Noma chef’s departure is an opportunity for change in California restaurants

Chef René Redzepi has resigned from his post as head of the restaurant group behind Noma following a week of anticipated protests over his $1,500-per-person pop-up planned for LA.

In his statement, Redzepi noted that Noma is bigger than one person, which is absolutely true.

In the restaurants of this building, it is the cooks, dishwashers, line cooks, and body cooks who end up working.

The big picture is important, of course. Every great restaurant starts with a creative leader.

But when an establishment reaches Noma’s international standards, it becomes more than just one chef’s ideas. It becomes a machine powered by the endless work of countless people behind the scenes. Those workers should move on.

What made Redzepi’s position untenable was not just criticism from food writers or social media. I think the pressure from the financial backers and partners was too much.

As anyone in the food service industry knows, when sponsors and investors are nervous, decisions happen quickly. Money talks.

Well-organized protests, with professionally written signs and organized messages, add to that pressure.

Organized protest campaigns have become a regular part of the politics of the restaurant industry, especially in cities like LA – and Redzepi, the optics were very complicated.

He has long been known as a progressive chef who champions liberal social causes. That means you also work within a cultural ecosystem that takes culture very seriously.

When criticism begins to come from what many would consider his “personal side,” the pressure to leave grows stronger.

My prediction is that Redzepi will return to Denmark, lay low for a while, and finally reinvent himself.

Perhaps he will return as a chef determined to prove that fine dining can succeed without the rigid kitchen traditions that once defined elite gastronomy. That narrative arc wouldn’t be surprising, given the controversy over his behavior.

But we would be wrong not to see that many chefs have already proven that point.

Eric Ripert, the legendary chef of Le Bernardin, has long been known to run through kitchens where tempers are deliberately held back on the line. He often talks about “grace over chaos,” and leading kitchens without condescension or anger.

Anthony Bourdain, another culinary philosopher, spent much of his career talking about the importance of building people up rather than tearing them down.

So the idea that successful kitchens should act as intimidating pressure cookers has already been debunked.

Which raises the next question: what happens now?

Will the protesters celebrate achieving their goal? Or will the goalposts move?

What I suspect is that Redzepi’s resignation will not satisfy the activists who helped fuel the anger. Because more often than not these campaigns are not about one chef, or one restaurant, but instead are fueling anger to push for broader policy changes.

In California, that often means calling for higher mandatory wages, more labor mandates, and new regulatory frameworks that increase the financial burden on restaurant owners.

Ironically, these policies rarely help the small, independent restaurants that are the backbone of the industry. Instead, they accelerated the closure of neighborhood restaurants that operated on thin margins.

If activists and policymakers really care about restaurant workers, there are more effective ways to help them than new mandates.

Lower income tax so workers can take home more money. Change California’s popular law, the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), so that workers receive the majority of settlement funds in legal disputes with employers, instead of the state collecting the lion’s share. (Currently, the state takes 75 percent.)

But that conversation rarely happens, because the uncomfortable truth is that the state benefits financially from the current system, and labor unions often act as political partners in maintaining this system.

René Redzepi’s resignation may have satisfied the cycle of immediate outrage – but, alas, deeper problems in the restaurant industry remain.

Those are structural, economic, and political issues — and they’re bigger than any one chef.

Chef Andrew Gruel is a chef, television host, and member of the Huntington Beach City Council.

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