Last year, journalists from The New York Times exposed a culture of abuse and sexual misconduct allegedly perpetuated by restaurateur Ken Friedman of the New York City restaurant The Spotted Pig. But last week, the food world reeled after an announcement that chef Gabrielle Hamilton and her wife, chef Ashley Merriman, would partner with Friedman in taking over the restaurant.
“It’s an international scandal,” said food writer Corby Kummer on Boston Public Radio Tuesday. “Women are scratching their heads everywhere.”
Hamilton told Eater she and Merriman would serve as new leadership for the restaurant.
“They said, ‘Well, it’s not our job to clean up his mess, but we catered [Friedman’s] wedding, we’ve been his house guests, we’re going to get ownership in this place and there’s 96 cooks who need leadership,’” Kummer said, “to which I say: then lead them someplace else. Don’t be in business with a near criminal who has shown no signs of wishing to be redeemed.”
Industry professionals have responded to the announcement with surprise and criticism, with many of them saying Friedman should not stand to profit from the staff he mistreated.
“To have a hero like this embrace Ken Friedman and his ‘rape room’ is shocking,” Kummer said. “Nobody gets it.”
The story in the Times featured testimony from ten women who said they were sexually assaulted by Friedman. Interviews also detailed a third-floor room nicknamed “the rape room,” a reserved space for VIPs where anything went.
Kummer stressed that the journalism that exposed Friedman was “a very big story” and also brought to light transgressions by the celebrity chef Mario Batali.
“It was about the entire permissive culture that Ken Friedman built, in which there was just an exemption — servers knew they were going to get into big trouble if they worked that ‘rape room’ shift,” he said. “He made it all possible and has not really apologized.”
Corby Kummer is a food writer, a senior editor at the Atlantic, a columnist at the New Republic and restaurant critic.
