She didn’t admit anything nearly that bad. Hence my thought:
@robert have you gone through all of the content from further up in the thread?
As linked by @hungryhungryhippos, check out the IG Stories on Joe Rosenthal’s account.
https://www.instagram.com/joe_rosenthal/
At this point, this is not about that single photo.
Whether that single photo is real is not important.
The voices are overwhelming.
She has admitted to serving moldy jam.
We will see what happens with the claims about an unsafe (I know you love that word) work environment and treating her employees like shit.
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You serve something quite possibly exposed to mold, you erase POC who work for you, and then you just straight up lie about consulting w/ a mold expert (unless she can produce documentation otherwise)?
I am not generally a mean-hearted person, but I have no sympathy for her and whatever repercussions come from all of this. I do, however, feel sorry for all the people who relied on her for an income.
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i have a couple basic questions i have yet to get the answer to (despite, trust me, a lot of digging through my rolodex) if anyone else knows:
- how long has this been going on?
- how long have people known about this?
- did anyone say anything when they found out about this, and if so, what happened?
- when were the photos taken?
- and what happened in between the time the photos were taken and now that these photos were released now (the week before her cookbook was about to be released)?
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Did she actually, officially depart from it?
If I may share some industry insights on partnerships. The questions you may have to ask are:
-How long have Koslow and Camara known each other? How well? Have they actually worked together extensively aside from one or two Food and Wine type events?
Depending on the truth, one version may be she left because the project simply did not materialize the way she envisioned and it was a simple differing of direction that they thought this restaurant would go
Or she realized her involvement was taking away more time than it was worth it depending on her percentage of ownership (assuming she had any at all since in an Eater article she describes it as a sort of consultancy).
Worst case scenario is that she saw how Koslow worked in reality and it didn’t vibe with her (maybe she thought Jessica had no idea what she was really doing as a chef?) and decided not to partner with her or their true personalities did not mesh. Often some partnerships are dreamed up by investors who gush over ideas on paper but the reality of bringing two individuals who do not have a history working together is difficult and often messy. Unless we hear something from Camara directly this is all conjecture but observed thru my professional lens.
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This has been educational. From the Washington Post article: “Randy Worobo, a professor of food microbiology in the food science department at Cornell University, also called the method unsafe. ‘Once the mold is on the surface, no matter how you remove it, there will be some mold that carries on,’ he said. “Basically, they’re just inoculating the next level.”
I don’t run a commercial kitchen, but at home there have been, from time to time, various foodstuffs from which I’ve removed the moldy layer. I didn’t realize I was “inoculating the next level.”
I’m going to be a little less laissez-faire in the future in my own kitchen and good thing I’m not running a commercial kitchen.
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I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I can’t access the Wash Po article, but I think one of the other articles mentioned that the efficacy of removing a moldy layer depends on the food and on the mold. And, ultimately, a commercial kitchen is (and should be) held to a different standard than what we do at home.
Gelyn Montanino, a former pastry chef at Sqirl, said that moldy jam buckets continued to be an issue at the restaurant when she was hired in August 2019. “I was immediately disgusted,” she recalled. “I asked about it and no one had a real reason as to why it was that way. Almost all the buckets would have a thick layer of mold on top with no lids or wrap. I’ve witnessed cooks scraping the mold off and putting the jam into their pans for the line.”
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In that WaPo article, koslow responded to the allegations that she stole/claimed her chefs work and didn’t give them credit.
This is ria’s response. Ria’s successor, Javier Ramos also left after two years and accuses her of the same thing.
Correct me if wrong, koslow has a background in pastry and preservation, not as chef/cook—at the very least very, limited on the savory side.
really? A shout out on social media? Where is it in the magazines and cookbooks where it really matters? Again, this speaks to the issue of respect, and recognition and not crediting the people that made her and sqirl successful. Yes it’s true, once a dish is on a restaurants menu, it’s technically the restaurant’s dish. But this speaks more about privilege. Getting away with it. Trampling over people (who happen to be POC) for your own success. Even now that she got caught, she is so ego driven she couldn’t drop the lies and be accountable.
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Citing her three “A” ratings is pointless since we know the restaurant was actively thwarting inspections. Would she have A ratings if the inspectors were shown the moldy jam?
Also calls into question about the health ratings system in LA.
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Her justification of, “… it’s not a new phenomenon,” really chafes, and is especially amplified given the public awareness of the ingrained, systemic racism within the food universe finally happening.
Maybe this is a norm, but it sure as hell shouldn’t be. She could have acknowledge the wrongness and thrown herself into addressing and changing the behavior within her business.
Instead, the whining “everybody does it” response is juvenile and pathetic. You’re entirely correct, @hppzz - this is her privilege and ego shining forth.
Disgusting.
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I’m glad the LA Times finally wrote about it.
Adding to @PorkyBelly’s quote, here’s more from the article in case people can’t access the it:
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Being locked away for hours…Can see why some of the former staff are so upset and so willing to speak out. Gelyn is quoted in the LA times article and she tried to tell Eater of the staff mistreatment…but i guess it was deemed not enough of a story.
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So reminiscent of the Mast Brothers affair.
Don’t get me wrong, the hostile work environment, appropriating credit, ignoring mold are all reprehensible. That’s Koslow, and her response has been ummmm… I mean, she locked staff in a fucking panic room.
But Koslow/Sqirl are the perfect repository for all our feelings about gentrification, privilege…even what’s considered professional cooking vs home (David Chang implied this was the reason for his initial skepticism about Sqirl). Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Still, don’t see a reason to Sqirl anytime soon/ever again (really disliked Onda, and the lunch specials have been subpar the last year, wonder which CDC left) Enjoyed Javier’s popup, and will do more Petite Peso.
And I wish Sqirl, in addition to handing out menus to that interminable line, had included a flier about which Virgil Village restaurants/businesses to patronize. I guess that wasn’t part of her ‘cheat.’
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yes, there’s definitely a nuanced and complex issue…owning vs. credit/recognition. but it seems like the crux of ria and javiers complaint is more about credit…and it must irk them so much that both realized she couldn’t cook or create those dishes on her own (unlike the CHEFS quoted in the article and capitalized to mimick Ria’s response to Koslow) and yet her name is on the authorship of recipes on the magazines, books, james beard…and so on.
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Definitely. I completely agree.
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