This article is the third in a series on kitchen labor, accountability, and reform. You can read the first on culinary education and the second on violence prevention here.
“Is it just that you’re interested in dropping a bombshell story… because it’s going to drive engagement?” asked Chefsteps Editorial Director Sasha Fanon Marx. His question reflects how it feels as if abuse in restaurants is only worthy of being news when it happens in famous kitchens, such as New York Times journalist Julia Moskin’s article on the abuse allegations against chef René Redzepi at his restaurant Noma. And when that coverage does exist, it’s framed as a personality profile on a short-tempered genius or an art monster. What drives coverage of famous kitchens isn’t concern for the workers in them. “There’s this rubbernecking that people enjoy,” Marx added, “I don’t watch UFC, but I watch The Bear.” Suffering in kitchens has become socially-acceptable, bingeable entertainment, instead of a problem to fix. Abuse happens outside of Michelin-starred restaurants, too, but it goes undocumented because it’s not nearly as sensational.
Accountability falls to food media because little public data or transparency infrastructure exists on restaurant labor conditions, even in cities like New York, and food media has never had standards requiring it to vet the kitchens it makes famous. A code of ethics that requires researching labor practices is not yet part of what it means to do the job of a food writer, critic, or influencer.
Food media is aware of the need for standards vetting labor practices in restaurants, but it’s slow to make that change. “You know, we created Noma. We created Momofuku,” chef and writer Hannah Selinger said about Redzepi and David Chang’s celebrity statuses, “We made these people famous without going behind the line to see what it was like working there.” Verifying restaurant workplace conditions isn’t impossible, it’s just work that nobody has been expected to do. Selinger’s comment isn’t just a hypocrisy to catch food media in—workplace conditions in restaurants are a real issue that need to be critically engaged with.
Chefs might be hesitant to open up, workers might fear retaliation from management, and critics aren’t necessarily trained OSHA inspectors, but there are ways food media can reasonably investigate histories of abuse. There are litigation records, Department of Labor (DOL) violations, and former staff to look for. And in New York City, we have Comptroller Mark Levine’s Employer Wall of Shame and Employer Violations Dashboard, which display the city’s “largest violators” and act as a database for labor violations, respectively.
It would be helpful to know what criteria food media is using to vet labor practices, if and when they do. It’s often unclear and convoluted what standards food media has, such as Los Angeles Times critic Jenn Harris’ article on why she refused the invitation to attend Noma’s pop-up in LA. At first she says, “It’s impossible to know exactly what goes on in someone’s kitchen,” but then provides the names of LA restaurants who she reports are “equitable” and “supportive” workplaces. How can it be both “impossible” to know how a kitchen functions, but then know that some function equitably? Harris claimed that she considers the reputations of chefs who she platforms before writing articles or posting on social media, however, she did not respond to my requests for comment on how she evaluates labor practices. A code of ethics that considers labor could standardize the expectations for who food media chooses to write about instead of each critic or influencer having their own, unaccredited system.
A lack of accessible data, coupled with a lack of ethical guidelines, means there isn’t much room for accountability. Customers don’t always do their research before they eat: “[W]hether they realize it or not, they just consume without thinking,” said Eric Huang, chef and owner of Pecking House in Chinatown, about his own experience in the restaurant industry. Diners who try to avoid eating at abusive kitchens have little information to act on and diners who don’t know never get a fair chance to. “Everybody eats, everybody goes out to eat, it’s a core, human experience and people understand very little about how any of it works.” Most of what food media personnel know about the reputation of their peers is through “word of mouth,” said Marx, but not every customer has the advantage of being well-connected in the industry like Marx, Huang, or Harris.
The publicly displayed data we do have on restaurants’ standards are programs like ABCEats that require businesses to post their sanitation grade in their street-facing windows. NYC doesn’t have any kind of window plaque or record to show the quality of labor standards. This means when a critic or influencer promotes a restaurant, there isn’t a simple way for their audience to see if they are giving attention to a toxic workplace. Huang emphasized factuality is a substantial problem in a media landscape where abuse allegations against chefs are often treated as opinions or a failure of “character” as a restaurant worker.
Without data or transparency policies, it’s up to a handful of people to speak out against labor conditions, such as members of the food media who don’t have as much at stake in losing their job as a line cook or waitress might. “It is a privilege to be able to be vocal about your values and try to make your job/workplace/industry aligned with such standards,” said chef, writer, and researcher Jenny Dorsey. “This is tricky because just giving more voice to community members can also harm them, especially through blowback at their jobs for being visible / talking to the press.” For example, speaking up could risk exposing a chef’s documentation status to immigration enforcement. Writers and creators who have the privilege to avoid problematic restaurants can do so.
Voluntary guidelines have worked in food media before. The now defunct Association of Food Journalists was the standard in the field until it shut down in 2020 due to a lack of funds, outlining ethical practices specific to the industry, such as encouraging critics to report if they suspect they’ve received “special treatment” at a restaurant. Some writers still honor parts of that code of ethics, such as making sure they fully compensate restaurants and chefs for what they eat. Unfortunately, labor and a commitment to researching an establishment’s history of abuse were never a part of those guidelines.
The AFJ’s guidelines had been updated as recently as 2018 to account for social media and freelancing, but not the rate at which content creators and influencers would come to reshape the food media landscape. Food media impacts what we eat more than ever (such as how 84% of Gen Z actively try social media food trends) and means it is significantly responsible for who consumers support and where they dine.
Where accountability starts in food media
Accountability can begin with revamping a code of ethics for food media that considers labor practices. It can be crafted with the help of a conversation between media and restaurant workers and how the latter would like to be considered when platforming head chefs—this might include anonymizing staff when possible in order to prevent retaliation. These guidelines would make researching an establishment’s labor practices the standard for writers, critics, journalists, and influencers looking to cover a restaurant. Food media’s research could be eased with an extensive database on restaurant labor standards and employee reports accessible to the public. And without a body like the AFJ to encourage these expectations, these policies can be adopted into pre-existing publication guidelines, like The New York Times’ own on “Ethical Journalism.”
In addition to how some young chefs are advocating for better labor standards, there is already a push from food media for this reform in transparency. “Starting in restaurants and moving into food media has made me realize how little food media actually sees of BOH [back of house or kitchen staff] work,” said Dorsey. She felt as if conversations about restaurant labor were “short-lived” and “felt like little bursts of solvable problems” in the face of a major systemic issue impacting workers every day.
No one enforced reserving tables anonymously when the AFJ was still around, but it became part of the expectation of what it meant to be a real food critic. These were guidelines the field decided were necessary to be taken seriously. Guidelines made paying for meals the standard for a legitimate food journalist; vetting labor a restaurant’s practices should be next.
Jaden Schapiro is a senior writer and researcher at the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center.
Cover image by Remco Guijs via Unsplash.
