Orleans; Charlie Hallowell in Oakland, California; and Ken Friedman and Mario Batali in New York. The companies have begun to reach for some sort of equilibrium, working in very different ways to figure out how – and if – they can move forward.
The most famous figure to fall has been Batali, the celebrity chef who was the subject of several published reports in December alleging behaviour that ran the gamut from piggish to coercive.
Aside from some initial public apologies, including one emailed newsletter that included a recipe for cinnamon rolls, Batali has been silent. By all accounts, he is not engaged in running the restaurant group that he started with his partner, Joe Bastianich, in 1998 when they opened Babbo in Greenwich Village. The terms of his income stream from the company have not changed, Bastianch said.
In an email on Tuesday, Batali, 57, said he had been spending time with his wife, Susi Cahn. “I am taking some time away from the restaurants to work on myself,” he said. “Business decisions will come after that.”
But Bastianich, who has apologised for his own sexual missteps, is moving ahead to remake the Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group, which has nearly 2,100 employees and 24 restaurants, including operations in Las Vegas and the elegant Del Posto in New York. That includes plotting a future without Batali.
“Divorces are never easy,” Bastianich said. “Do we buy out? Do we split restaurants? We may have intentions. He has intentions. Really, the decision is his. He’s going through a process. We’re going through a process. We’ll see.”
‘Changing the DNA’
Bastianich said he is intent on “completely changing the DNA of the company”. He is interviewing branding agencies to develop a new name. He is centralising some business practices and expanding medical and other benefits for employees in an organisation that has let each restaurant essentially function as its own company.
Frank Langello, executive chef at Babbo, who staff members said had created a sexualised and hostile work environment, left the company this month and was replaced by Rob Zwirz, from Lupa. A new human resources manager started this month, and an outside firm has been hired to investigate any future claims of employee harassment.
Both Bastianich’s mother, chef Lidia Bastianich, 70, and Nancy Silverton, 63, a partner with Bastianich and Batali in the Mozza group of restaurants in California and Singapore, have been elevated to leadership roles.
In New Orleans, women step up
The effort to stabilise the chef John Besh’s restaurant group in New Orleans has had more time to jell. News that 25 current and former employees had been sexually harassed at some of his dozen restaurants was reported by The Times-Picayune in October, two weeks after the New York Times broke the story about predatory sexual behaviour by Harvey Weinstein.
Besh, 49, remains an owner of the business, which includes eight restau- rants and has renamed itself BRG Hospitality, and he has final approval on major business decisions. But he has permanently turned over everything else to Shannon White, 31, who started with the company as a server.
When the scandal broke, she had just been named the company’s chief operating officer and had become a mother for the first time. In an interview in New Orleans last week, she said that in those first few days she realised that if the ship was going to be saved, somebody needed to take control.
“It was like we were in the eye of the hurricane,” she said. She persuaded Besh and his business partner, Octavio Mantilla, to make her chief executive. “I think it’s a women’s problem, and women have to take the lead,” she said. “A man is not going to understand it.”
In an emotional meeting with the executive chefs and general managers, White said they had a long road ahead but assured them that drastic changes were coming.
She sat up a hotline, revised training procedures and updated the employee handbook, adding a code of conduct and a morals-and-ethics clause. She started an assistance program open to all 1,200 employees, and is creating an employee advisory committee. She hired an independent investigator who unearthed another case of harassment; the bill for that alone may top $50,000, she said.
“I really don’t think of the financial implications of any of this,” White said. “No matter what, there were people who were at our restaurants who were being harassed, period. And it was going to stop, whatever it took.”
As for Besh, she said, “We are trying to figure out what, if any, role he may have in the future.”
Seeking justice in Oakland
The path forward appears rockier in Oakland, where several former employees of restaurants owned by the chef Charlie Hallowell described a pattern of sexual propositions and a near-constant stream of sexual innuendo to the San Francisco Chronicle in December.
Hallowell, 44, who began his cooking career at Chez Panisse, employs about 150 people at three restau- rants with his business partner, Richard Weinstein. His first, Pizzaiolo, has been a hub of local left-leaning politics, art and community projects since it opened in 2005.
Hallowell has been the most public about his personal and professional efforts to navigate the scandal. “I have stepped aside and indefinitely left the day-to-day operations of the restaurant,” he wrote last week in response to questions for this article. “I have stopped taking my salary and stopped taking any owner distributions.”
Listening to people’s experiences and hearing their anger and frustration “has been pretty brutal, and it has really illuminated the massive blind spot I had”, he said.
Hallowell said he is in the process of hiring a new chief executive with input from the staff, and is staying out of the restaurants as an independent investigation arranged by his legal counsel is underway. He has hired a human resources consultant, and said he wants to bring on a coach with expertise in management training and organisational psychology.
He is also working with Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, an organisation founded by Fania Davis, the sister of the author and political activist Angela Davis, which aims to bring victims and perpetrators together to work toward reconciliation.
“I feel like we are digging so deep into this place of blame that we can’t find a place of healing,” said Teiahsha Bankhead, a co-director. The goal, she said, is to recognise that people are taught to behave in certain ways – and to change that culture, both for women and men.
It may not be enough. The sevenperson management team at one restaurant, Boot and Shoe Service, had threatened that they would resign if Hallowell did not divest from the restaurant by Saturday. (At other restaurants, the staff is staying on and not joining in that fight.)
Silence and conversation in New York
Friedman, 56, who owns seven restaurants in New York and California with the chef April Bloomfield, has dropped out of public sight since the New York Times reported in December that he had created a pervasive culture of sexual predation and harassment, especially at the Spotted Pig in the West Village, where some employees referred to a celebrity-studded private dining room as “the rape room”.
Since making some initial apologies, Bloomfield has not spoken publicly about the state of the restaurants or her business relationship with Friedman. She has taken over operations.
Friedman has sought treatment, according to former employees who said he had sent them apologies and the phone number of a Connecticut rehabilitation centre in case they wanted to contact him.
Kelly Berg, the group’s recently hired human resources manager, issued a statement last Monday that said the company was working with consultants and “rolling out a forceful action plan to elevate and empower our managers and enact our standards throughout the organisation”. The plan includes increased training and better monitoring to ensure “a supportive and caring environment”. Friedman, the statement said, has not been involved in day-to-day management since the Times’s article appeared.
A quandry for customers
The dining public appears to be divided. At first, many reservations and holiday parties scheduled for Batali’s and Bloomfield’s restaurants were canceled. But business doesn’t appear to have suffered terribly. Babbo was packed last Sunday night. At the Spotted Pig, the wait for a 7pm table last Friday was an hour long.
For some diners, the taint may never go away. Brian Gresko, a Brooklyn writer who addresses themes of gender and masculinity in his work, was recently casting around for a new place to eat near Union Square because he could not bring himself to go to Otto, a Batali restaurant.
Gresko used to meet friends there regularly, and even chose it to celebrate his birthday. Now he vows to show support for the #MeToo movement by “not consuming the art or the products that these guys have created”, he said. “To my stomach’s dismay”.