which makes the whole idea of moving the restaurant insane and illogical to me. part of me thinks everything in the noma 2.0 era onwards has been a beyond nathan fielder-level trolling masterpiece
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Wow! May I ask what industry?
Since when? Whatâs built into the brand for me is having an unpaid intern make fruit-leather beetles all day every day.
I mean much of the MAD conference is about ethics and sustainability. In a sense a foraging and fermentation based cuisine is inherently projecting that as well.
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Is this the conference?
If so, and based on what Iâve skimmed on the Wikipedia page, it makes a lot more sense why there is a shock and outrage about the abuse allegations.
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Yes, thatâs it
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You guys should watch his documentary series Omnivore. Heâs clearly a socially conscious, deep thinking guy. People, especially geniuses, can be multifaceted â benevolent in some ways and cruel in others. Elon Musk is a great example.
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Elon Musk is many things but not a genius
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There is no point in arguing with those who blind themselves to the obvious.
He is a very effective manager. Many of his companies are run on ideas other developed
Having known at least 2 people who work/worked at his company, I dunno about that.
I think he is actually a genius at hype and as a business person.
Back to the topicâŠ
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I get that in any industry, especially restaurants, people have to pay their dues, handle pressure, make sacrifices and be a bitch, and grind through tough treatment for a while to move up. But whatâs coming out now about RenĂ© isnât just one or two bad experiences. A lot of people are speaking up at once, and it sounds like this has been sitting under the surface for a while.
I donât think the stories have fully hit the wider public yet, though thereâs supposed to be a protest outside the Noma LA residence on March 11th thatâll probably bring more traction. At the very least, it seems like people who felt they were silenced and couldnât talk before are finally trying to be heard, and that deserves respect.
What is straight up petty is hearing about unpaid interns being crammed three to a room on mattresses in run-down apartments, while paying rent to his own family, since his mother-in-law owns the apartments they are told to live in, all while the brand sits on millions. That crosses from âpaying your duesâ into something else.
No idea where this ends, but itâs hard to imagine this doesnât affect the legacy, and honestly the LA residency itself could realistically be in trouble depending on how this unfolds.
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When it sold out in under three minutes? Ha.
Apparently he likes to punch people and stab you with a fork. Sounds like a scumbag to me and a criminal if true. Plus Noma is the biggest and most expensive troll job in the food world.
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What also f up about the living situation is the mother n law is also head of Human Resources
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I get using local ingredients to forage or using a stem of a vegetable that would otherwise get thrown out to fight against food waste.
We also have an unbelievable amount of food waste from supermarkets, restaurants, and farms. On the daily. Those are more immediate, realistic, and local.
Where I volunteer on Skid Row the majority of the food we receive and serve is from Costco and Starbucks. Every night across the city and county probably thousands of pounds of perfectly edible food is dumped while people are starving.
Using flowers, stems, roots, and bugs to not go to waste is nice but as of now we should address the above. Itâs probably going to take policy to overcome barriers to not let this food go to waste.
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Found this from the Reddit thread below
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I worked in an industry known for being brutal towards and exploitative of workers, so my threshold for viewing a workplace as toxic is significantly higher than the average person.
Years ago when it came out that half of the kitchen staff were unpaid interns, I found it lame but not unexpected.
When the recent reports started coming out, I skimmed the first few I saw which happened to be mostly about yelling - verbal abuse letâs call it. Unfortunate, but not foreign to me.
Viewing it all together on that website, particularly the accounts of physical, psychological, and financial abuse, it seems obvious that toxic would be a nice way to describe things. Perhaps irredeemable is a better word. While itâs possible that this is all fabricated, the sheer breadth of reports, many of which corroborate each other, makes me believe it is not.
But Noma is so influential and powerful that I doubt this leads to any legitimate reckoning.
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Not to say any of this is false, but consistency in anonymous reports isnât authoritative.
Iâd kind of expect a history of lawsuits and police reports if this was mostly true.
Thatâs happening/happened in Europe where you have a very different system and culture wrt lawsuits. It is quite uncommon to sue as the âloser paysâ rules are put into play to avoid these massive amounts of useless lawsuits in the US. So, lawsuits are definitely not an indicator.
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