Is it time to kill off fine dining?
The problem with Rene Redzepi was not, ultimately, that he was charging more than $2000 a head for dinner. The problem with Rene Redzepi was that he was routinely abusing his staff.
Though, that took a while to filter through.
There had been anonymous complaints and well circulated rumours for years that the star Danish chef behind the Noma brand was up to no good. His practice of utilising “stages”, or chefs doing unpaid work experience, signing up for months-long stints with the threat of being blackballed globally if they left early, was widespread. It was part of the business model. Most people acknowledged that.
What wasn’t so generally understood was the extent of the abuse. A New York Times investigation earlier this year, spurred on by stories collected by former Noma employee Jason Ignacio White, lifted the lid on that particular saucepan, detailing Redzepi’s behaviour: punching cooks in the face, forcing unpaid interns to work 16-hour days, stabbing staff with kitchen implements, body shaming, intimidation and public ridicule.
Redzepi stepped down, eventually, claiming the abuse was no longer being perpetrated but that he would resign for the good of the Noma brand. The restaurant’s Los Angeles pop-up would go on to open as planned, with a sell-out run of meals costing US$1500 (A$2072) per head.
It would be comforting to look at Redzepi as an outlier, an abuser who is not at all representative of the fine-dining system. But you would have to be delusional to think that...
