The rumors started circulating on Twitter last night – a prominent chef was about to be “outed” as a sex predator this week. People treated the rumors like a blind item – who could it be? Anthony Bourdain? Bobby Flay? Emeril? But no – it’s Mario Batali, he of the Crocs and gross-looking Italian food. Batali was the co-host of the popular daytime chat show/cooking show The Chew, and he’s now stepped down from that show. The Eater had details of the allegations against Batali, which you can read here. A decade ago, he got really creepy and gross with a young chef and even groped her breasts. Three other women who worked for him in various capacities over the years have stories of his repeated gropes/assaults and demands that they touch him or sit on him, etc. Batali was quietly reprimanded for “inappropriate behavior” two months ago and was forced into harassment training by his company. Batali released a statement to Eater:
In a statement to Eater, Batali said that he is stepping away from the day-to-day operations of his businesses for an unspecified period of time. ABC, where Batali has co-hosted the daytime show The Chew since 2011, has also asked the chef to step away from the show “while we review the allegations that have just recently come to our attention,” a spokesperson said.
Batali did not deny all the allegations, saying that they “match up” with ways he has behaved.
“I apologize to the people I have mistreated and hurt. Although the identities of most of the individuals mentioned in these stories have not been revealed to me, much of the behavior described does, in fact, match up with ways I have acted. That behavior was wrong and there are no excuses. I take full responsibility and am deeply sorry for any pain, humiliation or discomfort I have caused to my peers, employees, customers, friends and family.
“I have work to do to try to regain the trust of those I have hurt and disappointed. For this reason, I am going to step away from day-to-day operations of my businesses. We built these restaurants so that our guests could have fun and indulge, but I took that too far in my own behavior. I won’t make that mistake again. I want any place I am associated with to feel comfortable and safe for the people who work or dine there.
“I know my actions have disappointed many people. The successes I have enjoyed are owned by everyone on my team. The failures are mine alone. To the people who have been at my side during this time — my family, my partners, my employees, my friends, my fans — I am grateful for your support and hopeful that I can regain your respect and trust. I will spend the next period of time trying to do that.”
Batali remains an owner of his individual restaurants, according to the B&B spokesperson. In a statement to Eater, B&B said that while the company has had sexual harassment training and policies for more than 10 years, it will now also enlist an independent, outside corporate investigations firm for any staffers wishing to make claims against owners of the restaurants.
“We take these allegations very seriously. We pride ourselves on being a workplace for our employees where they can grow and deliver great service with equal opportunity and free from any discrimination. We have strong policies and practices in place that address sexual harassment. We train employees in these policies and we enforce them, up to and including termination,” B&B’s statement reads in part. “Mr. Batali and we have agreed that he will step away from the company’s operations, including the restaurants, and has already done so.”
While Batali was an employee at ABC with The Chew, he’s also the head of his own restaurant empire and he is “the boss.” Imagine being the HR person who has to go to the boss and say “you can’t grope and harass women constantly, you need sexual harassment prevention training.” Yeah… and people wonder how these prominent, powerful men get away with it for so long.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Mario Batali is and always was trash and this doesn’t surprise me in the least. He has a HORRIBLE reputation for how he treats his employees and was sued for skimming tips from his waitstaff and not paying them overtime. He even spoke out AGAINST the minimum wage increase in NYC. He’s garbage.
F&cking hell! Now I can’t go to Eataly!!! This is an extra crappy Monday.
Noooooo!!!! Eataly is on my list of places I wanted to go in the near future. Grrrrr.
Welcome to the restaurant world in general. Sketchy accounting, managers who try to take a cut of tips, additional non-overtime hours – I could make the list longer. We have a close friend who worked for a very high profile, high end chef who has a reputation for starting chef’s careers in our city. And who also was apparently using one restaurant’s funds to finance her new one, causing all of the current employees paychecks to bounce. Repeatedly. People literally just stopped showing up to work over time because they weren’t being paid, until the day they got there and it was just closed. And the worst part? This kind of stuff is just par for the course in the restaurant world.
never understood why customers supplement waitstaff wages. pay your friggn staff a livable wage. tips are icing not the flour in a cake. for a successful person to steal from his staff? disgusting.
He spoke out AGAINST a minimum wage rise!? In other words, he’d pay even less than the current minimum wage if he could get away with it. What an utter prïck. Thank goodness we have good industrial relations laws. That didn’t stop a couple of our clebrity chefs trying to rip off their staff, though. Mongrels. And this one is a predator as well. Weed them all out. Show no mercy.
His wife is the daughter of the founders of Coach from NYC, Susan Cahn. I don’t know why she stayed with him, he has a bad rep, but most chefs act like maniacs in the kitchen. Babbo is good, but I haven’t been in there in years.
If you want to go to a good market in New York for Italian items Eataly is hard to beat however there are some nice old family places around the city that I like too. When I am visiting my grandmother on the Upper E side, there is Citarella that has excellent seafood but loads of other goodies. Excellent lox or so says the meat eaters in my life. If it makes anyone feel better, he is not the sole owner, and he has partners. I get our pasta there sometimes, but there are other choices.
I don’t eat in his restaurants, and now it is a guarantee.
I absolutely believe these women. He’s a total dirtbag. Awhile back he and his partners were sued by their employees for taking their tips. He has no moral compass at all. When I heard about the tips, I had a bad impression of him, now he makes me want to throw up.
To be honest, my first thought was “ummmm, all of them, probably?” The professional kitchen is not a female-friendly environment.
^^^
Yes!!!
Yep. Someone was commenting on how harassment was so bad in Hollywood and Government and how lucky we were that it wasn’t a thing elsewhere. My response was “clearly you haven’t worked in either a restaurant or tech”.
I would honestly be hesitant to let my teenage child work in a restaurant. I can’t think of a single girl, myself included, who were not sexually harassed at best, assaulted at worst, at my high school pizza job.
Don’t forget the medical field
I had no idea what my innocent self was getting into when I started serving at 18 years old. Even in “nice” places, the staff, the customers, the management, there were predators EVERYWHERE!
Indeed it is not. I enjoy watching certain cooking competition shows with professional chefs/cooks, and the women who talk about how they’ve worked and strived for their position possess a strange fierceness that’s almost akin to bitterness. Like, “you have no idea what I’ve gone through to get to this level.” It would be strange, but I too work in a male dominated industry and have experienced quite a bit of, ah, unprofessional behavior that is not only tolerated but treated as “well what can you expect”.
I was thinking about that as well. The women who do make it have to cultivate a certain “toughness” – not just in response to dealing with idiot men, but also to be accepted by those same men as their peers. There’s a reason why so many of them have a very hard edge.
Well put, Bridget. And then that hard edge is decried as “not feminine” and “acting like a man.”
I love to cook but even when they have those classes where you can cook with a chef or those culinary trips they lack boundaries. The stories are terrible, and I wouldn’t like to spend a day in one of those kitchens with some bully chef as my boss.
“They ‘match-up’ with ways he has behaved?” What an odd choice of words
At least he’s not denying it or saying “sorry if I offended someone.”
A cousin to the non-apology apology is the non-admission admission.
At this point has no woman been sexually harassed or assaulted….imagine what it’s like in other countries.
What does that have to do with anything?
I think they meant so many countries are even more backward than us on women’s rights. It must be even worse in a country where you have no rights at all.
It is the same in other countries. Nothing particularly special about the US in this instance.
Thanks Jan that’s what I meant….it all the same experience but imagine if powerful women in Hollwood could not escape it what about other countries eg like Syria,Sudan who have no chance to speak up. It was not an offensive statement
I’ve never been a fan, he’s so pretentious! I think this will be a relief to the other chefs on Chew,
I’ve caught them smirking and side eyeing him for years.
As for the allegations, before reading I thought men would be involved ( yes I know he’s married but I get a vibe )
Michael Symon is really the only chef that counts on that show, he better not be on the ever growing list. Good riddance to Batali, take Dr. Oz’s daughter with you please. Karla stay put, you’re awesome.
Agreed with all you said Nancy
Yep, totally agree with you too.
Eeww.
I wonder how Gwyneth Paltrow feels about this. Mario and Gwen are really close friends.
I was wondering the same thing 🧐
I was just thinking Gwyneth sure knows how to pick ’em – Weinstein, Affleck, Batali…
Gwyneth Paltrow is his peer, not a subordinate. He would not have have displayed this type of behavior within a mile of her.
He did it to his staff who had zero power and needed their jobs.
I am not sure if she would have even been aware of his treatment of women, but after her own episode with Harvey Weinstein, if she was and stayed Batali’s friend, then shame on her.
Oh my,
this was almost exactly predicted by a subplot in the second season of Master of None:
Dev ends up shooting a cooking show with a famous and celebrated chef (played by the great Bobby Cannavale) and right before the premiere, the chef is exposed as a major creep and sexual harasser.
I wonder if this is more than just a coincidence.
I immediately had that same thought. The parallel is too similar!
I’ve never liked Batali, he’s always skeeved me out.
Not surprising. I used to occasionally watch The Chew at the gym and he was always smarmy/creepy to the female hosts as well as the guests.
I wonder if Gwen will make a statement? She is very good friends with him.
I don’t know much about him, but yet again, am not surprised. At least he owned up to it and didn’t pull a “that’s not how I remember it” but it’s still so disgusting.
I was with a bunch of women friends over the weekend and we started talking about all this. Oh God, the stories. My heart broke for more than a few of them, and we all had stories of some level.
A couple of things.
I wouldn’t describe Mario Batali as “of the gross looking Italian food”. Disregarding him personally, he is one of the great American chefs. But if you’re used to just fettuccini Alfredo then his food isn’t going to be for you.
But none of this shocks me. Restaurants are a TOUGH place for women. They’re incredibly male dominated and a dude-bro culture permeates it. Not to mention the all-around attitude of stunted emotional growth (ie when you spend every night partying after your shift is done), it can be a truly toxic work environment. The restaurant industry (along with tech) are hotbeds of harassment and assault. It’s sad that apparently Batali is one of them, but not surprising knowing how pervasive this kind of stuff is in the industry.
And there are so many hosts on The Chew I totally forgot that Batali was even on it. I’m just here for Carla Hall anyway.
I grew up working in the the restaurant industry in Northern California and am proud to say that I have never witnessed this behavior. It’s a top down industry, meaning that abuse only thrives when the top allows it. I remember reading Bourdain’s first book and being shocked at how different my experience was. Yes, it’s a male dominated field, but working in an already woke area went a long way to making my experience very different than NYC in the 90s. What I’m trying to say is that a lot of us take our work seriously and didn’t party after every shift nor did we tolerate the old guard’s belligerent unprofessional behavior.
I’m waiting for Goop’s take on this. She’s been friends with him for years.
tom colicchio tweeted that no one should be surprised.
If something comes out about Colicchio I will be HEARTBROKEN.
Same. I don’t even know why I find him so endearing.
I’ve always heard that he’s a bit of an a-hole, but not in that regard. All great chefs tend to be pretty difficult, though.
He comes across as extremely blunt and no nonsense. And indeed, a lot of successful chefs are a-holes (even the ones that aren’t screaming obscenities). I’ve always thought it’s because there are so many moving parts in a kitchen and frequently undertrained, understaffed, or staffed by idiots.
Yes, Tom has been my celebrity chef crush for years..love him 😍
Skeevy. Yep, that’s the word. And it even came through on the TV.
At least he hasn’t denied it, or provided a half-assed response – I found his apology to be sincere and appropriate. It just sucks it’s him and not Fieri.