Alleged abuse by Rene Redzepi at Noma reverberates in the Boston restaurant scene

Such incidents keep happening — as far away as Copenhagen, and as close to home as Fort Point. Staffers accused Boston chef Barbara Lynch of workplace abuse at her high-end Menton in 2023; she closed all of her restaurants the following year. That Redzepi falls from the greatest heights and in such a public way makes Noma’s example particularly hard to ignore.

It forces those who appreciate and want to patronize ambitious, chef-driven restaurants to face a moral conundrum: Does doing so make us complicit in a system where success comes at the expense of those who help create it? Because this is so obvious one shouldn’t have to say it: Chefs should not abuse, exploit, or otherwise treat their employees badly. On principle alone.

Not because it might come back to haunt them, although that is a consequence even bosses who don’t speak principle might understand.

In France, journalist Nora Bouazzouni spent four years interviewing hundreds of restaurant workers for the 2025 book “Violences en Cuisine,” exposing a workplace culture where employees are subject to physical and emotional abuse and sexist and racist treatment by powerful chefs people are afraid to call to account. Those toxic French kitchens inform American ones. If you’ve watched the FX show “The Bear,” you are familiar with the brigade system, in which everyone has a role in the pecking order: executive chef, chef de cuisine, sous chef, and so on.

This hierarchy was developed by chef Auguste Escoffier in the late 19th century, inspired by his experience in the military. To this system, we add the wrinkle of tipping, with its roots in racism: First viewed as deeply un-American, it caught on after the Civil War with employers who didn’t want to pay formerly enslaved workers. In practice today, tipping means those in the kitchen earn a set hourly wage while those in the dining room might make more, or less, depending on diners’ whims.

None of this is a recipe for a harmonious, egalitarian workplace — even without high stress, long hours, and more drinking than other corporate cultures tend to permit. As yet another story breaks, as yet another chef apologizes (again, because Redzepi has apologized for some of his behavior in the past), one might wonder whether the system is irrevocably broken. Should we tear it all down?

Nihilism is tempting (what, is it just me?), but this line of thinking fails to honor the serious work being done by those in hospitality to change the industry for the better. This might mean anything from creating and enforcing clear codes of conduct to following different, more equitable business models (for example, the worker-owned Circus Cooperative Cafe in Cambridge) to finding ways to pay a fair wage across the entire staff (e.g. eliminating tipping and charging diners a clearly stated administrative fee or raising menu prices to compensate). Giving up on restaurants also discounts the real progress we’ve made as a culture since the era of the bad boy chef.

It was just a decade ago we were glorifying tattooed, in-your-face kitchen bros who swaggered around putting bacon in everything.

“Chefs are the new rock stars,” publications pronounced. In 2013, Redzepi was featured on the cover of Time magazine, flanked by chefs Alex Atala and David Chang (also since accused of abusing his staff), with the headline “The Gods of Food.” The website Eater asked Time editor Howard Chua-Eoan why no women chefs had been deemed gods or included in a “chefs’ family tree” graphic.

Some had been considered, including Alice Waters, Chua-Eoan said, but they didn’t make the cut: “There was no attempt to exclude women, we just went with the basic realities of what was going on and who was being talked about.” This has aged like raw milk: Have you heard of Waters? How about Atala?

Diners’ sensibilities have shifted, largely thanks to movements like #metoo and Black Lives Matter. The insatiable, democratizing lens of TikTok and Instagram that enabled White to levy accusations against Redzepi in such a visible way also exposes viewers to a whole new, dizzying array of food. We see this reflected in food media and restaurant awards: The roster of chefs and restaurants getting coverage and consideration has expanded and changed.

So has our definition of culinary excellence. A Uyghur restaurant, a restaurant that tells the story of the African diaspora, a restaurant run by an Indigenous chef — all are as likely to receive recognition as a restaurant serving French haute cuisine. If Time ran a “Gods of Food” package today, it would look completely different.

But as the Noma story makes clear, anointing gods of food is dangerous business. Gods of anything, for that matter. A week and a half after The New York Times ran its Redzepi story, it released a five-year investigation of United Farmer Workers cofounder Cesar Chavez, who is accused of sexually abusing girls and women in the movement for years.

On two different scales, the stories illustrate the perils of vesting any one person with too much power. We see this in every arena, as deified athletes, pop stars, movie directors, and presidents make news for their violent and abusive behavior. While celebrity claims our attention, we fail to recognize other, equally important stories unfolding closer to home.

In 2024, Stavros Papantoniadis, the owner of Stash’s Pizza in Dorchester and Roslindale, was found guilty of forced labor charges. He was accused of choking an employee; hitting a staffer and breaking his teeth; kicking a worker in the genitals, requiring surgery; and threatening to have people deported and withhold their wages if they tried to quit. Everyone from the mailman to distant relatives wants to talk to me about Redzepi right now.

Though I live less than a mile from what was once Stash’s, no one has ever brought up that case, despite its uncommon brutality. But the celebrity chef is out of the bag, and there is no stuffing our creation back in. What will be the fallout for Redzepi here?

Will this be a lasting reckoning, or a momentary pause for decorum? Protesters are calling for reparations; Redzepi is asking for talks with them, on the condition demonstrations outside the L.

A. pop-up desist.

In a March 11 Instagram video, Redzepi tells his staff he will step away: “You’ll see me around, but not in the way you’ve seen me around for the past 23 years. You guys are running the show now, you understand? This is your restaurant now, each and every one of you.

For me, I’m going into planning the next phase.” As he speaks, the camera pans slowly around the room, lingering on the faces of employees listening, nodding, their eyes filling with tears. Do they know they are being filmed, that their emotions will be broadcast?

Is this, too, a kind of violation? They are people, not props. People like the ones protesting in L.

A., holding signs that say “Noma broke me.” Can we drive past them to enjoy our $1,500 meal? If so, what broke us? Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. @devrafirst.