Noma chef’s departure is a chance for change— but California needs to fix two vital issues for restaurants to thrive

Chef René Redzepi has resigned from his role overseeing the restaurant group behind Noma following a week of anticipated protests surrounding his $1,500-per-person pop-up planned for LA.

In his statement, Redzepi noted that Noma is bigger than any one person, which is entirely correct.

At restaurants of this stature, it’s the cooks, dishwashers, line cooks, and sous chefs who ultimately make the operation run.

Grand vision matters, of course. Every great restaurant begins with a creative leader.

But once an institution reaches the global prominence of Noma, it becomes far more than the ideas of a single chef. It becomes a machine powered by the relentless work of dozens of people behind the scenes. Those workers should power on.

What likely made Redzepi’s position untenable was not simply criticism from food writers or social media. I imagine the pressure from financial sponsors and partners was simply too intense.

As anyone in the food service industry knows, when sponsors and investors get nervous, decisions happen quickly. Money talks.

The well-organized protests, complete with professionally printed signs and coordinated messaging, added to that pressure.

Organized protest campaigns have become a familiar part of the restaurant industry’s political landscape, especially in cities like LA — and for Redzepi, the optics were particularly complicated.

He has long been known as a progressive chef who champions liberal social causes. That means he is also operating inside a cultural ecosystem that takes cancel culture very seriously.

When the criticism begins to come from what many would consider “his own side,” the pressure to leave grows exponentially.

My prediction is that Redzepi will head back to Denmark, lay low for a period of time, and then eventually reinvent himself.

Perhaps he will return as a chef determined to prove that great restaurants can thrive without the harsh kitchen cultures that once defined elite gastronomy. That narrative arc would not be surprising, given the controversy over his behavior.

But we would be remiss not to recognize that many chefs have already proven that point.

Eric Ripert, the legendary chef of Le Bernardin, has long been known for running kitchens where anger is deliberately kept off the line. He often speaks about “kindness over chaos,” and leading kitchens without humiliation or rage.

Anthony Bourdain, another philosopher of the culinary world, spent much of his career talking about the importance of building people up rather than tearing them down.

So the idea that successful kitchens must operate like pressure cookers of intimidation has already been disproven.

Which raises the next question: what happens now?

Will the protesters celebrate having achieved their goal? Or will the goalposts move?

My suspicion is that Redzepi’s resignation will not satisfy the activists who helped fuel the backlash. Because too often these campaigns are not about a single chef, or a single restaurant, but instead leveraging outrage to push broader policy changes.

In California, that usually means calls for higher mandatory wages, additional labor mandates, and new regulatory frameworks that increase the financial burden on restaurant owners.

The irony is that these policies rarely help the small, independent restaurants that make up the backbone of the industry. Instead, they accelerate the closure of neighborhood restaurants that operate on razor-thin margins.

If activists and policymakers truly cared about restaurant workers, there are far more effective ways to help them than new mandates.

Cut payroll taxes so workers take home more money. Reform a notoroious California law, the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), so that workers actually receive the majority of settlement funds in legal disputes with employers, instead of the state collecting the lion’s share. (Currently, the state takes 75 percent.)

But that conversation rarely happens, because the uncomfortable truth is that the state benefits financially from the current system, and labor unions often act as political partners in maintaining it.

René Redzepi’s resignation may satisfy the immediate outrage cycle — but, alas, the deeper problems in the restaurant industry remain.

Those problems are structural, economic, and political — and they are far bigger than any one chef.

Chef Andrew Gruel is a chef, television host, and member of the Huntington Beach City Council.

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