The New York Times reporter Julia Moskin has what seems to be a pretty good story. The Times online headline definitely doesn’t undersell it: “Punching, Slamming, Screaming: A Chef’s Past Abuse Haunts Noma, the World’s Top-Rated Restaurant.” [some emphasis, links added]
Nor does the subheadline: “Dozens of former employees say René Redzepi inflicted physical and psychological violence on the staff for years.”
Yet leave it to the New York Times to take an apparently solid story and undercut it by inserting an unnecessary left-wing political tilt.
For context on Los Angeles, where the Copenhagen-based Redzepi, the subject of the Times’ article, is opening a $1,500-a-meal, 16-week pop-up, the Times says:
“Some local chefs have posted that they find it offensive that Noma is swooping in and drawing deep-pocketed diners, when Los Angeles restaurants are facing existential threats from climate change, inflation and immigration enforcement.”
The two hyperlinks in the sentence are to two Times articles about challenges facing the L.A. restaurant industry.
Neither one of them mentions “climate change.”
One of the articles names several factors: “the pandemic,” “the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020,” “the 2023 Hollywood strikes,” “wildfires”, and a curfew imposed by city officials to prevent rioting in protests against immigration enforcement.
The other article reports that “Covid shutdowns made diners more comfortable with food delivery and appreciative of the virtues of home cooking.”
It also mentions “marchers protesting the immigration raids” and “the writers’ strike and the fires, and rising rents.”
If the Times were looking on a politically open-minded basis for factors threatening the Los Angeles restaurant industry, it might have mentioned what restaurant operators have described as the region’s “crime and homeless crisis.”
It might have mentioned a series of increases to the minimum wage that took the statewide rate for fast-food restaurant workers to $20 an hour in 2024 and has moved the minimum wage up in the city of Los Angeles to $18.42 an hour in July 2026 from $16.04 an hour in 2022.
It might have mentioned Governor Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership or the threat of a confiscatory wealth tax.
The Times could claim that it’s not offering its own analysis, just passing along what “some local chefs have posted.”
But it doesn’t quote or link to any examples, and it doesn’t explain why harebrained social media posts should be passed along to its readers, “some people are saying” or “I am hearing” style.
After all, plenty of cities—Las Vegas, Miami, Tel Aviv, Dubai—have flourishing restaurant scenes with warm temperatures and no less exposure to climate change than Los Angeles or anywhere else on the planet.
As crafted, the line about climate change and immigration enforcement sounds like a Democratic Party campaign attack ad against the Trump administration, not something that belongs in a news article about a chef’s labor practices.
I asked Moskin for an on-the-record response or specific examples that “some local chefs have posted.” I did not hear back by the deadline.
Top: NYTimes blames ‘climate change’ for L.A. restaurant woes, not the crime, homelessness, minimum wage increases, or Dem policies.
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