As ‘top chef ’ braces for domestic assault trial, diners face a choice
Patronizing his new restaurant a morality debate
It’s about an hour before Aqui opens on Saturday afternoon, a quiet time of prep and concentration before diners file in to eat ponzu-kissed yellowtail and tuna-filled arepas at one of Houston’s best new restaurants.
Paul Qui sits in the tranquil, glass-enclosed courtyard and watches a staff meeting in progress. The James Beard Awardwinning chef who once scaled the highest peaks of culinary stardom knows that the assembled workers are responsible for Aqui’s day-to-day success. He also knows that his Montrose restaurant, the biggest and most expensive venture of his career, has been a lightning rod for controversy since it opened in August.
“It’s not about me or my redemption,” he said, gesturing to the staff. “It’s about them.”
But, in many ways, it is about Qui — the fate of a high-profile restaurant so often these days is intertwined with its celebrity face.
Qui, 37, is facing trial Monday for alleged domestic assault as the conscience of the country’s restaurant scene continues to reel amid sexual misconduct scandals that have embroiled famous chefs including John Besh and
Mario Batali. Foodies, in Houston and beyond, are debating the morality of patronizing certain restaurants based on reported allegations. The national discourse even led the James Beard Foundation in January to ask its committee members to consider integrity when making nominations for its annual chef awards, the culinary world’s biggest prize.
“Award winners are held up as role models,” said Emily Luchetti, interim president of the Beard Foundation, “and their character should play a part.”
Jonathan Horowitz, president of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association, said heightened attention and scrutiny comes with more responsibility.
“Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, chefs are much like many other people — they do things that are inappropriate,” he said. “They have to understand there are consequences for bad behavior.”
Qui was arrested at his Austin apartment on the morning of March 19, 2016. According to a widely circulated police affidavit, Qui came home with friends and they all indulged in cocaine, marijuana and alcohol. His live-in girlfriend at the time was in bed with her young son when they arrived, but she joined the party. She said Qui was intoxicated, grew jealous of interactions between her and his friends, kicked the friends out, then started knocking over furniture and breaking glass.
The girlfriend told police she tried to leave the apartment several times with her son and that Qui pushed her and her son away and “threw her several times against walls, doors and furniture.” In his statement to police, Qui admitted to knocking over furniture and breaking glass and to not allowing her to leave because he wanted to tell his side of the story with her there.
The affidavit noted blood smeared on walls, a cut and bruising on her arms, and that her jaw was slightly puffy and swollen.
Qui told the Austin American-Statesman later that he had asked a friend to call the police that morning “in an argument with my girlfriend that had escalated beyond my control.”
The charges of unlawful restraint and assault causing bodily injury to a family member are Class A misdemeanors that each carries a maximum penalty of $4,000 and/or up to one year in jail. Qui’s Austin
“His personal issues aside, it doesn’t take away from his talent. It also doesn’t excuse him for what he’s done.” Tom Colicchio, celebrity chef and restaurateur
attorney, Christopher M. Gunter, said Qui’s girlfriend has signed an affidavit of non-prosecution, a sworn statement that the alleged victim in a criminal case expresses a desire to halt prosecution.
“My biggest regret is being messed up and having children around,” Qui said. “That shouldn’t have happened. I never thought I’d be that guy. Never in my life.”
Qui’s mugshot — pink-rimmed eyes, disheveled hair, scrapes on his cheek — wound up on websites around the world. It was an astonishing departure from the smiling, boyish face that won Season 9 of Bravo’s “Top Chef” with his modern interpretations of pan-Asian foods in 2012, the same year he won Best Chef Southwest at the James Beard Awards for his work at Austin’s Uchiko restaurant.
Qui was born in Manila, Philippines. His parents split up when he was young, and he lived with his father, who was largely absent.
“I never had a mom-dad situation,” he said, adding that he was raised mostly by a nanny and other relatives.
At age 10, he moved to northern Virginia to live with his mother. At 15, he began spending summers in the Houston area with his father, who had moved to Missouri City. Qui moved to Houston full time in 1998 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in art at the University of Houston. He eventually dropped out as his attention focused on other pursuits — waiting tables, promoting clubs and partying.
“I was all over the place during that time,” he said. “I was doing drugs. I was selling drugs. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.”
Already familiar with the restaurant industry from his work as a waiter, he thought he’d give culinary school a shot.
“I found the fastest, shortest program for the least amount of money,” Qui said, referring to the now-defunct Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Austin. He moved there in 2003 for the 18-month program.
Four months later, he began working at Uchi, Tyson Cole’s acclaimed modern Japanese restaurant, rising through the ranks before transferring to the executive chef role at buzzedabout sister restaurant, Uchiko, in 2010.
As his career skyrocketed, Qui said he felt more lost.
“I was always looking for gratification wherever I could find it,” he said.
He found it in his restaurant family and within the food community — and in alcohol and drugs. Qui remembers those years as full of conflict and emotion. The trappings of his fame came with great experiences: travel, food, people. But he was saddled by guilt from being gone from his kitchen for extended periods to do food festivals and events. The push to challenge himself was extreme, and much of it came from within.
“I felt I had to work the hardest, sweat the most, party hardest,” he said. “It’s so selfish and self-destructive. Everyone told me to slow down, but I didn’t.”
He went to a monthlong rehab immediately after the arrest but says he remains a work in progress.
“Sobriety has always been a battle for me,” he said, adding that he’s still trying to work out “who I am as a person.”
During his time at Uchiko, Qui had partnered with a friend to open a food truck called East Side King, which eventually spawned other ventures in Austin. In 2013, with some of his winnings from “Top Chef,” he opened his own restaurant, which closed a few months ago, and he continues to operate Otoko at Austin’s South Congress Hotel and Pao by Paul Qui at the Faena Miami Beach hotel in Florida.
He opened Aqui last summer, a ground-up building on Lower Westheimer whose menu, overseen daily by chef de cuisine Gabriel Medina, features inventive Southeast Asian food with strong Filipino influence. Qui expected that some Houston diners would see the restaurant as tainted by association and boycott it. But he wishes that the work of his staff at Aqui was not being evaluated based on a night he regrets.
“They already made their judgment. I can’t change their mind,” he said of people who won’t eat at Aqui — and who call it out — because they see him as a domestic abuser.
One of those people is Gwendolyn Knapp, who wrote an essay for Houstonia magazine railing against Chronicle critic Alison Cook’s decision to write positively about the food and staff at Aqui.
“I am not eating at Aqui because I value the lives and welfare of women and children more than I do a buzzy new restaurant experience,” she wrote.
Amanda Kludt, the editor-in-chief of Eater, put it more plainly in an email to the Chronicle: “I have zero interest in going to Paul’s restaurants. And I don’t imagine our national critic, when he comes through Houston on his next visit, will dine at Aqui given the breadth of options in town.”
The staff at Aqui chooses to work there despite the controversy. Pastry chef Jillian Bartolome recently spoke on the subject in an article titled, “What it’s like to be an employee of a maligned restaurant.”
“It’s a complex business,” she told ChefsFeed.com. “There are people (working at Aqui) who are also victims of domestic abuse and violence; we still choose to be here. For me, this is an uncommon opportunity that I took to advance my career. It’s been an incredible (experience) for me. I don’t expect anybody to agree with my choice, but none of those people are standing in my shoes, or know anything about what my journey has been.”
Bartolome added that each situation is complex, be it Qui or other chefs, and that often conversations about them lack nuance: “Everybody wants to stand on the right side of morality, and to even acknowledge the other side sometimes opens the door to a very slippery slope.” Celebrity chef and restaurateur Tom Colicchio, a longtime judge on “Top Chef ” and outspoken critic of sexual harassment culture in restaurants, said Qui’s arrest should not be placed in the same category as chefs who have been accused of sexual harassment — Batali, for example, who allegedly groped multiple employees, or Besh, who allegedly attempted to coerce an employee during a monthslong sexual relationship.
“When you see issues of sexual harassment in our industry, it’s a pattern. It’s not one instance,” Colicchio said. “With Paul, it’s not a pattern.”
Has his opinion of Qui as a chef changed since the arrest?
“Yeah, a little bit. It’s hard to say,” Colicchio said. “I think it’s hard to look at someone and say they’re not redeemable. I think we have to believe in redemption at some point. It’s hard not to. Forgiveness is a part of it. But you have to earn forgiveness. You don’t get forgiveness because you outlasted it. You have to own up to it.”
Colicchio said he still considers Qui a great chef, one of the best to ever compete on “Top Chef.” “His personal issues aside, it doesn’t take away from his talent. It also doesn’t excuse him for what he’s done,” he said. “The image of the bad boy chef was OK in our industry for a long time, and people were willing to look the other way because of the talent.”
Not so today, when the industry is working to fix itself in the wake of the Me Too movement.
“The way the industry fixes this is to make sure it doesn’t continue,” he said.
Anita Jaisinghani, the chef-owner of Pondicheri in Houston, said she’s not sure if she’d give Aqui her business. Like Kludt, she questions why a Houston diner, with so many other options, would eat there in light of the allegations. Still, she said, Qui deserves compassion as much as the next man.
“We’ve all done things in our lives that we’re not proud of,” Jaisinghani said. “Isn’t to forgive divine? That’s human nature.”
For his part, Qui hopes one day he can get to a point where his arrest is no longer a discussion topic.
“I know it’s going to take time,” he said. “A lot of time.”