The dining critique in an age of scandal

I’m working my way through a stack of menus as I begin writing this year’s Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants, which will be published April 29. Each time I come to those of Pizzaiolo, Boot & Shoe Service, Bottega, Coqueta and Tosca Cafe I move them to the bottom of the pile.

All these restaurants were in last year’s 2017 guide, and since it was published in May the restaurant world has been rocked by accusations. Chefs and owners from New Orleans to New York have been accused of sexual harassment of staffs.

The Bay Area is hardly exempt. In an investigative piece March 11, Chronicle reporters Tara Duggan and Karen de Sá talked with more than 70 past and present employees of Charlie Hallowell, owner of Pizzaiolo and Boot & Shoe Service, and uncovered years of harassment in the workplace. Michael Chiarello, owner of Bottega and Coqueta and one of the country’s highest profile chefs, has settled two harassment suits, one in 2010 at Bottega and the other in 2016 at Coqueta. Ken Friedman, the co-owner of North Beach’s Tosca, was accused of sexual harassment and abuse by multiple women at his New York restaurants.

It is impossible to ignore the impact on the restaurant business, or on those of us who write about it. For decades the restaurant culture has put up with harassment, and we’re just now coming to grips with it. In the Chronicle’s investigation of Hallowell, the reporters cite a 2014 study by the industry watchdog Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. It found that “two-thirds of nearly 700 female restaurant employees surveyed said they had been harassed by owners, managers or supervisors.”

Along with just about every other restaurant critic in the country, I’ve been struggling with how to evaluate restaurants given this backdrop. How do I handle a review of a place when the owner or chef is accused of harassment or assault? Do I refuse to review it, or review with caveats? Should I take a restaurant with an accused chef or owner out of the Top 100, the 23-year-old list that applauds the best of the region?

That leads to another question: If the restaurant is excellent, am I doing a disservice to its other employees by refusing to review it or removing it from the Top 100?

Over the past months, since the #MeToo movement gained strength, I’ve spent hours talking to other critics, friends and people whose opinion I respect — and I still have no clear-cut answer. But none of us can move these questions, like so many menus, to the bottom of the pile. I have to be clear on how I’m doing my job.

As part of this questioning, I’ve carefully analyzed how I operate as a critic, a profession that by its very nature is controversial.

I’ve always seen my goal as evaluating a restaurant as objectively as possible, through both my own eyes and the eyes of a diner. Of course, criticism is subjective, but a critic should be consistent and explain conclusions so that readers understand how judgments were made.

Here’s how I’d describe the way I approach a meal: It’s almost like having an out-of-body experience as I try to separate and compartmentalize my thoughts and preconceived notions from the dining experience at hand. I try to break apart the various components of food, service and atmosphere and even noise. After looking at the components separately, I then put them back together again when I write. In the end, my evaluation has everything to do with the experience of dining.

The most important quality of a critic is to know himself or herself. It’s important to analyze how you react to certain events, to understand your prejudices and, more importantly, to know what you like or dislike so that those don’t influence what you write. I may have an aversion to a certain ingredient in a dish, but that doesn’t give me the license to say the dish is bad. Other principles of whether the ingredients are balanced and how a dish fits into the menu should come into play in the final evaluation. That means I could personally dislike a dish but praise it if it’s well constructed.

My aim always is to tell readers what they can expect when they visit that restaurant.

Then what about the chefs or owners themselves — how does their behavior influence a review? Generally, I try to suspend my knowledge of and opinions of a chef and disregard any pedigree of the ownership. After more than 30 years reviewing restaurants in the Bay Area, I’ve been accused of giving favorable reviews simply because I know the chef or owner. But I’ve always attempted to approach every restaurant the same way, whether I know the chef or not: I keep focused on what is placed before me over three visits. Period. I’ve given lukewarm reviews to chefs I know are great people, and I’ve given raves to some I personally dislike.

This is the only credible way to approach a review, and the only way I can defend my position.

Charges of harassment are, of course, extraordinarily different than my own likes or dislikes. But how much of my knowledge of a chef and his workplace should impact how I evaluate what a diner will experience? And if we only know about a handful of harassment cases, but clearly it happens more than we have reported, is using such charges an inconsistent yardstick?

That becomes the crux of the dilemma: If a restaurant is still excellent, or serves a purpose that no one else does, should it be excluded from coverage? Like everyone else I want workplace harassment to stop and for harassers to be called out. Many people might think that by giving a restaurant coverage I’m condoning bad behavior. Yet I’m looking at the entire restaurant, and just because I might include a restaurant where the owner or chef is under suspicion, that should not be equated with supporting harassment.

If I pass over a restaurant with an accused chef, am I also punishing the dozens of employees who have made the restaurant great? Should they also be penalized for a chef ’s or owner’s transgressions, especially if they are working at the top of their profession?

After Tosca Cafe came to the top of my pile of menus a third time, I took a deep breath and kept it in the current working list for this year’s guide. At this point, a month away from publication, it still might not make the cut. But I don’t think it should be automatically excluded.

Here’s my reasoning for leaving it in at this point: I visited earlier this year and found that the food at Tosca Cafe was consistently good.

This bar/restaurant has been a part of San Francisco history for nearly a century. Friedman and chef April Bloomfield, who own the Spotted Pig and other restaurants in New York, brought back a piece of history by restoring the interior and reopening the kitchen that had been closed since 1953. It’s a San Francisco icon we should be able to honor.

The chef, Josh Even, was brought in from New York when the restaurant opened five years ago. In every practical way, Tosca is his kitchen — he is the one responsible for making Tosca sing. Leaving him, and all the other employees who have worked so hard, off the list seems unfair. For those reasons I think the decision to include the restaurant on the list of prospective Top 100 spots outweighs the rest.

As for Hallowell’s and Chiarello’s restaurants?

They have been moved, once again, to the bottom of the pile. In the next few days, I have to decide if the benefit to diners —and employees — outweighs the charges, as the Top 100 is readied for publication.

There is no single, uncomplicated answer to the question of how to cover businesses run by owners who have been accused of committing criminal acts. As a human, I condemn harassment in all forms. As a diner, I can take my my money where I want. But as a critic, I come back to what I understand best: Judging the quality of the dining experience as best I can. When I wear my critic’s hat I’m not evaluating what happens behind the kitchen door. I’m writing about what comes out that door.

In the end, diners will make the ultimate decision, as they always have.