Early last monday, I received two texts from my closest friend that just read “Write about the Prune issue,” and “I’m so angry and hurt.”
Since there is more than enough heartbreaking and infuriating news to go around, I had to admit my ignorance to her as I hadn’t checked any blogs or feeds in at least 72 hours. I was only 50% sure that there wasn’t a typo or autocorrect situation happening. But a quick google, as it often will, sent me rapidly down the rabbit hole of Gabrielle Hamilton’s announcement that she will partner with Ken Friedman to take over the Spotted Pig – and the bizarre avalanche of explanations, rationalizations, soundbites and social media commentary that went with it.
For those similarly uninformed, the gist of the story is this: last December, at perhaps the crescendo of the #metoo movement, the New York Times published an exposé of Ken Friedman - owner of the Spotted Pig, Chef April Bloomfield’s perpetually hip West Village restaurant. The article detailed some shocking (or perhaps not-so-shocking) incidents during which Friedman sexually harassed and abused employees, and generally created a culture of fear and shame. It was an indictment of Friedman himself, as well as an excessively sexualized culture with lax standards for respect. Many women saw ourselves in the servers and managers he victimized, even if we had never experienced quite such egregious behavior. Other powerful industry figures have been called out since then, and at least some cathartic retribution has been hashed out in the public eye. Bloomfield, apparently ignorant to the extent of the abuse, left The Spotted Pig in May. But the restaurant didn’t close, and as of 6 days ago it has found a new chef to pick up the mantle.
Hamilton, chef and owner of the award-winning Prune in New York, announced the partnership between herself, her wife Ashley Merriman, and Friedman in an interview last week. She peppered the interview with a number of explanations ranging from the deliberately provocative (“Everyone is a better spouse their second time around”) to the self-congratulatory (she and Merriman are “exceptionally poised to be the leading edge of the paradigm shift”) to the straight-up offensive (see: that cringe-worthy hurricane Maria comparison). Understandably, many were upset with her announcement, calling it “self-serving” and “callous”. If it does not exist already, there will probably be a sassy line-by-line response to her entire announcement, tearing it apart for whatever comfort that brings. This is not that response.
Instead, this is a response to my friend – the one who originally texted me to unpack her feelings. Her initial word choice – “hurt” – is one reserved for the people close to us, in whom we place enough trust to begin with that we can be betrayed. She respected Hamilton and looked up to her as a still very rare example of a successful woman in a notoriously male-dominated industry. Surely, Hamilton was setting her own rules, leading by example, and changing the culture in a way that would trickle down to us mere mortals tending bar and working the line. As she said herself, “In some ways, we’ve been throwing the same parties that Ken’s been throwing….but we didn’t sexually harass our waitresses, and we didn’t blacklist employees who betrayed us. We weren’t abusive to our kitchen crews, and we didn’t manage our restaurants through fear or intimidation.” So – why not just keep it up? Why do damage control for a man who so demonstrably did the opposite, without regard for general decency or anyone’s wellbeing but his own?
Here is where some arguments are made for Hamilton [and her partner’s] decision. They generally fall into one of two types. The most common is some variation on “the best way to fight for good is to get in bed with the devil and compromise”. This is partially the argument given by Hamilton herself – with just a soupçon of “I’m doing it for his employees”. The reasoning is, if he and others like him are still around exerting power and influence on the industry, wouldn’t it be better to have a decent woman by his side guiding him in the right direction? It’s pretty much the same reasoning that we’ve seen from countless politicians in the last year and a half. And – shockingly – it hasn’t worked. We are no closer to a reasonable immigration deal than we were 18 months ago, for example, but we’ve managed to separate thousands of children from their families and put them in detention centers in the meantime. But if politics are too much a minefield to go looking for parallels, April Bloomfield herself is evidence that you can’t just throw X chromosomes at problem deep in the institution. When you make a deal with the devil, you legitimize the devil and undermine yourself. Indeed, Hamilton’s explanation has already begun to legitimize Friedman and make herself a prop – she states that their goal is to be “one of the luckier things to ever happen to Ken Friedman”, as though the original exposé and its fallout were simply bad luck for which Friedman bears no blame. It’s a confusing PR move for Hamilton, and an infuriating narrative switch for the rest of us.
So let’s set aside whether Hamilton herself believes in this tactic or is simply using it as justification for a career move she wanted to make anyway. That brings us to the second argument I’ve seen floating around: women have a right to act selfishly for their own gain. Bad press statement or none, The Spotted Pig is a well-respected, successful restaurant, and as an established chef who has worked incredibly hard to get where she is, Hamilton has every right to take a job there. We should not hold her to a higher standard than a male compatriot – in fact, she should get a bit of a pass.
To which I say – sure. Let’s give her a pass. Let’s admit she has the right to disappoint us as much as any male chef, or male politician, or male CEO. Let’s admit there is probably some tiny gain to having narrowed the celebrity chef wage gap. Let’s hope she is the exception to every rule about sleeping with the devil, and keep our fingers crossed for the remaining employees at the Spotted Pig. And then lets go back to the drawing board and figure out who in the industry is more worthy of our respect. More importantly, let’s figure out what is more worthy of our respect. What accomplishments should we lift up as an industry? What values should we look for? How do they differ from the ones we’ve been accidentally celebrating through our words, actions, and Instagram posts?
I suspect many people (many women especially), will ask themselves these questions and reach the same conclusion I have. In one way or another, I’ve defined success as adoration and accolades. Success is celebrity, success is wealth, success is a glowing review in the New York Times. And if this is what we value as individuals or an industry, no wonder our heroes will disappoint us. No wonder the Spotted Pig will remain open and the Friedmans and Batalis of the world will find work – we tolerate so much in the glow of celebrity and renown. Even now, there is a sense that the Pig somehow deserves to be open, on the basis great food alone. We think of these award-winning restaurants as existing above the fray of their creators, owners and investors, because food is art and hospitality is sacred and surely the Prunes and Pigs, like a great Woody Allen movie, deserve a place in the pantheon? But maybe we need to tweak our values slightly to allow for a more complicated equation. Originality and insight in the kitchen will always matter, but that equation could also place humility, care, and community on at least as high a pedestal.
I invite everyone to work out this equation for themselves. Hamilton has undoubtedly worked harder than almost anyone in the industry, of any gender. And hard work too is a beautiful, inspiring thing. But hard work and integrity are not the same, and their relationship is a correlation at best. So I won’t tell my friend (or anyone else) not to be disappointed by Hamilton, or by the industry, or by New York. We all sacrifice something to do the work we do. I guess I’ll just ask instead – who do you know who has demonstrated unflappable integrity? Because I bet at least one of those people makes a mean burger too.