Sqirling Credit, Media Misses, Mission Chinese Messes, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, July 17th, 2020
Hello Friday,
Always feel like I have to apologize when Family Meal gets mostly food media focused, but you know what, this time I am absolutely not going to apologize. I am going to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness.
Let’s get to it…
The Credit – “As controversy swirls around Jessica Koslow’s LA restaurant [Sqirl], the conversation is moving from moldy jam to more complex questions about who deserves credit for what.” In a deeply reported piece for Eater LA, Farley Elliott says, “Eater has communicated with nearly a dozen current and former staffers at Sqirl and at Koslow’s second restaurant, Onda, and almost all point to problems that they say begin with Koslow herself, who they contend spent little time in Sqirl’s kitchen, even while taking public credit for the work of less visible employees. Koslow is not a chef, they say, but has allowed that title to attach itself to her over time, particularly within food media — resulting in accolades like a Best Chef: California nomination from the prestigious James Beard Foundation.”
The they there are people like former Sqirl pastry chef Sasha Piligian (“The restaurant was built by the chef de cuisines, the pastry chefs, the cooks, who all contributed recipes and development… I literally worked for Jessica for almost three years and I’ve never seen her cook”), former Onda CDC Balo Orozco (“She doesn’t cook”), and former Sqirl chefs Elise Fields, Ria Barbosa and Javier Ramos (who claim credit for a fair chunk of Sqirl’s reputation-making IP and acknowledge the contributions of not-quoted sous chef Matt Wilson in the process) among others.
There is a lot going on here, so I’ll just say read the piece! This conversation (or part of it at least) is coming for many of you. Not least because…
The Conversation – Food media is processing “Why did we miss this?!” feelings over both the reports on Sqirl, and the charges in this TNR op-ed, where Mission Chinese Food Brooklyn head chef Kate Telfeyan alleges, “In its consistent, uncritical celebration of chefs and owners later revealed to be bad bosses, and in its refusal to reckon with its own role in facilitating their rise to the top, the food media has failed us.” Telfeyan notes that, “Last week, Angela Dimayuga, former executive chef at Mission Chinese Food in New York City, posted a statement on Instagram detailing the abusive, misogynistic workplace fostered by chef-owner Danny Bowien during her six years at the restaurant.”
Telfeyan implies those allegations have “passed largely unnoticed,” maybe because food media has some interest in ignoring charges against a celebrity chef like Bowein (click-wise the opposite is true?), and thinks they weren’t uncovered in the first place because: “Food journalists rarely, if ever, take the time to get behind the scenes and talk to the ‘little people’ in restaurants—the line cooks, dishwashers, and servers—to understand what these workplaces are really like.”
As to the charges against Bowein, he went on the Feeling Asian podcast this week to talk openly(ish) about them and level new allegations of willful negligence against both Dimayuga and the people she brought on board to Mission Chinese, which would include Telfeyan herself.
As to the charges against food media, most publicly discussing this (read: tweeting) were in agreement that improvements can be made(!), and/but Grubstreet’s Chris Crowley also began a much-shared thread yesterday with a question for the plaintiff: “One of my questions for writers asking ‘why don't writers talk to regular restaurant workers more?’ is have you ever tried to talk to restaurant workers? people are afraid to go on the record about the most benign shit. and they don't necessarily have the time or want to.”
And writer Mari Uyehara noted that Telfeyan’s call to action is just a little compromised by “a pretty egregious omission that the author—who is decrying chef adulation and lack of journalistic standards—calls attention to her few years as a chef, but completely leaves out that she was a restaurant publicist for [almost ten years].”
Anyway… while (important) discussions of process rip around food media, writer Amethyst Ganaway tweeted yesterday: “It hasn’t even been a month, and all the opportunities that were being poured into Black food people have already came to a stop. I don’t care that food media created a shitty food scene, no shit Sherlock. Y’all keep writing bout it but not fixing it.”
Perspective, my dear Watson!
Awards Season – And the 2020 Julia Child Award recipient is… Danielle Nierenberg of Food Tank. Profile on the award’s official page. She joins past recipients José Andrés, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, Danny Meyer, Rick Bayless, and Jacques Pépin. (A list that now has a non-chef, but might be looking for some other kinds of variety next year too…)
And speaking of Rick Bayless… Eater Chicago’s Ashok Selvam reports he and long-time business partner Manny Valdez are splitting up, with Valdez keeping Leña Brava and Cruz Blanca while Bayless focuses on… everything else. Per Selvam, “Both Bayless and Valdes are frank about the fact that their partnership has deteriorated. Valdes wouldn’t go into specifics of how the relationship had frayed, but says they’ve been considering the change since March… Bayless says he and Valdes were already moving in different directions before the pandemic hit.”
The Media – FYI, Serena Dai has officially started as food editor at the SF Chronicle, so her old Lead Editor job at Eater NY is officially open for applications on the Vox job board. Good luck, all! Meanwhile in LA, writer Mona Holmes has accepted a full time staff position at Eater (a move her colleagues had been pushing Vox for publicly). Holmes told me her beat won’t change much, but PR types should assume she wants as many jam-forward pitches as you can can.
P.S. – While much of my attention is still focused on ongoing negotiations to serve as simultaneous lead editor of both Bon Appetit and LAT Food, I have always considered the Eater NY gig an acceptable fallback opportunity. With that in mind, I ask that Eater EIC Amanda Kludt and Vox CEO Big Jimmy (“The Blazer!”) Bankoff please consider this newsletter my CV, and view this Abba video as my cover letter. Thank you.
What Guests are Reading – As told to Chris Crowley in Grubstreet: “I’m a Bartender Who Had COVID-19. My Restaurant’s Owner Warned Me Not to Talk.” Details via the anonymous Texan: “Our restaurant is next to a big lake. When we first reopened to the public, we had people from different parts of Texas come in. One group sat there and made fun of me the whole time for wearing a mask. People would laugh at me. Like, ‘Hey, you can take that down and breathe, you know us, we’re regulars, we don’t have COVID.’” Not yet, baby doll. Not yet.
And last but not least: Some Sad News – “Hillary Gregg, Line Cook at Top-Shelf Restaurants, Dies at 73. He was the Quilted Giraffe’s longtime ‘walking cookbook’ and later cooked at another Manhattan restaurant, March.” Obituary from Rod Nordland in the NYT’s Those We’ve Lost series: “He learned to cook at hotel restaurants in his homeland [St. Vincent and the Grenadines], a popular tourist and sailing destination. Family lore has it that he worked as the private chef on board the yacht of Roy Cohn, the notorious McCarthy hearings lawyer and later an adviser to Donald Trump.”
And that’s it for today. Did this get scattered? Do you see typos? Please send complaints to the three year old girl who is currently singing along to Christmas songs in the chair next to mine. Love working from home with my family, but… It’s July, Vivi. For the love of God.
I’ll see you here Tuesday for next Family Meal.
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The case of Jessica Koslow is actually very similar to that of her Onda associate Gabriela Cámara (which surprises me anyone has mentioned in all of this). It is true that Gabriela is a very talented restauranteur, but as far as I know, she's a History of Art major, I never understood when she became a 'Chef'. My question is, are they themselves taking the credit, or is people around giving it to them, for whatever justified or unjustified reason?