My last post on my experience working for free as a chef has, of course, met some criticism. Most notably, by the comment from my former employee, Lisa Dunbar.
Firstly, thank you for engaging in this discussion. I respect the seriousness of your position, and admire both your intellectual grounding and the weight that your lived experiences carry, particularly your time at Noma and El Bulli.
For transparency, I staged at Relæ twice in 2016 and 2017, and my experience was of a fair and mutually valuable exchange. I gave my time and labour in return for practical skills, technical insight and an inside view of your business and way of thinking. Those weeks remain among the most inspiring of my career.
That said, I was able to exercise agency in a way not everyone can. I was in my thirties with solid experience working in many kitchens, including my own. I could contextualise what I was seeing. I could take paid leave and expense the travel. My circumstances are the exception to the rule.
This is where privilege enters. Agency is not only maturity and knowledge — it is material security. Had I been a younger adult, with no savings and limited professional footing, would the exchange have felt the same? Perhaps. But it is far less certain. That feels worth examining, not to indict, but to understand. Particularly in the context of highly decorated restaurants with a greater reliance on stagieres than your own.
This train of thought raises something practical: is there scope for clearer industry norms around staging — a recognised framework, a shared set of expectations between stagiaire and host, even some form of syllabus or structured educational programme? It may be unrealistic to implement something industry-wide, but this is precisely where 'progressive' industry leaders and business owners should be more proactive. When unpaid or low-paid labour forms part of a business or industry 'system', clearer parameters, responsibilities and educational outcomes should be placed at the forefront.
I realise there are now many exceptions, but historically this structure has been at best informal and at worst non-existent. Without defined standards, the agreement risks becoming ambiguous. That ambiguity is where the critique we are currently experiencing rightly gains force.
There is one further point I feel compelled to raise, although it is uncomfortable.
Lisa has spoken about feeling fear in her workplace at the time. That may be dismissed as her own personal perception, but I don’t think we should rush to do so. As male business leaders in an industry with a documented history of coercive behaviours, we carry responsibility to examine not only intent but impact.
In my own interactions with you, I never felt fear. I felt humble and dare I say honoured, but any exchange we shared felt like it was bound by respect. But I experienced that environment as a confident, established male professional. Would a young woman in her early twenties have felt the same ease within the hierarchy? I don’t know. That uncertainty alone warrants reflection.
Gender inevitably complicates this conversation. Structural inequalities — to borrow the language being debated — can be intensified when viewed through that lens. It intersects with questions of power and agency, however we frame them.
As someone who now hosts stagieres and leads a team, I am conscious that how I behave — especially as a male employer where younger females are concerned — has the potential to shape someone else’s sense of safety and belonging. That awareness feels central to whatever progress our industry makes next.
To be clear: my experiences staging at Relæ and maybe half a dozen other likeminded restaurants are almost entirely positive. I do not view staging as inherently exploitative. But I do believe that as industry leaders, we have a responsibility to formalise the conditions under which opportunity is offered. If we believe in agency, we should ensure the conditions exist for it to be meaningfully exercised.
Thank you Nicholas for engaging in the conversation. You raise important points. I will take the time to properly address them. I believe I already addressed some of them in my original piece on working as a stage, just want to confirm you have read it?
Thanks Christian. I've just re-read your initial piece. It's a really useful tool, containing lots of candid advice well suited to a young chef at the beginning of their journey as well as some sensible musings that apply to wider (professional) life too.
Many of the points I raise have already been touched upon in the wider debate elsewhere. I don't think that the concepts of privilege, or to Lisa's point, gender (in both cases, read structural inequality) have been fully explored.
Like I say, as male industry leaders, perhaps it is on people like you and I to proactively push these kinds of questions forward.
Regardless, I look forward to your response in due course and to your next pieces.
I think you might very well be right, unless perhaps, you could consider it a question of opposing worldviews. I acknowledge in the piece that power structures are real and to be studied and understood. The question is what to do about it:
1. Make an attempt at changing, reversing or abolishing the structure. This seems to be the mainstream narrative surrounding the topic.
2. Inform, empower and support those within the system to make the choices they believe serves them best on their own journey. This was the position and motivation of my piece.
I believe more in the second than the first I do not claim that the structure is neutral, but wish to give people a clear-eyed understanding of it so they can navigate it on their own terms.
The discussion around minorities and gendered inequality is admirable and has come a very long way. I believe it puts too much emphasis on group identity and not enough on the individual. I believe both are to be explored with honesty. I have seen women and minorities working with me and for me showing an outstanding level of independence, agency and spirit. Defaulting to an underlying belief that they must necessarily be oppressed does not serve them in any way that I can think of.
If we are to discuss this through a lens of privilege you can make the case that my lived experience cannot possibly understand theirs and that they could very well feel exploited even though I did not see it that way. That is a fair point. But then I fail to understand how a white, Danish native female can seemingly represent not only her own lived experience in Denmark but that of everyone else in globally.
This points to the major flaws of this world view that somehow attempts to make one persons account to be undeniably more valuable than another which then implies that we must endlessly rank peoples accounts based on their group identity. This sounds a lot like creating more of the same problem somewhere else.
When we put less emphasis on the group identity and more on the individual we can judge that individual not only by its stated motives but by its actions. This is the base upon which we have built Western Society which is in itself another system with its flaws. But to me, it proposes a much more sound environment for any individual from any class, gender or identity.
Thanks again for your inputs - would you be fine with me publishing our thread and conversation? I think it explains a lot to those that have not followed the discussion too closely.
This is an interesting discussion and it's useful to understand your points of view in more detail.
I agree your efforts to inform, empower and support are essential and carry weight given your career. It's a very worthwhile exercise and one I applaud.
It is my opinion, however, that whilst abolishing or reversing the structure is neither practical nor timely, fundamental change is essential and must be driven from within the system, not outside of it. By that I mean Chefs, restaurateurs and business owners such as myself proactively creating the framework - not only for the unpaid stages, but for the wider team as a whole - to ensure the exchange is fair and mutually beneficial.
I agree the conversation around minority and gender inequality is nuanced but the challenges - and lets be honest, the exploitations - are real even if businesses like the ones we are / have been involved in are fundamentally opposed to them. As a white, privileged, male I feel uncomfortable suggesting we put less emphasis on the group as, for me personally, it feels in danger of minimising or devaluing a situation that does not deserve to be so.
I think whats really interesting is how this whole debate - on your channels as well as in the wider media landscape - is provoking thought and critique within our industry of a system that we once accepted but are now willing to question. I've certainly been inspired to think carefully about how we as a business nurture our paid employees, trainees and stagieres alike.
I'm hopefully that many others in similar positions elsewhere will be doing the same.
All the best,
Nicholas
P.s. Yes please do feel free to publish this thread. My handle on social media is @nicholasbalfe if it ends up appearing elsewhere.
I think this conversation is being distorted by two things: 1. A focus on the very top few restaurants 2. This idea that restaurants “rely on” unpaid internships.
There are thousands of incredible places doing excellent work. You can absolutely use an unpaid internship as a way to get in the door and learn with no prior experience and a great attitude and determined work ethic. This process has proved valuable to many many people including myself. Focusing on the “top” restaurants insures this. Furthermore, I don’t see enough discussion about how much work it takes to host unpaid interns. When I have taken on stages it slows my day down even though it is well worth it to have an educational model and be able to cultivate talent rather than hire talent. If I get a case of chickens in from the farm I can break them down pretty quickly. It takes me at least three times as long to teach and monitor a stage. When they master that task they go on to learn something new and the process repeats itself. Once they’ve done enough of that and there’s an open spot for hire, these are the folks who get the spot. Not to say the system is perfect, no system is, but when it works it’s a beautiful thing.
You write well and to the point. I have had - short interactions with Lisa Dunbar, which in many ways makes it understandable why you ended up in this debate.
Thank you for the insights into your thoughts, and for going to great lengths to address this conversation in all its complexity. The whole discussion is very interesting, even to a complete business outsider like me.
I think it is fair to question the motifs of anyone contributing to what looks like an online feud, everyone seems to have their skin in the game, and everyone has their own experience and (hi)story, and I also understand that not everything can or must be shared or explained in public. BUT I think it might help to make a clear distinction between what is labelled as exploitation by some (the definition of what working "for free" should and should not entail – this deserves extensive discussion IMO) and abuse. It might go without saying for some (hopefully most) that abuse and harassment (physical, sexual, verbal, emotional) should not be tolerated anywhere, but I feel like it can not be stressed enough, and we also need the ones who have fame and power not only to reject it, but also to see it, name it, fight it wherever they can, even among their peers and especially when those affected are lower in the system's hierarchy.
Thank you very much for your comment. I do 100% agree with you. If I have not managed to make it clear, I do not condone any type of abuse whatsoever. I am suspicious of the way accounts of abuse can be addressed by imposing big structural changes. Those should be addressed one by one, with appropriate respect and due diligence given to both the accuser and the accused.
The discourse right now seems to diagnose the problem by grouping individual issues to argue that they are embedded in the "system" or structure, not as failures of individuals but as the undeniable result of the structure itself. This is very understandable, particularly if you are on the outside looking in. But somehow, when looking for a solution, the only way the systems can change seems to be by holding a limited number of people accountable for all of it's flaws. I do not believe this approach will bring about the change people hope for.
Demanding the abolition of a system to make that change assumes that there is nothing salvageable within it and that those within it are either suffering or exploiting. This does not reflect the accounts of my own life or many others who have been within this industry for decades and achieves only to further the current polarization around the topic.
Thanks for the thoughtful pieces. Curious what you think about the relationship between restaurants being a business and restaurants *relying* on unpaid labor to function. As someone outside the industry (I’ve worked at restaurants and bars, only as a waiter and 15+ years ago) it seems like if restaurants are a business and can’t operate without unpaid labor, they aren’t actually a business in the capitalist sense.
To me, that reliance seems to be underlying a lot of the criticism I read.
Again-I’m naive to what actually happens. Is it fair that there are high end restaurants who could not function without unpaid labor? Do you have a proper business if you can’t make it work without unpaid labor?
You're making the assumption that the industry as a whole relies on unpaid labor. My two cents from 50 some years in the business is that the vast majority of restaurants never have someone stage at them, and for those that do, usually the more famed places, it's rare to have more than one or two working there at any given time. Places like El Bulli or Noma, that had a significant percentage of their staff be unpaid stage positions, are the exception, not the rule.
Not it isn't an issue, but many industries have historically replied on unpaid or underpaid labor. It's a value prop for unskilled people to enter into a field, trading their work for training and network development. It is particularly glaring in this industry, I believe, because the upside of successful apprenticeship is not great compared to other trades. Of course this is a symptom of the industry as a whole simply running on slim margins.
I agree, and then again I do not. The applications for restaurants at the highest level are so many because of the prestige and allure, more than actual opportunity. If you want to be in top fine dining yes, but I believe that the vast majority of people that wanna have good jobs and live good lives are better off taking another path and maybe sprinkle in a shorter stage here and there for inspirations. It is wrong to think that you should start at the top, you wont learn much to be honest. I think I made the point in my previous post
I agree that relying on it makes very little sense and is unsustainable as a business. It also creates a distorted output and makes the food overly manipulated.
To the people outside the industry whose primary point rests on the idea of fame, power, and "Chefs who are millionaires"- in reality there are so few of these it is almost laughable. Even the Chefs who you see that own multiple restaurants, are on lists, and you imagine are living lavishly, are not. This is an industry with a bottom line of less than 10% and thats if you are lucky. Furthermore, with the exception of a few TV personalities, most Chefs are pretty humble people and would rather not have the public attention. What they want is the respect from their peers and their community. The lists, the awards, these are things that have been manufactured by travel companies, media outlets, not restaurant people. If we want to talk about exploitative practices, look at the people and companies who have created a business model of going to restaurants to make content and publishing that content without the consent of the restaurant or Chef. We have independent food writers and media outlets (even the NY Times) who regularly go to restaurants to poach ideas and then publish reverse engineered recipes. Whats more is they are quite open about this practice. I can point to countless examples of this. You might be tempted to say- "well that exposure helps the business". But this is not entirely true- it only winds up changing the clientele from local community people to people who travel around city to city to snap pictures. This was not a change we as Chefs and restaurant owners asked for and we were quite fine in the pre-smartphone/social media era. All of this is important because it creates a false picture of what a Chef and a restaurant is and helps to foment a very misplaced anger towards them.
On the subject of what is and isn't abuse the distinction should be quite easy- physical abuse anywhere even in public at the grocery store is assault, a criminal act and should be treated as such. That means filing charges not this type of vigilante internet justice we are seeing. Verbal and emotional abuse is an entirely subjective matter, it is real no doubt, but impossible to adjudicate in reality and is not a criminal act. That is not to say it is ok, conflating these two things is bad for everyone. The writings of Jonathan Haidt, as Chef Puglisi pointed out, are very instructive on this topic.
You raise some fascinating and pitifully misinformed claims.
Content creators and recipe developers who take inspiration from restaurants (such as myself, proudly) are a natural outcropping of human curiosity and artistic exchange.
Consider: virtually all lauded artists, scientists, chefs, etc across history have received inspiration from the people and movements around them. This is not “theft”. Do you even know what a recipe developer does?? Esp if you knew what went into making these Noma dishes, the sheer expertise, labor, and equipment required to pull them off is simply not attainable by any old content creator with a tiktok, nor is the expertise feasibly transmittable to their lay audiences who have 0 culinary background.
When I adapt a recipe from a restaurant I love for lay audiences to cook at home, I am helping home cooks and paying my respects to the restaurant. I am adding value to the conversation: home cooks would never be able to recreate the exact dish Noma made, but they can make a pared down version because a recipe developer has adapted it. It’s like when a bestselling book or movie is translated into a new language so that audiences around the world can appreciate it. It’s a beautiful thing.
You seem to hold this mistaken view that the strokes of culinary greatness are schemed up by singular geniuses alone, concocted in a vacuum apart from external influences. This is pure myth. Successes in the culinary world are a synthesis of so many creative and labor inputs from disparate groups of people united together. You think René is in the kitchen dreaming shit up? No of course not, there is no new hit dish without the farmers and purveyors who hone their craft and deliver exceptional product; there is no new hit dish without all the rest of the countless people involved along the way. So why should the one chef at the top reap all the benefits?
If you look at how some high end restaurants in international markets like NYC are opened and marketed you will see celebrity chefs names plastered all over them, sometimes who have had next to zero labor or creative input on the restaurant. Then when said restaurants sous chef develops a new hit dish, that dish is credited to the Boulud or other figurehead whose name is attached to the restaurant. so yes, we should be applauding all the people who make these things happen and stop glorifying a few big names as though they are gods
Hi, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I actually agree with pretty much all of what you said which leads me to believe that I didn't do a good job in articulating my point. For the record, I have been everything from an unpaid stage all the way to Executive Chef and also hold a BFA in which I studied a ton of Art History. So I well versed in the history of the creative process and the way art is produced as it pertains to the human mind. Lets shift focus on this subject away from Noma/Rene for a moment. What I was trying to articulate was a though about the concept of exploitation as it pertains to restaurants and point out that there is an ecosystem if food media which in my view does exploit restaurants for content. In some cases this is beneficial- in some cases I view it as purely exploitative. I have for a fact, a NY Times email I saved in which Melissa Clark (I still like and own her book btw) says plainly that "people always ask me where I get my ides for recipes from and I say 'well I go to my favorite restaurants and transform their dishes into recipes" While I take your point about the human brain and art production, this (which isn't art in the traditional sense, it's NY Times piece which is content that is part of their profit model) seems quite obviously different. There are hundred if not thousands of similar content creators on social media. I can think of one well known San Francisco based food writer who's website includes under the tab "My Recipes" such recipes like "State Birds Yuba amatriciana" or "Mister Jius Chrysanthemum salad". This to me strikes me as very plainly, stealing for one's own content. My greater point is this- their is a food media ecosystem (some, not all to be clear) which I believe exploits restaurant IP and in return promises eyeballs, attention, lists which wind up doing more harm to everybody.
well actually, recipes aren’t restaurants IP (in the United States).
Legally speaking, In the U.S., recipes themselves cannot be copyrighted because they are considered functional, factual, and not original works of authorship. Recipes are mere list of ingredients and instructions, they are raw information.
And that’s the way it should be. The idea that anyone can own a list of ingredients is preposterous. You also run into a problem if you disagree; for example if you think a recipe popularized by x fancy restaurant should be privatized,
where is the line drawn?? are you gonna privatize an everyday peanut butter jelly recipe now? Are we carving up food like land now? That would be a crime against all humanity; food is the essential language of life.
Again, going back to my point before; the chefs who put these recipes on their restaurant menus adapt and use knowledge from other sources they have interacted with. Recipes never come about in a vacuum. Just because x person is a big name restauranteur today does not mean they have sole and discrete authorship over the summation of food ideas they put their label on. This is just creating artificial and grossly commodified barriers walling off how food knowledge is permutated over generations.
If recipe developers learn how to make quality facsimiles of a restaurant recipe they love, good on them! It is a creative endeavor, just like the people making the so called original in the restaurant. This negative stigma around it is absurd.
What I will say creates unhealthy conditions in fine dining industry are awards media like Michelin (and to some extent NY Times when they release “best of” lists) who engineer these hype cycles. The idea that restaurants are rankable up to the very best is quite silly and creates the conditions for egoism and warped silos of prestige where high pressure scenarios to ascend to the top are engineered and the abusive behavior that is a byproduct of seeking prestige is swept under the rug.
Yeah I understand what you are saying. I do feel like you're being a little dismissive of my point by taking it to the extreme. Obviously a list of ingredients is not owned by anyone.
But can you concede the point at least that if I have a restaurant called "Wonderful Lizard" and I have say a citrus salad on the menu that is not entirely unique but unique in some ways, and then some content creator or NY Times writer comes along and starts publishing for profit pieces without my consent titled "Wonderful Lizards Citrus Salad"- that might be a little exploitative? I understand it's not copyrighted, etc but it seems like this practice, which is widespread, is not great especially when it's tied to "Oh don't worry it's good for exposure and hey I'll put you on this Best of San Francisco list" Doesn't that just seem like something that in other industries would not fly?
I don't see it that way; I see it as a work of creativity and a sign of deep respect, especially if the recipe developer is forthwith about crediting the names of their inspiration! The restauranteur in this situation may or may not like it, and I do not fault them for having their personal opinion, but it is completely fair and there should not be a wider cultural stigma around it (there isn't).
Also, I have yet to come across any concrete evidence that this kind of exchange produces negative outcomes for the restaurant. I only see positives.
I came up working in Berkeley and Oakland California. I’d prefer not to say publicly where but you can probably guess a few spots :)
Respectfully, I think you are, while unintentional I’m sure, devaluing the craft of cooking and restaurant building. Think of it using another real world example- I own a restaurant. Someone contacts me about a film they are shooting. They offer to pay a day rate to film a five minute scene in a movie. I agree. This is during a service so I am obligated to let all of my guests know and sign a consent form prior to their visit. Contrast that to the many many Instagram content creators who take photos and videos without anyone’s consent and paying no rate for their shoot while posting it to their monetized IG account. These two examples are effectively the same except the second example we are just letting slide. Why? Would it be fair for restaurants to prohibit this type of content creation or demand a fee for using their space this way? I think so. Except what would happen if they did? Most likely a lot of bad press and slander. Restaurants even the successful ones are financially precarious businesses and my point is that I don’t think enough people understand this and understand the way food media exploits this dynamic.
This was a very refreshing article to read. Thank you for sharing this, and for calmly, and intellectually debating this complicated topic in a modern world which seems to increase in nonsense by the day.
Am looking forward to visiting your restaurant one day.
You say that you believe in people but not in the system. Yet we live in a system that leads us somewhere — not people within the system, but the system itself that directs us. Please correct me and give examples if I’m wrong.
The twentieth century showed that there are systems other than capitalism, where a person is not exploited by another person and the pursuit of capital is not the cornerstone of all activity and the main motivation taught from school onward. I will give two simple examples: the Soviet Union during Stalin’s rule, and the lives of what were perhaps some of the last truly free people in Papua New Guinea before colonists arrived there in 1976.
Both of these systems demonstrate a much greater potential and diversity of life than capitalism. For example, today many indigenous people are engaged in growing coffee and carrying sacks from place to place — essentially primitive labor. Yet just one generation ago, they lived without money or capital. They knew their land and wildlife, knew how to live with it, interact with it, and survive in the wild better than almost anyone living on the planet today.
I am not trying to portray capitalism as some kind of horrible system or preach against it. But non-capitalist economies do exist, and they can be incredibly effective (for example, the USSR under Stalin). At the same time, they do not require exploiting people, and competition between ideas, individuals, and their actions can remain at the highest level.
Now back to cooking. If you’d have sometime this year I will be happy to welcome you at Refettorio in Geneva and show in person the reality of non-capitalist economy, restaurant exist 5 years already, with the staff payed in time, with high, at least 1 star Michelin standards food, ultra seasonal, local, wine card, 80pax every night, and yes based on free labor. But we call it volunteers job. To have a wide conversation with bigger audience perhaps within the walls of Restaurant.
Hi Ruslan, thank you for your comment. I don’t claim capitalism to be perfect, but I believe that it has proven to create the most prosperity. Its distribution of wealth is by design unequal, and today we see it’s inequality at the extremes of what the system can carry, hence the unrest and dissatisfaction with it that I agree with 100%. I do, though, believe that anyone, rich and poor, would mostly benefit from us recalibrating the current system rather than tearing it down.
I know, it is very, very difficult, and there is a powerful interest in keeping it as it is. Focusing on fine-dining restaurants and kitchen culture within them to fix capitalism (as some people are doing, not you) is focusing on a tiny symptom of a much larger problem, and this is where I think the discussion mixes up a whole bag of big questions and offers only oversimplified answers.
Refettorio sounds great and I am happy to come visit one day.
Dear Christian,
Firstly, thank you for engaging in this discussion. I respect the seriousness of your position, and admire both your intellectual grounding and the weight that your lived experiences carry, particularly your time at Noma and El Bulli.
For transparency, I staged at Relæ twice in 2016 and 2017, and my experience was of a fair and mutually valuable exchange. I gave my time and labour in return for practical skills, technical insight and an inside view of your business and way of thinking. Those weeks remain among the most inspiring of my career.
That said, I was able to exercise agency in a way not everyone can. I was in my thirties with solid experience working in many kitchens, including my own. I could contextualise what I was seeing. I could take paid leave and expense the travel. My circumstances are the exception to the rule.
This is where privilege enters. Agency is not only maturity and knowledge — it is material security. Had I been a younger adult, with no savings and limited professional footing, would the exchange have felt the same? Perhaps. But it is far less certain. That feels worth examining, not to indict, but to understand. Particularly in the context of highly decorated restaurants with a greater reliance on stagieres than your own.
This train of thought raises something practical: is there scope for clearer industry norms around staging — a recognised framework, a shared set of expectations between stagiaire and host, even some form of syllabus or structured educational programme? It may be unrealistic to implement something industry-wide, but this is precisely where 'progressive' industry leaders and business owners should be more proactive. When unpaid or low-paid labour forms part of a business or industry 'system', clearer parameters, responsibilities and educational outcomes should be placed at the forefront.
I realise there are now many exceptions, but historically this structure has been at best informal and at worst non-existent. Without defined standards, the agreement risks becoming ambiguous. That ambiguity is where the critique we are currently experiencing rightly gains force.
There is one further point I feel compelled to raise, although it is uncomfortable.
Lisa has spoken about feeling fear in her workplace at the time. That may be dismissed as her own personal perception, but I don’t think we should rush to do so. As male business leaders in an industry with a documented history of coercive behaviours, we carry responsibility to examine not only intent but impact.
In my own interactions with you, I never felt fear. I felt humble and dare I say honoured, but any exchange we shared felt like it was bound by respect. But I experienced that environment as a confident, established male professional. Would a young woman in her early twenties have felt the same ease within the hierarchy? I don’t know. That uncertainty alone warrants reflection.
Gender inevitably complicates this conversation. Structural inequalities — to borrow the language being debated — can be intensified when viewed through that lens. It intersects with questions of power and agency, however we frame them.
As someone who now hosts stagieres and leads a team, I am conscious that how I behave — especially as a male employer where younger females are concerned — has the potential to shape someone else’s sense of safety and belonging. That awareness feels central to whatever progress our industry makes next.
To be clear: my experiences staging at Relæ and maybe half a dozen other likeminded restaurants are almost entirely positive. I do not view staging as inherently exploitative. But I do believe that as industry leaders, we have a responsibility to formalise the conditions under which opportunity is offered. If we believe in agency, we should ensure the conditions exist for it to be meaningfully exercised.
With respect,
Nicholas
Thank you Nicholas for engaging in the conversation. You raise important points. I will take the time to properly address them. I believe I already addressed some of them in my original piece on working as a stage, just want to confirm you have read it?
Thanks Christian. I've just re-read your initial piece. It's a really useful tool, containing lots of candid advice well suited to a young chef at the beginning of their journey as well as some sensible musings that apply to wider (professional) life too.
Many of the points I raise have already been touched upon in the wider debate elsewhere. I don't think that the concepts of privilege, or to Lisa's point, gender (in both cases, read structural inequality) have been fully explored.
Like I say, as male industry leaders, perhaps it is on people like you and I to proactively push these kinds of questions forward.
Regardless, I look forward to your response in due course and to your next pieces.
All the best
Nicholas
I think you might very well be right, unless perhaps, you could consider it a question of opposing worldviews. I acknowledge in the piece that power structures are real and to be studied and understood. The question is what to do about it:
1. Make an attempt at changing, reversing or abolishing the structure. This seems to be the mainstream narrative surrounding the topic.
2. Inform, empower and support those within the system to make the choices they believe serves them best on their own journey. This was the position and motivation of my piece.
I believe more in the second than the first I do not claim that the structure is neutral, but wish to give people a clear-eyed understanding of it so they can navigate it on their own terms.
The discussion around minorities and gendered inequality is admirable and has come a very long way. I believe it puts too much emphasis on group identity and not enough on the individual. I believe both are to be explored with honesty. I have seen women and minorities working with me and for me showing an outstanding level of independence, agency and spirit. Defaulting to an underlying belief that they must necessarily be oppressed does not serve them in any way that I can think of.
If we are to discuss this through a lens of privilege you can make the case that my lived experience cannot possibly understand theirs and that they could very well feel exploited even though I did not see it that way. That is a fair point. But then I fail to understand how a white, Danish native female can seemingly represent not only her own lived experience in Denmark but that of everyone else in globally.
This points to the major flaws of this world view that somehow attempts to make one persons account to be undeniably more valuable than another which then implies that we must endlessly rank peoples accounts based on their group identity. This sounds a lot like creating more of the same problem somewhere else.
When we put less emphasis on the group identity and more on the individual we can judge that individual not only by its stated motives but by its actions. This is the base upon which we have built Western Society which is in itself another system with its flaws. But to me, it proposes a much more sound environment for any individual from any class, gender or identity.
Thanks again for your inputs - would you be fine with me publishing our thread and conversation? I think it explains a lot to those that have not followed the discussion too closely.
Hi Christian.
This is an interesting discussion and it's useful to understand your points of view in more detail.
I agree your efforts to inform, empower and support are essential and carry weight given your career. It's a very worthwhile exercise and one I applaud.
It is my opinion, however, that whilst abolishing or reversing the structure is neither practical nor timely, fundamental change is essential and must be driven from within the system, not outside of it. By that I mean Chefs, restaurateurs and business owners such as myself proactively creating the framework - not only for the unpaid stages, but for the wider team as a whole - to ensure the exchange is fair and mutually beneficial.
I agree the conversation around minority and gender inequality is nuanced but the challenges - and lets be honest, the exploitations - are real even if businesses like the ones we are / have been involved in are fundamentally opposed to them. As a white, privileged, male I feel uncomfortable suggesting we put less emphasis on the group as, for me personally, it feels in danger of minimising or devaluing a situation that does not deserve to be so.
I think whats really interesting is how this whole debate - on your channels as well as in the wider media landscape - is provoking thought and critique within our industry of a system that we once accepted but are now willing to question. I've certainly been inspired to think carefully about how we as a business nurture our paid employees, trainees and stagieres alike.
I'm hopefully that many others in similar positions elsewhere will be doing the same.
All the best,
Nicholas
P.s. Yes please do feel free to publish this thread. My handle on social media is @nicholasbalfe if it ends up appearing elsewhere.
I think this conversation is being distorted by two things: 1. A focus on the very top few restaurants 2. This idea that restaurants “rely on” unpaid internships.
There are thousands of incredible places doing excellent work. You can absolutely use an unpaid internship as a way to get in the door and learn with no prior experience and a great attitude and determined work ethic. This process has proved valuable to many many people including myself. Focusing on the “top” restaurants insures this. Furthermore, I don’t see enough discussion about how much work it takes to host unpaid interns. When I have taken on stages it slows my day down even though it is well worth it to have an educational model and be able to cultivate talent rather than hire talent. If I get a case of chickens in from the farm I can break them down pretty quickly. It takes me at least three times as long to teach and monitor a stage. When they master that task they go on to learn something new and the process repeats itself. Once they’ve done enough of that and there’s an open spot for hire, these are the folks who get the spot. Not to say the system is perfect, no system is, but when it works it’s a beautiful thing.
Point made very clearly. People on the outside do not see this level of complexity, and that, I think, is the problem.
Hi Christian
You write well and to the point. I have had - short interactions with Lisa Dunbar, which in many ways makes it understandable why you ended up in this debate.
Peace Andreas
Thank you for the comment.
Thank you for the insights into your thoughts, and for going to great lengths to address this conversation in all its complexity. The whole discussion is very interesting, even to a complete business outsider like me.
I think it is fair to question the motifs of anyone contributing to what looks like an online feud, everyone seems to have their skin in the game, and everyone has their own experience and (hi)story, and I also understand that not everything can or must be shared or explained in public. BUT I think it might help to make a clear distinction between what is labelled as exploitation by some (the definition of what working "for free" should and should not entail – this deserves extensive discussion IMO) and abuse. It might go without saying for some (hopefully most) that abuse and harassment (physical, sexual, verbal, emotional) should not be tolerated anywhere, but I feel like it can not be stressed enough, and we also need the ones who have fame and power not only to reject it, but also to see it, name it, fight it wherever they can, even among their peers and especially when those affected are lower in the system's hierarchy.
Thank you very much for your comment. I do 100% agree with you. If I have not managed to make it clear, I do not condone any type of abuse whatsoever. I am suspicious of the way accounts of abuse can be addressed by imposing big structural changes. Those should be addressed one by one, with appropriate respect and due diligence given to both the accuser and the accused.
The discourse right now seems to diagnose the problem by grouping individual issues to argue that they are embedded in the "system" or structure, not as failures of individuals but as the undeniable result of the structure itself. This is very understandable, particularly if you are on the outside looking in. But somehow, when looking for a solution, the only way the systems can change seems to be by holding a limited number of people accountable for all of it's flaws. I do not believe this approach will bring about the change people hope for.
Demanding the abolition of a system to make that change assumes that there is nothing salvageable within it and that those within it are either suffering or exploiting. This does not reflect the accounts of my own life or many others who have been within this industry for decades and achieves only to further the current polarization around the topic.
Thanks for the thoughtful pieces. Curious what you think about the relationship between restaurants being a business and restaurants *relying* on unpaid labor to function. As someone outside the industry (I’ve worked at restaurants and bars, only as a waiter and 15+ years ago) it seems like if restaurants are a business and can’t operate without unpaid labor, they aren’t actually a business in the capitalist sense.
To me, that reliance seems to be underlying a lot of the criticism I read.
Again-I’m naive to what actually happens. Is it fair that there are high end restaurants who could not function without unpaid labor? Do you have a proper business if you can’t make it work without unpaid labor?
You're making the assumption that the industry as a whole relies on unpaid labor. My two cents from 50 some years in the business is that the vast majority of restaurants never have someone stage at them, and for those that do, usually the more famed places, it's rare to have more than one or two working there at any given time. Places like El Bulli or Noma, that had a significant percentage of their staff be unpaid stage positions, are the exception, not the rule.
Very good points Dan.
Not it isn't an issue, but many industries have historically replied on unpaid or underpaid labor. It's a value prop for unskilled people to enter into a field, trading their work for training and network development. It is particularly glaring in this industry, I believe, because the upside of successful apprenticeship is not great compared to other trades. Of course this is a symptom of the industry as a whole simply running on slim margins.
I agree, and then again I do not. The applications for restaurants at the highest level are so many because of the prestige and allure, more than actual opportunity. If you want to be in top fine dining yes, but I believe that the vast majority of people that wanna have good jobs and live good lives are better off taking another path and maybe sprinkle in a shorter stage here and there for inspirations. It is wrong to think that you should start at the top, you wont learn much to be honest. I think I made the point in my previous post
I agree that relying on it makes very little sense and is unsustainable as a business. It also creates a distorted output and makes the food overly manipulated.
Aren't you doing to her exactly what you say you are against? A public condemnation?
To the people outside the industry whose primary point rests on the idea of fame, power, and "Chefs who are millionaires"- in reality there are so few of these it is almost laughable. Even the Chefs who you see that own multiple restaurants, are on lists, and you imagine are living lavishly, are not. This is an industry with a bottom line of less than 10% and thats if you are lucky. Furthermore, with the exception of a few TV personalities, most Chefs are pretty humble people and would rather not have the public attention. What they want is the respect from their peers and their community. The lists, the awards, these are things that have been manufactured by travel companies, media outlets, not restaurant people. If we want to talk about exploitative practices, look at the people and companies who have created a business model of going to restaurants to make content and publishing that content without the consent of the restaurant or Chef. We have independent food writers and media outlets (even the NY Times) who regularly go to restaurants to poach ideas and then publish reverse engineered recipes. Whats more is they are quite open about this practice. I can point to countless examples of this. You might be tempted to say- "well that exposure helps the business". But this is not entirely true- it only winds up changing the clientele from local community people to people who travel around city to city to snap pictures. This was not a change we as Chefs and restaurant owners asked for and we were quite fine in the pre-smartphone/social media era. All of this is important because it creates a false picture of what a Chef and a restaurant is and helps to foment a very misplaced anger towards them.
On the subject of what is and isn't abuse the distinction should be quite easy- physical abuse anywhere even in public at the grocery store is assault, a criminal act and should be treated as such. That means filing charges not this type of vigilante internet justice we are seeing. Verbal and emotional abuse is an entirely subjective matter, it is real no doubt, but impossible to adjudicate in reality and is not a criminal act. That is not to say it is ok, conflating these two things is bad for everyone. The writings of Jonathan Haidt, as Chef Puglisi pointed out, are very instructive on this topic.
You raise some fascinating and pitifully misinformed claims.
Content creators and recipe developers who take inspiration from restaurants (such as myself, proudly) are a natural outcropping of human curiosity and artistic exchange.
Consider: virtually all lauded artists, scientists, chefs, etc across history have received inspiration from the people and movements around them. This is not “theft”. Do you even know what a recipe developer does?? Esp if you knew what went into making these Noma dishes, the sheer expertise, labor, and equipment required to pull them off is simply not attainable by any old content creator with a tiktok, nor is the expertise feasibly transmittable to their lay audiences who have 0 culinary background.
When I adapt a recipe from a restaurant I love for lay audiences to cook at home, I am helping home cooks and paying my respects to the restaurant. I am adding value to the conversation: home cooks would never be able to recreate the exact dish Noma made, but they can make a pared down version because a recipe developer has adapted it. It’s like when a bestselling book or movie is translated into a new language so that audiences around the world can appreciate it. It’s a beautiful thing.
You seem to hold this mistaken view that the strokes of culinary greatness are schemed up by singular geniuses alone, concocted in a vacuum apart from external influences. This is pure myth. Successes in the culinary world are a synthesis of so many creative and labor inputs from disparate groups of people united together. You think René is in the kitchen dreaming shit up? No of course not, there is no new hit dish without the farmers and purveyors who hone their craft and deliver exceptional product; there is no new hit dish without all the rest of the countless people involved along the way. So why should the one chef at the top reap all the benefits?
If you look at how some high end restaurants in international markets like NYC are opened and marketed you will see celebrity chefs names plastered all over them, sometimes who have had next to zero labor or creative input on the restaurant. Then when said restaurants sous chef develops a new hit dish, that dish is credited to the Boulud or other figurehead whose name is attached to the restaurant. so yes, we should be applauding all the people who make these things happen and stop glorifying a few big names as though they are gods
Hi, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I actually agree with pretty much all of what you said which leads me to believe that I didn't do a good job in articulating my point. For the record, I have been everything from an unpaid stage all the way to Executive Chef and also hold a BFA in which I studied a ton of Art History. So I well versed in the history of the creative process and the way art is produced as it pertains to the human mind. Lets shift focus on this subject away from Noma/Rene for a moment. What I was trying to articulate was a though about the concept of exploitation as it pertains to restaurants and point out that there is an ecosystem if food media which in my view does exploit restaurants for content. In some cases this is beneficial- in some cases I view it as purely exploitative. I have for a fact, a NY Times email I saved in which Melissa Clark (I still like and own her book btw) says plainly that "people always ask me where I get my ides for recipes from and I say 'well I go to my favorite restaurants and transform their dishes into recipes" While I take your point about the human brain and art production, this (which isn't art in the traditional sense, it's NY Times piece which is content that is part of their profit model) seems quite obviously different. There are hundred if not thousands of similar content creators on social media. I can think of one well known San Francisco based food writer who's website includes under the tab "My Recipes" such recipes like "State Birds Yuba amatriciana" or "Mister Jius Chrysanthemum salad". This to me strikes me as very plainly, stealing for one's own content. My greater point is this- their is a food media ecosystem (some, not all to be clear) which I believe exploits restaurant IP and in return promises eyeballs, attention, lists which wind up doing more harm to everybody.
well actually, recipes aren’t restaurants IP (in the United States).
Legally speaking, In the U.S., recipes themselves cannot be copyrighted because they are considered functional, factual, and not original works of authorship. Recipes are mere list of ingredients and instructions, they are raw information.
And that’s the way it should be. The idea that anyone can own a list of ingredients is preposterous. You also run into a problem if you disagree; for example if you think a recipe popularized by x fancy restaurant should be privatized,
where is the line drawn?? are you gonna privatize an everyday peanut butter jelly recipe now? Are we carving up food like land now? That would be a crime against all humanity; food is the essential language of life.
Again, going back to my point before; the chefs who put these recipes on their restaurant menus adapt and use knowledge from other sources they have interacted with. Recipes never come about in a vacuum. Just because x person is a big name restauranteur today does not mean they have sole and discrete authorship over the summation of food ideas they put their label on. This is just creating artificial and grossly commodified barriers walling off how food knowledge is permutated over generations.
If recipe developers learn how to make quality facsimiles of a restaurant recipe they love, good on them! It is a creative endeavor, just like the people making the so called original in the restaurant. This negative stigma around it is absurd.
What I will say creates unhealthy conditions in fine dining industry are awards media like Michelin (and to some extent NY Times when they release “best of” lists) who engineer these hype cycles. The idea that restaurants are rankable up to the very best is quite silly and creates the conditions for egoism and warped silos of prestige where high pressure scenarios to ascend to the top are engineered and the abusive behavior that is a byproduct of seeking prestige is swept under the rug.
Yeah I understand what you are saying. I do feel like you're being a little dismissive of my point by taking it to the extreme. Obviously a list of ingredients is not owned by anyone.
But can you concede the point at least that if I have a restaurant called "Wonderful Lizard" and I have say a citrus salad on the menu that is not entirely unique but unique in some ways, and then some content creator or NY Times writer comes along and starts publishing for profit pieces without my consent titled "Wonderful Lizards Citrus Salad"- that might be a little exploitative? I understand it's not copyrighted, etc but it seems like this practice, which is widespread, is not great especially when it's tied to "Oh don't worry it's good for exposure and hey I'll put you on this Best of San Francisco list" Doesn't that just seem like something that in other industries would not fly?
out of curiosity, where/for who did you work as an executive chef?
I don't see it that way; I see it as a work of creativity and a sign of deep respect, especially if the recipe developer is forthwith about crediting the names of their inspiration! The restauranteur in this situation may or may not like it, and I do not fault them for having their personal opinion, but it is completely fair and there should not be a wider cultural stigma around it (there isn't).
Also, I have yet to come across any concrete evidence that this kind of exchange produces negative outcomes for the restaurant. I only see positives.
I came up working in Berkeley and Oakland California. I’d prefer not to say publicly where but you can probably guess a few spots :)
Respectfully, I think you are, while unintentional I’m sure, devaluing the craft of cooking and restaurant building. Think of it using another real world example- I own a restaurant. Someone contacts me about a film they are shooting. They offer to pay a day rate to film a five minute scene in a movie. I agree. This is during a service so I am obligated to let all of my guests know and sign a consent form prior to their visit. Contrast that to the many many Instagram content creators who take photos and videos without anyone’s consent and paying no rate for their shoot while posting it to their monetized IG account. These two examples are effectively the same except the second example we are just letting slide. Why? Would it be fair for restaurants to prohibit this type of content creation or demand a fee for using their space this way? I think so. Except what would happen if they did? Most likely a lot of bad press and slander. Restaurants even the successful ones are financially precarious businesses and my point is that I don’t think enough people understand this and understand the way food media exploits this dynamic.
This was a very refreshing article to read. Thank you for sharing this, and for calmly, and intellectually debating this complicated topic in a modern world which seems to increase in nonsense by the day.
Am looking forward to visiting your restaurant one day.
Kind regards,
Louise
God Påske.
You say that you believe in people but not in the system. Yet we live in a system that leads us somewhere — not people within the system, but the system itself that directs us. Please correct me and give examples if I’m wrong.
The twentieth century showed that there are systems other than capitalism, where a person is not exploited by another person and the pursuit of capital is not the cornerstone of all activity and the main motivation taught from school onward. I will give two simple examples: the Soviet Union during Stalin’s rule, and the lives of what were perhaps some of the last truly free people in Papua New Guinea before colonists arrived there in 1976.
Both of these systems demonstrate a much greater potential and diversity of life than capitalism. For example, today many indigenous people are engaged in growing coffee and carrying sacks from place to place — essentially primitive labor. Yet just one generation ago, they lived without money or capital. They knew their land and wildlife, knew how to live with it, interact with it, and survive in the wild better than almost anyone living on the planet today.
I am not trying to portray capitalism as some kind of horrible system or preach against it. But non-capitalist economies do exist, and they can be incredibly effective (for example, the USSR under Stalin). At the same time, they do not require exploiting people, and competition between ideas, individuals, and their actions can remain at the highest level.
Now back to cooking. If you’d have sometime this year I will be happy to welcome you at Refettorio in Geneva and show in person the reality of non-capitalist economy, restaurant exist 5 years already, with the staff payed in time, with high, at least 1 star Michelin standards food, ultra seasonal, local, wine card, 80pax every night, and yes based on free labor. But we call it volunteers job. To have a wide conversation with bigger audience perhaps within the walls of Restaurant.
Hi Ruslan, thank you for your comment. I don’t claim capitalism to be perfect, but I believe that it has proven to create the most prosperity. Its distribution of wealth is by design unequal, and today we see it’s inequality at the extremes of what the system can carry, hence the unrest and dissatisfaction with it that I agree with 100%. I do, though, believe that anyone, rich and poor, would mostly benefit from us recalibrating the current system rather than tearing it down.
I know, it is very, very difficult, and there is a powerful interest in keeping it as it is. Focusing on fine-dining restaurants and kitchen culture within them to fix capitalism (as some people are doing, not you) is focusing on a tiny symptom of a much larger problem, and this is where I think the discussion mixes up a whole bag of big questions and offers only oversimplified answers.
Refettorio sounds great and I am happy to come visit one day.
Thank you for reply. If you don’t mind to share your email for further communication, we’d like to organize your visit.