Friedman settles, Grubhub proffers, Hernández heads home, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, January 10th, 2020
Hello Friday,
Let’s get to it…
The Settlement – In NYC, “Ken Friedman, the principal owner of the Spotted Pig restaurant in Manhattan, has agreed to pay $240,000 and a share of his profits to 11 former employees who have accused him of sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination…. The former employees will share a $240,000 settlement paid out by Mr. Friedman and the restaurant over two years and, for the next 10 years, 20 percent of Mr. Friedman’s profits, including any money he makes if he sells the business, of which he owns 75 to 80 percent…. As part of the settlement, which Mr. Friedman signed on Dec. 18, he will step down as an operator of the Spotted Pig and will no longer have any role in its operations or management.”
Full story, details, reactions from the former employees, and statement from Friedman via Julia Moskin in the NYT. Well worth a read. Moskin also notes the agreement formalizes some blame on Friedman’s partner April Bloomfield (“Despite her ownership and managerial role in the company, Bloomfield took no action to mitigate or prevent future harassment”), and that a related “inquiry into Mario Batali, his former business partner Joe Bastianich and dealings at the restaurants they once owned together remains open… the attorney general asked that anyone with additional information about the chef’s behavior contact her office.”
And if you want to hear from her directly, Trish Nelson, pictured raising her fist at the podium in the Times piece, is on Food & Wine’s Communal Table podcast with Kat Kinsman this week.
NB: Friedman has told Eater that on top of what he’s agreed to in the settlement, he will be giving up ownership of the Spotted Pig as well. Cool. But we’ve heard that before. In announcing her split with Friedman in June of 2018, a spokesman told Moskin, “Ms. Bloomfield… will no longer be involved with the [the Spotted Pig] in any way.” In her piece yesterday, Moskin writes that — over a year and a half later — “Bloomfield is in the process of divesting from the Spotted Pig… she still owns between 20 and 25 percent of the business.” Added a couple key words in italics to the latest Eater NY headline: “Ken Friedman Claims He Is Leaving the Spotted Pig”.
The Delivery Wars – The Wall Street Journal’s Maureen Farrell and Cara Lombardo say Grubhub is considering a sale, but it’s behind the paywall and I can’t subscribe to everything so here’s Kristen Hawley, editor of restaurant tech newsletter Expedite, explaining her twitter take on the rumors that Walmart is a potential buyer.
The Close(s) – Eater NY’s Tanay Warerkar reports, “Flashy Chinese roast duck chain DaDong’s only New York location has filed for bankruptcy protection, closing shop after just over two years — and multiple brutal zero-star reviews — at its massive space near Bryant Park. The highly-anticipated Beijing-based chain — which has a few Michelin-starred locations in China — opened… in December 2017.”
Meanwhile, some kind of casual culling is underway in SF’s Ferry Building, where Luke Tsai says Tanya Holland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen is closing after less than a year there, and Eve Batey says Traci Des Jardins’ Mijita Cocina Mexicana “shut down on December 29 after 15 years in business.”
The Big Think – Also lots of movement at José Andres’s ThinkFoodGroup so far this year. Eater Chicago’s Ashok Selvam says they’ve announced a partnership with Gibson Group for another restaurant there, while the Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman reports they’re going to “close upscale seafood restaurant, Fish, at MGM National Harbor [near DC] after just over three years on January 15,” and her colleague Anna Spiegel has word that “Minibar head chef Jorge Hernández has moved on from the modernist tasting room after a year and a half.” TFG tells Spiegel, “Hernández is heading back to his hometown of San Antonio to take a position as the culinary director for The Mighty Union hospitality group.”
The Chain Gang – Via Priya Krishna, the NYT has a long look this week at what “may become an increasingly common, and far more accessible, path to a career as a chef”: chain restaurants. I understand what this piece is trying to get at, but damn that framing and this headline is misleading, and risks downplaying the difficulty (and cost!) of getting from one place to the other for aspiring chefs: “Current job: Award-Winning Chef. Education: University of IHOP.” Sure. Fine. But pretty sure Tiffany Derry, the chef with the IHOP background, also went to culinary school at the Art Institute of Houston, and it’s almost an aside in the article that between her time at Applebee’s and her job as an exec chef at Blackberry Farm, Cassidee Dabney went to NECI. Feels a little like those throwaway lines in success story pieces that are like, “Growing up in a small town in the midwest, she never imagined she would make it in the media business. (Moxy’s dad is a billionaire rancher who leases land from Ted Turner and her mother splits time between their Montana estate and a successful career as a movie producer in LA.) Her grade school had only dial-up internet, and most of her neighbors were cows.”
The Opportunities – Tell PR: Eater’s Hillary Dixler Canavan put out a call for more first-person industry stories for their Eater Voices series yesterday. (Plus, don’t forget you’ve got one more week to nominate yourselves to be Eater “Young Guns.”) And at around the 9:35 minute mark in yesterday’s Dave Chang Show podcast, he asks people with “any creative project” coming out soon to get in touch for a possible guest spot: “If you know someone or you are about to release something in 2020 send us an email at askdave@majordomomedia.com, and let’s get a podcast session done, and we can help you promote it.” He says on his podcast you don’t have to worry about your ideas being condensed and edited by a journalist, which is great! (No idea what he said after that because, sweet holy holy, that guy just goes on and on and on.)
For Design Fans – A reader sent me this new Wonho Frank Lee photo spread of Olivetta in West Hollywood, but it’s too overwhelming to look at again, so I’ll just copy/paste my reply to her here: “Let's get a group together and go get buzzed on weed rosé under that drapery, stare at those lampshades, and listen to whatever Geffen Records is trying to get clicking on Spotify. The fringe! The frill! The flora! The... cobra and flower frescos?” You are all invited.
And last and definitely not least – On Tuesday, the Washington Post published “an edited excerpt of an [Osayi Endolyn] essay on dining out as a black woman in ‘Women on Food’ by Charlotte Druckman.” It really has to be read in its entirety for full effect, so I’m not going to try to excerpt the excerpt. Here it is. Settle in and get to it. And probably send it around to friends and staff too. Maybe you relate to Endolyn, or maybe you’re like me. For folks like me, I will say this: The feeling of getting irrationally defensive and then having my irrational defenses torn down is incredibly uncomfortable and inherently worth it. Recommend.
And that’s it for today. On a side note, if you’re feeling like there’s some insurmountable creative challenge on the horizon for you soon, just remember that after 12 lunar months of easy focus on pigs, a lot of copywriters and PR people are gearing up to promote big Chinese New Year deals for their clients’ restaurants in… The Year of the Rat.
I’ll see you here Tuesday for next Family Meal.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or irrational defenses to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you like Family Meal and want to keep it going, please chip in here. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself
P.S. – A controversial man by the name of shitfoodblogger asked me to shout out his Carbface podcast with guest Farideh Sadeghin this week, and I wasn’t going to because the new episode has zero restaurant content and it’s a bit raunchy and not for everyone, but in order to help those who do listen, here is a link to a photo of co-host Laurie Woolever’s instagram purse. If that makes sense to you, you are welcome.