The system behind the scandal
The allegations that have emerged over recent weeks about René Redzepi and Noma – now documented in detail by the New York Times – make for shocking reading: exploitation, bullying, verbal and physical violence. All of it is appalling and demands a serious reckoning.
Yes, Noma has shaped many careers. But the question that presses equally hard is how many careers were snuffed out before they could begin and what those who were harmed are still living with today. I can’t imagine that coming forward was an easy decision for many of the people who have done so.
And yet: as extreme as the specific allegations are, anyone who actually knows this industry will not have been surprised by the pattern. Which is precisely why this piece is not about Redzepi or Noma. It would be too easy, and ultimately dishonest, to frame a systemic problem as the failure of one man or one restaurant. Because unfortunately, exploitation and abuse of power aren’t aberrations, but the predictable output of a system designed, economically and culturally, to produce exactly this. I want to address both dimensions.
On the matter of economics, there is one uncomfortable truth not many guests are aware of. Behind the choreographed elegance of tasting menus, the champagne, the storytelling, there lies something far less palatable: in fine dining, exploitation isn’t a flaw in the business model. It is the business model.
Ordinary restaurants already run on unpaid overtime as a matter of course. Fine dining does the same, and layers on top of that a substantial cohort of unpaid stagières. If those people were paid, the already considerable cost of a menu at a Michelin-starred restaurant would be much steeper. There is a gap between the level of excellence and innovation that the market expects and the price it is actually willing to pay, and into that gap fall decent working conditions and fair pay, overtime included.
So why do young people still sign up for unpaid stages? Recognition, passion, ambition, the line on the CV – all of that. But also the fact that these conditions are extraordinarily easy to reframe as a test of personal mettle. The gruelling, self-denying apprenticeship years, the legendary work ethic: these are touted as the entry ticket to the guild of masters. Emotional hardening and sacrifice are recast as proof of culinary seriousness. Anyone unwilling or unable to work for nothing must simply not want it badly enough. The next conclusion follows almost naturally: if you can’t handle the pressure or the shouting, well, then you don’t deserve to be there.
Beneath Redzepi’s Instagram apology – posted an hour before the Times piece went live – you can find exactly the apologists you’d expect, adopting the submissive register of “Yes, Chef!” to insist that everyone has free will and that choosing an unpaid stage is a rational decision. Some go further and say the quiet part out loud: that the harsh treatment, the abuse even, are a fair price for proximity to genius. Diamonds form under pressure. The conditioning runs deep.
And because it runs so deep, everyone working in kitchens and service should be asking themselves honestly how they have been and continue to be a part of this system. Punishing working conditions, relentless pressure, abuse of power, and harshness are things most of us know from the inside. Perhaps not in the extremes described in the Noma allegations – but most of us have had a taste of some version of it, no doubt.
At Nobelhart & Schmutzig we have been sitting with these questions for years. We also know that this is an ongoing process, one that probably never ends. When we opened in 2015, we wanted to build a restaurant that didn’t exist only “for the guest” but made the producers behind the food visible and placed them at the centre of what we do. That mattered, and it was overdue. At the same time, we were working with unpaid stagières, treating sixty-hour weeks as normal, and had absorbed a great deal from this industry – including about how to treat people – without questioning any of it.
In recent years it has become clear to us that the commitment to what we call values-led hospitality has to begin with the people who work with and for us every day. At Nobelhart, nobody does that unpaid. We operate a forty-hour week, a competitive package of salary and benefits; we invest in training, in fair structures, and in conversations that are not always comfortable but are always necessary. We have a Code of Conduct and an independent confidential contact so that problems among the team and/or with leaders can be raised without fear of consequence.
Two points on this.
First: these practices generate costs, which we pass on to guests. Which is why a plate of stuffed cabbage costs 55 euros, and the vegetable-forward menu 120. This earns us a fair amount of criticism, and some of it is quite harsh. But that is what it looks like when the price of a dish also reflects fair conditions for the people who made it.
This is only one side of the picture, though: the structural conditions of a business model, and what it costs to fund them properly. However, the issue here is precisely not just working hours and pay slips or whether an unpaid stage at a starred restaurant is a sound investment in your career.
Which brings me to my second point: I am not telling you a story about my own moral superiority. Even when you are genuinely committed to taking responsibility – and I am – you remain part of the culture that shaped you, and that you continue to shape through your own behaviour. Speaking from experience: you can write codes of conduct, win awards for them, and still find yourself ambushed by habits, attitudes, and reflexes you thought you’d left behind long ago.
If you are a leader in this industry, and you want to be serious about this stuff, then this requires an ongoing personal practice of learning, unlearning, examination, and constant self-reflection. (Ideally aided by people who are actually willing to go head to head with you.)
I have to acknowledge, for instance, that despite everything I have worked on, I might still raise my voice under pressure. Less often than I used to, but it still happens. On a human level, it is reprehensible, and always has been. But since the myth of necessary harshness persists so stubbornly in this industry, I’ll also offer a practical argument for the sceptics. From a leadership perspective, this behaviour is simply counterproductive. The evidence from learning research is unambiguous: people do not become more receptive or more effective when they are learning and working under fear or humiliation. On the contrary.
Either way, when I make that kind of mistake now, I apologise directly to the person, bring in our confidential contact if needed, and – crucially – ask what concrete amends or changes they need from me in order to feel safe and supported in the team and under my leadership. There is an internal structure that supports my personal commitment to good leadership practices, and which holds me accountable when I fall short of my standards. Beyond that, I use therapy and consulting, both of which keep returning me to my own blind spots.
Because this is also true: as the person in charge, it is my job to manage the pressure I am under. If I don’t, someone else pays the price.
And yet, we also need to have a conversation about the pressure itself. That is one of the central reasons hospitality is so structurally prone to toxic working cultures. In fine dining, guest expectations are enormous while margins remain thin. On an operational level, everything happens all at once and the polished exterior must be maintained regardless. There is almost no room for error, or even for anything less than perfect. Many chefs at this level experience even the smallest flaw as a catastrophic threat: to their reputation, to the recognition on which their business and their identity are built.
Restaurants make for a perfect storm of perpetual overwhelm, and that overwhelm tends to find dysfunctional exits. The enormous performance pressure that celebrated chefs carry is often redistributed downward: onto the people who do the daily work that generates the reputation and the revenue, who are themselves often neither sufficiently protected nor adequately paid. Meanwhile the head chef stands before the world as something godlike – absolute authority, public glory – while also privately buckling under the demands of the role.
And that is precisely the hardest thing: admitting that you are overwhelmed, above all to yourself. In our industry – and perhaps much of the working world – that is still widely seen as weakness. The ability to be unfazed under immense pressure is precisely what is taken as proof of exceptional talent. Anger and outbursts, then, function as a self-reassuring masculine performance, a way of externalising the pressure so as to shield yourself from far more difficult emotions: the possibility of your own vulnerability, and the shame and guilt you might feel towards the people you’ve harmed.
To draw the threads together: the structural conditions of the industry, the quasi-military hierarchy of the brigade, the merciless logic of markets, competitions and guest reviews, alongside the egos and the masculinist socialisation of many of the people who hold power in restaurants – together these create an ideal substrate for exploitation and cruelty, which is then re-narrated as necessary, or even right.
Which is also why this is not, in the end, about Redzepi and Noma. It is about how all of us in hospitality, especially those of us with leadership responsibilities, want to approach change. (And if we want to at all: looking at some of my colleagues’ responses to Redzepi’s apology, I’m genuinely less certain about that than I’d like to be.) Be that as it may, we would all do well to resist the logic of blame and pile-ons. Complex structures cannot be reduced to individual names; and that reduction must not become a way of letting ourselves off the hook, or of refusing to ask the systemic question. Yes, it is tempting to believe that what we’re looking at is a few bad apples. But really, it is the expression of an industry that has
sustained itself for decades on the story that hardness equals quality, and that suffering and sacrifice are the necessary price of excellence.
And this brings me to another important point: all of this concerns not only the people who work in hospitality but the people who eat in it, too. If we want a restaurant culture that does not run on exploitation, we – and that includes guests – need to have a fundamental conversation about price, expectation, and value. What does it actually mean in concrete terms for labour, time, skill, and dignity to become visible? And what does that ask of all of us, each of us individually? And will people be willing to pay for it?
A question I find myself returning to: do guests actually want to go to restaurants that discuss these things openly, that make the difficulties visible, even in the service of something worth fighting for? Is my transparency going to cost me? Isn’t it the beautiful surface, the escape, the feeling of being looked after – and yes, getting properly sloshed – that motivates people to part with their hard-earned cash on a night out? These are legitimate desires, and as a host I really do love to meet them. At the same time, I know that change in the system is only feasible if guests are part of it, if they are willing to examine their own expectations, both around price and around the seamless perfection they have come to demand.
It seems to me that a necessary conversation has been made possible here, beyond Redzepi and Noma: one conducted without finger-pointing, but with genuine accountability. Within our industry, yes, but also including the people we do all of this for in the first place: our guests.
Yours,
Billy Wagner
The system behind the scandal
The allegations that have emerged over recent weeks about René Redzepi and Noma – now documented in detail by the New York Times – make for shocking reading: exploitation, bullying, verbal and physical violence. All of it is appalling and demands a serious reckoning.
Yes, Noma has shaped many careers. But the question that presses equally hard is how many careers were snuffed out before they could begin and what those who were harmed are still living with today. I can’t imagine that coming forward was an easy decision for many of the people who have done so.
And yet: as extreme as the specific allegations are, anyone who actually knows this industry will not have been surprised by the pattern. Which is precisely why this piece is not about Redzepi or Noma. It would be too easy, and ultimately dishonest, to frame a systemic problem as the failure of one man or one restaurant. Because unfortunately, exploitation and abuse of power aren’t aberrations, but the predictable output of a system designed, economically and culturally, to produce exactly this. I want to address both dimensions.
On the matter of economics, there is one uncomfortable truth not many guests are aware of. Behind the choreographed elegance of tasting menus, the champagne, the storytelling, there lies something far less palatable: in fine dining, exploitation isn’t a flaw in the business model. It is the business model.
Ordinary restaurants already run on unpaid overtime as a matter of course. Fine dining does the same, and layers on top of that a substantial cohort of unpaid stagières. If those people were paid, the already considerable cost of a menu at a Michelin-starred restaurant would be much steeper. There is a gap between the level of excellence and innovation that the market expects and the price it is actually willing to pay, and into that gap fall decent working conditions and fair pay, overtime included.
So why do young people still sign up for unpaid stages? Recognition, passion, ambition, the line on the CV – all of that. But also the fact that these conditions are extraordinarily easy to reframe as a test of personal mettle. The gruelling, self-denying apprenticeship years, the legendary work ethic: these are touted as the entry ticket to the guild of masters. Emotional hardening and sacrifice are recast as proof of culinary seriousness. Anyone unwilling or unable to work for nothing must simply not want it badly enough. The next conclusion follows almost naturally: if you can’t handle the pressure or the shouting, well, then you don’t deserve to be there.
Beneath Redzepi’s Instagram apology – posted an hour before the Times piece went live – you can find exactly the apologists you’d expect, adopting the submissive register of “Yes, Chef!” to insist that everyone has free will and that choosing an unpaid stage is a rational decision. Some go further and say the quiet part out loud: that the harsh treatment, the abuse even, are a fair price for proximity to genius. Diamonds form under pressure. The conditioning runs deep.
And because it runs so deep, everyone working in kitchens and service should be asking themselves honestly how they have been and continue to be a part of this system. Punishing working conditions, relentless pressure, abuse of power, and harshness are things most of us know from the inside. Perhaps not in the extremes described in the Noma allegations – but most of us have had a taste of some version of it, no doubt.
At Nobelhart & Schmutzig we have been sitting with these questions for years. We also know that this is an ongoing process, one that probably never ends. When we opened in 2015, we wanted to build a restaurant that didn’t exist only “for the guest” but made the producers behind the food visible and placed them at the centre of what we do. That mattered, and it was overdue. At the same time, we were working with unpaid stagières, treating sixty-hour weeks as normal, and had absorbed a great deal from this industry – including about how to treat people – without questioning any of it.
In recent years it has become clear to us that the commitment to what we call values-led hospitality has to begin with the people who work with and for us every day. At Nobelhart, nobody does that unpaid. We operate a forty-hour week, a competitive package of salary and benefits; we invest in training, in fair structures, and in conversations that are not always comfortable but are always necessary. We have a Code of Conduct and an independent confidential contact so that problems among the team and/or with leaders can be raised without fear of consequence.
Two points on this.
First: these practices generate costs, which we pass on to guests. Which is why a plate of stuffed cabbage costs 55 euros, and the vegetable-forward menu 120. This earns us a fair amount of criticism, and some of it is quite harsh. But that is what it looks like when the price of a dish also reflects fair conditions for the people who made it.
This is only one side of the picture, though: the structural conditions of a business model, and what it costs to fund them properly. However, the issue here is precisely not just working hours and pay slips or whether an unpaid stage at a starred restaurant is a sound investment in your career.
Which brings me to my second point: I am not telling you a story about my own moral superiority. Even when you are genuinely committed to taking responsibility – and I am – you remain part of the culture that shaped you, and that you continue to shape through your own behaviour. Speaking from experience: you can write codes of conduct, win awards for them, and still find yourself ambushed by habits, attitudes, and reflexes you thought you’d left behind long ago.
If you are a leader in this industry, and you want to be serious about this stuff, then this requires an ongoing personal practice of learning, unlearning, examination, and constant self-reflection. (Ideally aided by people who are actually willing to go head to head with you.)
I have to acknowledge, for instance, that despite everything I have worked on, I might still raise my voice under pressure. Less often than I used to, but it still happens. On a human level, it is reprehensible, and always has been. But since the myth of necessary harshness persists so stubbornly in this industry, I’ll also offer a practical argument for the sceptics. From a leadership perspective, this behaviour is simply counterproductive. The evidence from learning research is unambiguous: people do not become more receptive or more effective when they are learning and working under fear or humiliation. On the contrary.
Either way, when I make that kind of mistake now, I apologise directly to the person, bring in our confidential contact if needed, and – crucially – ask what concrete amends or changes they need from me in order to feel safe and supported in the team and under my leadership. There is an internal structure that supports my personal commitment to good leadership practices, and which holds me accountable when I fall short of my standards. Beyond that, I use therapy and consulting, both of which keep returning me to my own blind spots.
Because this is also true: as the person in charge, it is my job to manage the pressure I am under. If I don’t, someone else pays the price.
And yet, we also need to have a conversation about the pressure itself. That is one of the central reasons hospitality is so structurally prone to toxic working cultures. In fine dining, guest expectations are enormous while margins remain thin. On an operational level, everything happens all at once and the polished exterior must be maintained regardless. There is almost no room for error, or even for anything less than perfect. Many chefs at this level experience even the smallest flaw as a catastrophic threat: to their reputation, to the recognition on which their business and their identity are built.
Restaurants make for a perfect storm of perpetual overwhelm, and that overwhelm tends to find dysfunctional exits. The enormous performance pressure that celebrated chefs carry is often redistributed downward: onto the people who do the daily work that generates the reputation and the revenue, who are themselves often neither sufficiently protected nor adequately paid. Meanwhile the head chef stands before the world as something godlike – absolute authority, public glory – while also privately buckling under the demands of the role.
And that is precisely the hardest thing: admitting that you are overwhelmed, above all to yourself. In our industry – and perhaps much of the working world – that is still widely seen as weakness. The ability to be unfazed under immense pressure is precisely what is taken as proof of exceptional talent. Anger and outbursts, then, function as a self-reassuring masculine performance, a way of externalising the pressure so as to shield yourself from far more difficult emotions: the possibility of your own vulnerability, and the shame and guilt you might feel towards the people you’ve harmed.
To draw the threads together: the structural conditions of the industry, the quasi-military hierarchy of the brigade, the merciless logic of markets, competitions and guest reviews, alongside the egos and the masculinist socialisation of many of the people who hold power in restaurants – together these create an ideal substrate for exploitation and cruelty, which is then re-narrated as necessary, or even right.
Which is also why this is not, in the end, about Redzepi and Noma. It is about how all of us in hospitality, especially those of us with leadership responsibilities, want to approach change. (And if we want to at all: looking at some of my colleagues’ responses to Redzepi’s apology, I’m genuinely less certain about that than I’d like to be.) Be that as it may, we would all do well to resist the logic of blame and pile-ons. Complex structures cannot be reduced to individual names; and that reduction must not become a way of letting ourselves off the hook, or of refusing to ask the systemic question. Yes, it is tempting to believe that what we’re looking at is a few bad apples. But really, it is the expression of an industry that has
sustained itself for decades on the story that hardness equals quality, and that suffering and sacrifice are the necessary price of excellence.
And this brings me to another important point: all of this concerns not only the people who work in hospitality but the people who eat in it, too. If we want a restaurant culture that does not run on exploitation, we – and that includes guests – need to have a fundamental conversation about price, expectation, and value. What does it actually mean in concrete terms for labour, time, skill, and dignity to become visible? And what does that ask of all of us, each of us individually? And will people be willing to pay for it?
A question I find myself returning to: do guests actually want to go to restaurants that discuss these things openly, that make the difficulties visible, even in the service of something worth fighting for? Is my transparency going to cost me? Isn’t it the beautiful surface, the escape, the feeling of being looked after – and yes, getting properly sloshed – that motivates people to part with their hard-earned cash on a night out? These are legitimate desires, and as a host I really do love to meet them. At the same time, I know that change in the system is only feasible if guests are part of it, if they are willing to examine their own expectations, both around price and around the seamless perfection they have come to demand.
It seems to me that a necessary conversation has been made possible here, beyond Redzepi and Noma: one conducted without finger-pointing, but with genuine accountability. Within our industry, yes, but also including the people we do all of this for in the first place: our guests.
Yours,
Billy Wagner