Noma’s highly anticipated $1,500-per-head tasting menu in LA would have been controversial under any circumstances.
But when it is being hosted by a chef facing scrutiny over abusive kitchen practices, a backlash was inevitable.
What’s ironic, though, is that much of the outrage is coming from the same elite food world that helped build a culture of abuse.
The New York Times recently detailed allegations of long hours, unpaid labor, harassment, and abusive kitchen culture at Noma.
The Copenhagen restaurant has long been celebrated as the pinnacle of modern gastronomy –– a place where you pay $200 to smell butter.
The reaction across media and social platforms has been swift condemnation.
But anyone who has worked in professional kitchens for more than a decade, and especially those of us who came up in the early 2000s or earlier, had a very different reaction.
For decades (really, for more than a century), elite kitchens have been run like military brigades. The chef is the general, and the cooks are the peons, the soldiers in a culinary Full Metal Jacket.
Books have been written about this kitchen culture. Anthony Bourdain made a career exposing it. Marco Pierre White helped define the modern version of it. One of his most famous cooks, Gordon Ramsay, turned the persona of the volatile chef into a global media brand, humiliating cooks on television for their mistakes.
For young chefs, the bargain was simple: Endure the brutality, work the hours, and maybe one day earn your place in the hierarchy.
The hours were real. Twelve, 14, and 16-hour days were common (and still are).
Kitchens can feel like a cult –– from early morning until midnight, you see the same 20 or 30 faces, rarely stepping outside. You prep for lunch, meticulously clean the kitchen, and prep again for dinner.
Then there’s the intensity of service — hours standing over a hot range, butter-basting scallops, plating endless courses, sometimes assigning one cook to peel asparagus for half a shift.
The work is tedious, exhausting, and mentally consuming.
For some cooks, it builds discipline and resilience. For others, it breaks them.
The industry has long paid a price for that culture. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and burnout have shadowed professional kitchens for decades. It’s why so many talented chefs eventually leave the line altogether, ending up years later in 9-to-5 sales jobs for food distributors after the grind becomes unsustainable.
That said, there is an important distinction that must be made.
Hard kitchens are one thing. Abuse is another.
When verbal pressure crosses into physical intimidation or sexual misconduct, as we saw with Mario Batali and other high-profile cases, laws and rules must be enforced.
Those abuses deserve exposure and accountability.
But the broader outrage surrounding Noma also exposes a deeper irony.
California, and LA in particular, sit at the forefront of regulations to protect workers. The state has some of the highest minimum wages in the country, strict labor laws, and extensive administrative oversight.
Yet restaurants in California are closing at alarming rates.
Now the same elite diners willing to spend $1,500 on a tasting menu, complete with microscopic portions and elaborate culinary theatrics, are expressing outrage over kitchen labor practices that have existed for generations.
Many of these abusive elite restaurants build global brands, attract wealthy diners, and command international attention.
Meanwhile, the independent neighborhood restaurants — places that treat employees like team members, and operate without the spectacle of elite gastronomy — are often forgotten.
Those small restaurants are the ones actually struggling to survive.
If we truly want restaurant workers to earn more and live better, the conversation cannot stop at blaming one-off, self-absorbed chefs.
It must include the broader economic reality facing small businesses.
California imposes enormous payroll taxes, regulatory costs, and compliance burdens that drain both workers’ paychecks and owners’ balance sheets.
That is a form of abuse few people talk about.
We may never regulate our way out of difficult personalities or harsh workplace cultures. Human behavior rarely changes through regulation alone.
But if policymakers genuinely care about restaurant workers, they should start by making it easier, not harder, for the restaurants that employ them to survive.
Because right now, the biggest threat to the restaurant industry isn’t just abusive chefs. It’s the slow suffocation of small restaurants under California’s regulatory regime.
Chef Andrew Gruel is a chef, television host, and member of the Huntington Beach City Council.
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