René Redzepi - Noma Controversy, the $1,500 LA Pop-Up, and What Happens Next?!

This week on the Chef’s Cut, Adrienne and Joe react to René Redzepi stepping down from Noma amid allegations of past abuse. They talk about how this story has reverberated throughout the world of fine dining, and speculate on how it will influence kitchens going forward. In this episode, we discuss: The $1500 Noma pop-up in Los Angeles Abuse in restaurants and why the new generation of chefs aren’t putting up with it Noma and René Redzepi’s impact on the fine dining industry How diners vote with their dollars Joe’s thoughts on running a positive and supportive kitchen Adrienne’s own stories of enduring abusive behavior in the kitchen Follow the show: @chefscutpod Follow Adrienne: @chefadriennecheatham Follow Joe: @insta.flamm

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Adrienne Cheatham?

  This week on The Chef's Cut, we're talking about Rene Redzepi stepping down from Noma amid allegations of past abuse. What happens to the $1,500 a seat Noma LA pop-up? And what does this mean for fine dining guests and workers?

• 0:23Adrienne Cheatham?

  I know we are only one episode into our three-part hospitality series. We're going to have to get back to that next week because this week, there's something that came up, Joe, that we have to talk about. There's no way that we can not talk about this, this topic that's all over the news right now, and that is Noma. The number one restaurant in the world is being canceled, and that's not even the biggest part of the story. The biggest part is that Rene Redzepi, the executive chef of Noma, has stepped away from the restaurant. And in this episode, we're going to talk about what happened, what led up to this point, and more importantly, what this means for chefs,

• 1:07Adrienne Cheatham?

  for diners, and for our industry at large.

• 1:09Joe Flamm?

  You know, I think him stepping away is one of the loudest things that's happened in our industry in a really, really long time. And, you know, like, all this comes out, the New York Times article that hit a couple of days ago alleging all these allegations against, you know, Rene himself and the culture there at Noma, and, you know, the abuses and all that, on the heels of this massive pop-up that you and I had been talking about, you know, this $1,500 per person, move everyone to LA, massively corporately-backed juggernaut of a pop-up. And then all this comes flying out, and you see, you know, you saw the money walk away first, right? You know, Amex backs out. Was it the other one, Blackbird?

• 1:51Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, the platform, the reservation platform.

• 1:53Joe Flamm?

  The reservation platform backs out.

• 1:55Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 1:56Joe Flamm?

  And now, but it's like, you still have this thing there. And now, you know, Redzepi shows up to pre-shift. And says he's leaving and he's stepping away from mad too. You know, this is the, the founder of Noma. This is a guy, you know, 23 years ago, who started maybe the most prolific restaurant of mining your cooking era, right? You could say, people are talking about this on a household level, who maybe necessarily didn't even know who he was.

• 2:24Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 2:24Joe Flamm?

  But like this has made him a household name in, you know what I mean? In, in the worst, in, in a negative way as opposed to, you know, a positive way.

• 2:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. And this, it all kind of started because they brought 130 staff members from Copenhagen to LA for this pop-up and charging $1,500 a person. And so first, the conversation was about how expensive it is, right? Like, that was the first thing that people kind of honed in on. And then people started looking at the labor practices and said, well, they're charging so much, but there's so many years of staff that were unpaid. And then it kept going and it snowballed and it snowballed. And then people started digging into allegations of abuse that happened in the kitchen in the early years.

• 3:11Joe Flamm?

  Yeah. And I think it's one of those things where it's like, you know, they talk about at restaurants where it's like, the bigger a place gets, the more issues you're going to have, right? The more people that are going to come for you. And I think it's, you know, 23 years is a long fucking time. And fine dining 23 years ago is very different than fine dining today. Or restaurants 23 years ago, or anything 23 years ago, right? But, you know, I think it's like, when we started to see this snowball, you know, you wondered, right? Cause you were like, yeah, we talked about the price and we're like $1,500 is crazy. But then that shit sold out in three minutes. So you're like, all right, the price doesn't matter. And you talk about the unpaid labor model and you're like, okay, yeah, but they've been doing that forever and it hasn't mattered. You know what I mean? It hasn't mattered to the diner, whether or not people are getting paid. It hasn't mattered

• 3:56Joe Flamm?

  to Michelin. It hasn't mattered to world's 50 best. It hasn't mattered to anything. For 23 years. And I feel like the stuff in the New York Times article, like, you know, alleged, you know, physical abuse and the verbal abuse, I think, was on the table forever with this place and other places. And I don't know, I wasn't there. I've never worked there. You know what I mean? I've never met Renee. But it's, it's crazy that like, that was finally the tipping point where you saw action, where you saw sponsors actually pull out.

• 4:24Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Joe Flamm?

  And the sponsors pulling out, like, that's, you know what I mean? Anything, right? Nothing happens till the money's effective. You know what I mean? And then, once the money gets pinched, things get shaken up.

• 4:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Joe Flamm?

  You know, you can fuck with a lot of things, but you can't fuck with the bag.

• 4:36Adrienne Cheatham?

  I think it's also because the allegations in the New York Times article did go beyond what people, people already expect the stereotype, like, right? People watch The Bear. People know about Noma from The Bear because the main character had Staj there and had flashbacks in an episode. There are certain things that people assume and take for granted and are okay with when it comes to fine dining and verbal abuse. Or, you know, we used to call them like the Jedi Mind tricks. It's like, they gotta break you down to build you up. So there is a certain level of what was acceptable. And then what came out in the New York Times article that some people have experienced

• 5:17Adrienne Cheatham?

  there went well beyond what I think people thought. You know, when you think of a fine dining kitchen, this restaurant was named number one in the world five times. So you expect that there's a high level of pressure, super high expectation. There's a ton of like, a militaristic ethos of the way people are like, you know, disciplined there. But physical abuse definitely takes it to another territory. And that's why I think Amex and Blackbird pulled out. Because once you go beyond what is acceptable abuse, which shouldn't be acceptable in our

• 5:59Adrienne Cheatham?

  industry, but it is the standard of how things have been done. And it's what I've experienced also. But when you go beyond that into physical abuse, and some of the things that I read, even I was surprised by.

• 6:11Joe Flamm?

  Did you expect, let me ask you this, did you expect him to walk away?

• 6:15Adrienne Cheatham?

  No, I didn't because on one hand, this behavior was a very long time ago. And, you know, in his statement, he said that he's done therapy. He's stepped away from service, that he has tried to make amends and change his behavior over the years. So I didn't think, number one, I was going to be reading about the types of, you know, things that I was reading about that, that people had experienced there. But I also didn't expect him to be stepping away. I mean, it's literally the start of the 16 week pop up in LA.

• 6:53Adrienne Cheatham?

  And for the exec chef to step away before the first service or right on the first night. And the sous chefs, the CDC, the team that they brought from Copenhagen is going to be running it. I did not see that coming at all. But he, he said that, you know, he felt that he's too much of a distraction right now. But I definitely did not see that coming.

• 7:16Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, I mean, I didn't see it coming either. I mean, I felt like this, this situation, and I mean, we'll still see what comes out of this. You know what I mean? It feels like every few hours, things are unfolding, things are changing. There's perspectives coming from all sides of the aisle on it, right? People of like, yeah, this should be this, people on the other side who are like, you know, they spent time there, they had a great experience or whatever it may be. But the, the fact of the matter is like that this is, you know, where it's at now. This is, you know, the way, you know, he's being held accountable for these allegations. And, you know, with him stepping away, I think it brings to the question of like, like, what does that mean for that restaurant of that pop up? You know what I mean? Like one, like, you know, I don't even know if it's a question of like, is that enough?

• 7:59Joe Flamm?

  Like there's, I mean, I don't know what else he could do at that moment, right? But like for those people still there, they're there. It's starting. They have people coming to the door. Does that change the guest perspective? You know what I mean? Are they still gonna come? Is this thing gonna make it 16 weeks?

• 8:16Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 8:16Joe Flamm?

  Is it gonna run its full course? Or is it gonna taper out? Is it gonna fall off? Like what's gonna happen here?

• 8:27Joe Flamm?

  There's so many layers to this that are crazy, but like that it's not just like, oh, this is a restaurant group and now this guy's walking away from this restaurant group and there's still all the people there running it. But it's like, these are people who run a restaurant in a different fucking country.

• 8:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 8:42Joe Flamm?

  Who are now in another country for 16 weeks. Also, like, a lot of promises been made for this pop-up. But I mean, I gotta imagine like a lot of funding for those promises were coming from those sponsors.

• 8:55Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah, Amex had tons of seats that they booked for their certain reservation people to give priority. All those reservations have been released. And so people were getting alerts who had been on the waitlist, like, reservations are open, reservations are open. Are people booking them at the same rate? Because when it went live, the whole 16 weeks sold out in three minutes, like you said. Now, what is that? I've heard other diners who had booked, some people are canceling reservations. The LA Times critic said that she's not gonna go.

• 9:29Joe Flamm?

  Well, are those tickets refundable?

• 9:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  Hmm. Good question. Amex refunded their guests who had booked, from what I read in their statement, I think it was like on Eater, Amex said that they're refunding their people. But I don't know, because you typically have to prepay for that.

• 9:48Joe Flamm?

  Mm hmm. That's like the curiosity of it. That's what I'm saying. Like, the ripples of this, where it's like a pop-up like that, where it's prepaid, it's like 16 weeks. Like, so does it go the 16 weeks? You know what I mean? Like, is Noma still Noma without Renee? You know what I mean? Is the entity now bigger than him? And is it enough to remove one person in that it's not, you know what I mean, like a cultural thing? And I don't know. You know what I mean? I don't, I've never spent any time around that camp. You know what I mean? I've never even, I've never even, you know, I've spent time in one three Michelin star restaurant in my life, and it was in a tidy touted Italy, and it was, you know, it'd be the family run restaurant. It was not that. So it's, to me, like... I can't even like, you know, like fathom what today looks like where they're going into prep.

• 10:33Joe Flamm?

  But it's like, I mean, I imagine you would be if you're the chef right of that kitchen now, you just gotta be like, we're full steam ahead, right? We gotta go about our business. We gotta get ready. We gotta set up. But I think it's a weirdly defining moment of like, what does this mean? Cause like, at the end of the day with everything, right? The only truth is the diner. Critics can say what they want. Awards can say what they want. It doesn't matter. People go, people go.

• 10:57Adrienne Cheatham?

  Guests in diners, it's like if you don't support factory farming of animals and you vote with your dollar, you buy from local farms, you buy meat from, you know, a place that does it the right way. Or it's like, as a, as a guest, as a diner, you vote with your dollar. So are people still gonna go? Are they gonna take a harder look at the types of restaurants they're going to? Are they gonna take a harder look at the chefs that they're supporting with their dollars? That they're going to pay for these dinners if there is abuse allegations? And we saw a lot of that during Me Too, where reservations started to drop at restaurants where it was coming out that chefs had been abusive.

• 11:41Adrienne Cheatham?

  And, you know, sexual assaults had happened and whether it was the owner or the chef, those restaurants did start to lose business. Until the person was disassociated with the restaurant. And then people started returning. But it did take a while. And what does atonement look like for something like this? If the abuse happened years ago, is it still ongoing? Is that still the culture of the restaurant? From what I've, what I've heard, it wasn't the same in recent years as what the people who had experienced this abuse was from years before. So how do you atone for that? How do you make amends for that? And what does that look like?

• 12:25Adrienne Cheatham?

  What does that look like for the people who still work there? Do they wanna continue working there? If Renee Redzepi is not involved in it? Because part of the reason you go to a restaurant like that is to learn from the chef. So if he's not associated with it, do you still wanna be there?

• 12:41Joe Flamm?

  Right. And I think like, I think for some people, they can't fathom why people, you know, went to these restaurants to begin with, right? Of like, why would you, if you know it's like that? And it's like, I think it's one of those things though. For us as like cooks and chefs like coming up, it's like you go work at the best places because it instantly gives you a level of like credibility, right? It instantly gives you a level of seriousness to your craft. And I think it's, you know what I mean? Like not a good, but it is, you know, people wore it as a badge of honor of like, I worked at the hardest place in the world, right? And it was the toughest kitchen and, you know, mentally, physically and all these things, right? And they take that as like a badge of honor and not like as a dissuader of like, I want

• 13:24Joe Flamm?

  to show like that a place like that wouldn't break me or whatever. And I think like, so it's like, there's still, you know, as much as it's been unpaid and much of the things, it's like, there were still thousands of people lining up to work there, right? And I think like, that's hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, but it's like, I think when you're a restaurant at that level, that was how those things still worked. And it doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it okay. It shouldn't be the way. But like as much as happened right now, like I don't think we'll know what this is for like a while. You know what I mean? It really will be like, how this pop-up plays out for the next 16 weeks? Does it make it all the way through? I think is like number one, right? Like, do people go?

• 14:05Joe Flamm?

  Like, is this going to go the whole gauntlet of like 16 weeks is, that's also like an unprecedented pop-up. Like, and I know they've done it other places. They did it in Japan, they did it in Mexico. It's not like, you know, oh, we came to Chicago for two nights. This is a fucking residency in Vegas. This is a massive undertaking. So it brings up so much more questions than answers. And I think what comes out of this, what the response will be to it is like so much more, because I think like the industry, like, like we have already responded. You know what I mean? I think in the past years of like how people are running their kitchens, I think, you know, in the most part are very, very different from the kitchens we came up in.

• 14:46Joe Flamm?

  But like, how does the diner respond to not being able to look away in this scenario from how the sausage is made?

• 14:53Adrienne Cheatham?

  People are running kitchens differently, but people who work in these restaurants are also Not accepting the same behavior that we accepted a few years ago. You know, in our, in our generation coming up in restaurants. I've definitely had things thrown at me. I've definitely been yelled at where it goes beyond the mistake that I made. If I cut something wrong or overcooked or undercooked something. The screaming that you would get went beyond you overcooked this piece of fish or you undercooked this piece of fish or you messed up that ship a nod. It definitely went into a, you suck as a human being. You don't belong here. That's why people who come from where you come from don't work in places like this.

• 15:37Adrienne Cheatham?

  So I, I understand that that behavior was never okay. But like you said, I mean, I personally wore it as a badge of honor. I was 14 hours without a bathroom break. One time was my record because my chef would yell at me every time I tried to leave my station, even if it was between seating sometimes. And I was proud of having built up that toughness and being seen as one of the guys. I was proud that I didn't let them break me because the sous chefs had taken bets on how long I would last in the kitchen in the first place. And the fact that I outlasted them, I was like, nah, take that. Because I wanted to show them that I was tougher.

• 16:21Adrienne Cheatham?

  And so I personally put up with a lot of bullshit that I probably should not have put up with. But I also never went to HR and never necessarily stood up for myself. And the one time I did stand up to myself for the chef who, like I said, threw this tall metal container straight at my head. And if I hadn't ducked out of the way, it would have smashed me in the face. And it chipped a tile when it hit the wall behind me. I didn't go to HR. When he got that angry that that happened, it's because for the first time, I had actually started to say, chef, actually, that's not what happened. You know, I had actually started not talking back. It was still, yes, chef, let me tell you what actually happened.

• 17:07Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's when it went off the rails. So it just, it put me back in that shut up, yes chef mentality, because I didn't want to get to the point where physical abuse would come in because that was physical abuse, but I never had anybody lay hands on me. I never had anybody punch me in the stomach. I never had anybody, you know, poke me with a pasta fork or something like that. So I don't know how, how I would have even reacted in that situation. I don't know that people nowadays will even put up with being yelled at to a certain degree like we did.

• 17:49Joe Flamm?

  I've told stories to like, you know, cooks who I've worked with over the years about like coming up and being a sous chef for people and just like the way chefs talk to me and the way they would say things to me and you know, they were like, oh my God, they're like, how long did you work there? Like a couple of months? And I was like, oh, I spent two years there. And they're like, what were you? They were like, what were you doing? Like, what were you thinking?

• 18:08Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 18:08Joe Flamm?

  And you know, like the best I could come up with at the time was like, I think I was just at the point where I was like, well, I'm not going to let this person get the better of me. I'm going to go out on my own terms. I'm not going to quit because I feel like they are going to, you know, bully me. And that's what they were trying to do. It's just like, you know, it was a bully mentality and culture. I think of like those old kitchens where it's like, oh, they just like bullied the shit out of people until they thought it would make them better or it would break them. And, you know, I think it was very much a mentality of like, well, this is the way, you know, people were even harder on me. So I'm going to be hard on you. And the reason I'm good is because people were hard on me. And I've always hated that mentality of like, you know, it sucked for me, so it should suck for you.

• 18:51Joe Flamm?

  I think, you know, our generation has had the greatest opportunity to say, it doesn't have to be like this. It could be whatever we want it to be. You know what I mean? Now that we're in charge, you know what I mean? A kitchen can be run, you know, intensity and aggressiveness does not have to be a tone. It does not have to be a way of speaking together. There's other ways to bring that to a kitchen that are positive and not negative. And you know, I mean, not derogatory. My kitchens are super intense and aggressive, but like, it's not because people are yelling at each other. It's because we're like pushing the pace. It's because we're being maniacs and having fun and like barking at each other. And I don't mean like barking orders at each other. I mean, like literally just barking

• 19:33Joe Flamm?

  at each other. Um, like dogs. I, you know, I think in my mind, I hope that the, this change had all already been happening. And you know what I mean? I think when you, you, you read the things about what was going on there. It seems like some of those changes had been happening. And you wonder, you know, I think the response to this by the diners is going to show, is it too little, too late? Is this a big enough move? What else will it be? What will come from this? Will the pop up survive? Will Noma survive? That's the bigger question here. You know what I mean? Something that was so prolific, something that was a restaurant that created a genre like Nordic cuisine.

• 20:09Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Joe Flamm?

  Like they thought Nordic was cuisine. Yeah. And then it was, you know, the Favikens and the Relays and the, all these things. And, you know, Copenhagen being the dining city and the mad symposiums and all of these things, right?

• 20:23Adrienne Cheatham?

  Fermentation labs, foraging, like all these things that Noma put in place that they created. I mean, Anthony Bourdain in 2013 said Rene Redzepi was the most important and influential chef of the time.

• 20:37Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  And that's, you, you can't understate the importance that somebody has and the impact that they've had on the industry. And that's why I think everybody's watching how this is unfolding and what's going to happen because we're all thinking through this in real time. This is causing a lot of us to look back at stuff that we went through, people that we worked for, past behaviors. And it's also probably going to cause some people to examine the way they behaved and say, oh shit. Is somebody gonna come for me next? Like, you never know what that could lead to. So this is kind of like a watershed moment for our industry because we've discussed the abuse before. We've

• 21:19Adrienne Cheatham?

  discussed the way kitchens were run before, but this is on a whole new level that is really making people stop and take stock of so much more than just, eh, you know, we'll talk about it next week. You know, just be a little better tomorrow. This is really making people take a harder look at, at ourselves and our industry and what we kind of swept under the rug for so long.

• 21:46Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, so I think it's, you know, like you said, it's a watershed moment. Like, what happens now? Do they go the 16 weeks? Does Noma make it? I think it's something that we won't truly know for a while, right? As this continues to unfold. But, you know, I think it's one of those things you hope it just, it does recalibrate us in a good way. You know what I mean? Of like reminding people of like, like, one, like, this shit can't be that fucking serious.

• 22:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right. At the end of the day.

• 22:15Joe Flamm?

  It can't be. It can't be. Like, everybody needs to fucking calm the fuck down. It can't be that serious. You know what I mean? Where we're screaming at each other, people are hitting people. And like, you know what I mean? Like, it can't. We could still push really hard. We could still strive for excellence on the highest level. We could still push the boundaries of creativity of, you know, food, of sourcing, of how we do things. But like, it doesn't have to be that way. What the fallout is from this, what the reaction is from this, I think it'll be, it'll be a while till we know. But Noma, as we know it, has changed forever. We'll see what this means for the legacy of that restaurant and for, you know, Renee himself.

• 22:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah. And one thing that we've always promised to our listeners, to our audience, is that we will not shy away from the tough topics. We are going to talk about this. We're going to talk about other things as they come up because things are still developing in real time and we're working through this together in real time. And we will continue to have these conversations just like we always have and just like we always will.

• 23:25Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's it for this episode of The Chef's Cut. Be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening, especially if you're watching us on YouTube, where you can find full-length videos of every episode. And don't forget to rate and review wherever you're getting your podcasts. For Jo Flamm, I'm Adrian Cheatham, and this has been The Chef's Cut: Life Beyond the Pass.