THE DINER’S RESPONSIBILITY WHEN HARASSMENT SCANDALS HIT EATERIES.
How should diners react when chefs are accused of abuse?
At around 6 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 28, a little less than 24 hours after the Chronicle published an investigative report in which 17 women accused Oakland chef-restaurateur Charlie Hallowell of sexual harassment, his flagship restaurant on Telegraph Avenue was packed with customers.
This was just hours after Hallowell — who also owns Boot & Shoe Service and Penrose in Oakland — addressed the sexual harassment allegations with his entire restaurant staff in a private meeting at Penrose earlier in the day. Hallowell has said that he is stepping down from day-to-day operations while an outside consultant performs an investigation into the company; beyond that, his next steps remain unclear.
Compared to other Bay Area restaurants that have been linked to sexual harassment scandals, like Coqueta or the recent upscale iteration of Tosca, many say that Pizzaiolo in particular has been strongly tied to a legion of regulars in its community. In the report’s fallout comes an important question for diners: how will they react to a neighborhood restaurant when its owner becomes a central character in such a scandal?
While several of those Thursday night customers declined to talk on the record, the Chronicle called a handful of other locals familiar with the restaurant for comment.
Since Pizzaiolo opened in 2005, Oakland resident Elaine Smith has been a regular. She used to call the place a “second kitchen” for her family. She said there were afternoons where instead of going home after picking her two sons up from school, she would take them to Pizzaiolo. There, while sitting at tables during the late afternoon dinner rush amid homework papers and textbooks, they’d eat pizza and speak with neighbors, she said.
Her sons are now in their 20s. Earlier this month, both came to visit and each one wanted to have dinner at Pizzaiolo, which they did. Now, Smith said she isn’t sure when she’ll ever return.
“I feel sorry for all of the employees that they have to go through this. Every person that works there is going to have endless conversations about this issue and it’s so difficult for them, I imagine,” Smith said. “I would go back tomorrow if I knew for sure Charlie was never going to set foot in there. The workers are the people I care about. Those are who I’ll think about as I drive by there while this plays out.”
Food writer John Birdsall lives blocks from Pizzaiolo. When he and his husband first married and moved to the neighborhood years ago, the pizza shop was, in many ways, their culinary introduction to the area. Over time, the shop weaved itself into the fabric of their Oakland existence.
Outside of the fare, Birsdall said Pizzaiolo’s stances on social issues made it unique. He said the restaurant supported marriage rights and social movements like Occupy Oakland and Black Lives Matter, among many others. The support was visible in the windows facing Telegraph, social “billboards” for the restaurant, as Birdsall called them.
“You knew if you were walking down Telegraph, you would see expressions of solidarity in the windows. You felt like they were allies,” he said. “Knowing the experience of the workers was uncomfortable or detrimental, it feels like betrayal.”
Regarding the question of local customers choosing to distance themselves from Pizzaiolo, Birdsall said it wouldn’t be hard. The neighborhood has a litany of dining and drinking options, he said, including Temescal Brewing near 40th Street, as well as the newly opened Hawking Bird, Rose’s Taproom, Dona Tomas and Burma Superstar, all along Telegraph.
“I think the old feeling that Pizzaiolo was really a beacon was lost, and I’m not sure what happens where a restaurant could regain that,” he said. “I’m feeling pretty pissed off because I feel that Pizzaiolo has always been a neighborhood anchor in many ways.”
Adam Lamoureaux, the founder of Linden Street Brewery and now a co-founder of Old Kan Brewery in West Oakland, said for Oakland residents, extracting the love for a neighborhood spot entrenched in the community from the scandal surrounding it isn’t easy, especially when the scandal stems from one person’s actions.
As a prominent beer supplier in the East Bay, Lamoureaux said he built a professional relationship with Hallowell over the years and identifies the chef ’s destinations as “influential places” in the Oakland dining scene. But it’s that past professional relationship that spurred Lamoureaux to do some soul searching over the last 36 hours.
“As a supplier, am I helping if I continue to give beer to a place that treats people poorly? If they’re getting the best produce, the best beer, is there any incentive for them to change their behavior?” Lamoureaux said. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about over the last day or so since all this started happening.”
After the Chronicle story published, Lamoureaux wrote in a Facebook post that as a member of the East Bay restaurant industry, he had heard the rumors about Hallowell’s behavior over the years. Yet by not confronting Hallowell about the rumor, Lamoureaux said he was therefore complicit in the chef ’s actions. Speaking as a customer, he says his fear would be seeing the place devoid of patrons, a situation negatively affecting the job security of Pizzaiolo employees.
“Oakland is a forgiving place and hopefully we can turn this into a positive. The industry needs to take a long look at itself,” Lamoureaux said. “It’s a damn shame. My concern is with the employees.”
Chris Kelling has worked in the restaurant industry for almost 20 years, including years in Oakland. His social circle intersects with some of the individuals quoted in the Chronicle’s story about Hallowell. He admitted that it was good news to hear people dined at the restaurant Thursday evening.
“Is it OK to keep eating at these restaurants is clearly the most difficult question to answer, because while you don’t want these gross men to continue to profit, there is a staff, who are much less able to take a financial hit than the owner is,” he said. “Charlie Hallowell has three restaurants — that’s got to be at least 100 people working for him. Should they all lose their jobs because he acted terribly? The answer is of course no, but how do we reconcile that with the active desire to not want to give the owner our money?”
Kelling said he is hoping for a fairy tale ending: “Someone coming along and buying him out, keeping the restaurants as they are, and keeping all staff — minus anyone who may have been complicit, of course. And if we’re writing this fairy tale, it would of course be wonderful for the person buying him out to be a woman.”