Not mentioned: crime, homelessness, minimum wage increases, Democrat politicians
New York Times reporter Julia Moskin has what seems to be a pretty good story. The Times online headline definitely doesn’t undersell it: “Punching, Slamming, Screaming: A Chef’s Past Abuse Haunts Noma, the World’s Top-Rated Restaurant.” Nor does the subheadline: “Dozens of former employees say René Redzepi inflicted physical and psychological violence on the staff for years.”
Yet leave it to the New York Times to take an apparently solid story and undercut it by inserting a totally unnecessary left-wing political tilt. For context on Los Angeles, where the Copenhagen-based Redzepi, the subject of the Times article, is opening a $1,500-a-meal, 16-week pop-up, the Times says, “Some local chefs have posted that they find it offensive that Noma is swooping in and drawing deep-pocketed diners, when Los Angeles restaurants are facing existential threats from climate change, inflation and immigration enforcement.”
The two hyperlinks in the sentence are to two Times articles about challenges facing the L.A. restaurant industry. Neither one of them mentions “climate change.”
One of the articles names several factors: “the pandemic,” “the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020,” “the 2023 Hollywood strikes,” wildfires, and a curfew imposed by city officials to prevent rioting in protests against immigration enforcement.
The other article reports that “Covid shutdowns made diners more comfortable with food delivery and appreciative of the virtues of home cooking.” It also mentions “marchers protesting the immigration raids” and “the writers’ strike and the fires, and rising rents.”
If the Times were looking on a politically open-minded basis for factors threatening the Los Angeles restaurant industry, it might have mentioned what restaurant operators have described as the region’s “crime and homeless crisis.” It might have mentioned a series of increases to the minimum wage that took the statewide rate for fast-food restaurant workers to $20 an hour in 2024 and has moved the minimum wage up in the city of Los Angeles to $18.42 an hour in July 2026 from $16.04 an hour in 2022. It might have mentioned Governor Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership or the threat of a confiscatory wealth tax.
The Times could claim that it’s not offering its own analysis, just passing along what “some local chefs have posted.” But it doesn’t quote or link to any examples, and it doesn’t explain why harebrained social media posts should be passed along to Times readers, “some people are saying” or “I am hearing” style. After all, plenty of cities—Las Vegas, Miami, Tel Aviv, Dubai—have flourishing restaurant scenes with warm temperatures and no less exposure to climate change than Los Angeles or anywhere else on the planet. As crafted, the line about climate change and immigration enforcement sounds like a Democratic Party campaign attack ad against the Trump administration, not something that belongs in a news article about a chef’s labor practices.
I asked Moskin for an on-the-record response, or to point me to specific examples that “some local chefs have posted.” I did not hear back by deadline.
The Times article is noteworthy for two other reasons. First, it omits any kind of humility or self-examination when it comes to the Times’s own coverage of Redzepi over the years.
In 2011, writing in the New York Times Magazine, Mark Bittman described Redzepi as “a sweet guy running an oddly nonhierarchical kitchen,” praising dishes such as “deep-fried moss” and “Beets with onion ash.”
Also in 2011, Times bigfoot Roger Cohen noted Redzepi’s “Macedonian Muslim father.” Cohen described Redzepi as “a chef for a shrinking planet” and also mentioned the “deep-fried Finnish moss with boletus mushroom and a cream dip.” Said Cohen, “I found Redzepi in a bubbly mood.”
In 2018, Pete Wells, then the Times restaurant critic, assured Times readers, “There is no discernible hierarchy in the service staff, although Mr. Redzepi is obviously the boss.” Wells, too, described Redzepi as “the son of a Muslim father of Albanian descent.”
Now that there’s “Punching, Slamming, Screaming” and “past abuse” involved rather than an adulatory celebration of the world’s best chef, the Times no longer finds the Muslim angle fit to print.
Redzepi, who wrote publicly in 2015 about his own behavior—”a terrible boss,” a “bully,” “I’ve yelled and pushed people”—told the Free Beacon, “I am deeply sorry and I have worked to change. A decade ago, I began speaking openly about my behavior in the kitchen – the outbursts, the anger, and at times even physical aggression, where I shouted and pushed people, acting in ways that are unacceptable. I was not able to handle the pressure, small mistakes could feel enormous to me, and I reacted in ways that I regret deeply today.”
A spokesperson for Noma said “we’ve made meaningful changes to transform our culture and workplace over the last several years – including a fully paid internship program, improved hours and time off, expanded benefits, a dedicated HR team, leadership training, mentorship programs, and more. … We’re committed to making Noma a supportive and rewarding environment for everyone who works here.”
The Times article does acknowledge that “Restaurant kitchens have long been punishing workplaces … and many chefs have admitted to bullying workers.” Anthony Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential that “The life of the cook” was one “with a carefree disregard for all conventional morality.”
Read the full article here
