An Ego explosion during the dinner rush creates controversy and divides NYC May 13, 2010
Posted by Eli in : Uncategorized , trackbackA controversy emerged this week after Ron Leiber was kicked out of Restaurant Marc Forgionein TriBeCa. Now, this wouldn’t have been such a massive deal except that Ron Leiber just happens to write for one of the most powerful news entities in the world – The NY Times. So it was with great fanfare and debate that we were virtually introduced to Chef Forgione, Mr. Leiber and the unique way in which they met.
“The event” can all be boiled down to these key points: Chef Forgione yelled at someone on his staff and people in the dining room could hear. It was bothering Mr. Leiber. He walked into the kitchen and had an exchange with the chef and then returned to his seat. The chef then came and kicked Mr. Leiber out of his restaurant.
Now Max and I have both worked in restaurants of varying degrees of quality. We have had our share of loud conversations that we didn’t care or didn’t bother to think if guests could hear, we’ve both been yelled at by superiors, owners and other workers and have even talked a fair amount of shit about guests not limited to – their orders, the general stupidity of diners lack of food knowledge and their lack of restaurant etiquette. Max is now a chef at The Breslin in NYC and works 12 hour shifts in one of the NYC’s most popular restaurants so when I first saw this post and starting see the controversy unfold over twitter, I immediately called Max on his cell to get his take. I am currently, a professional diner so I thought we’d maybe have completely different opinions on the situation.
Below are our first thoughts:
Max: I see both sides. I don’t think this Chef should be a dick to his cooks, but I also don’t think anybody should go in to the kitchen during service. Even non-kitchen staff who work at the Breslin don’t dare to come in to the kitchen during service. The kitchen is where the work gets done and a diner should respect that space. If people have a strong moral objection to people getting yelled at they probably shouldn’t go out to eat because it happens in every restaurant. Chefs yells at their staff. Although it is very unprofessional to yell so loudly that the customers can hear, since they’re there to have a nice meal and obviously somebody yelling takes away from that experience to say the least. But that doesn’t mean that Chefs don’t yell and that there isn’t a really good reason why they are yelling.
Eli: At first I thought Mr. Leiber was a serious badass and should be commended for telling the chef he was ruining all the diners experience with the loud yelling. Mr. Leiber was eating dinner out (for which he pays handsomely in NYC) and expects a certain level of service and quality. He most likely assumes that his experience won’t contain (or at least shouldn’t have) someone loudly being yelled at within earshot, so he does something about it by letting his own voice be heard. Up to this point, I am totally cool with Mr. Leiber standing up for what he believes in. You want to rep the little guy? Awesome. Go for it. Where he loses me is when he walks in the kitchen. That is just absolutely bonkers and I wonder at what point in his mind he thought “yep. I’m just gonna go back into the kitchen because this seems like the right way to handle this situation.” I mean, the wait staff takes your food when you send it back due to unhappiness, so they’d most likely be the proper conduit for voicing your concern about this issue as well. So at first I was totally on Mr. Leiber’s side. He wanted to remedy his own situation and make himself (and fellow diners) more comfortable. But I totally switched over to the chef’s side when Mr. Lieber went into the kitchen. The kitchen is the chef’s office. In there, he can treat his employees (within the law) as poorly or as wonderfully as he sees fit. If someone messes something up, the restaurant, chef and its employees can be severely damaged. So yelling may be at times, a necessary tool of the trade. Mr. Leiber overstepped his bounds and told a stranger how to do his job. This wasn’t a mom hitting a kid at a supermarket where you are like, holy shit I gotta say something. This was a full grown adult (Mr. Leiber) out of his element telling the chef ( fully immersed in his element), how to handle his own business. I think Mr. Leiber owes the chef a public apology for dragging his name through the mud via the NYtimes.
To close: I’m actually less interested in the interaction between Mr. Leiber and the chef than the ”fall-out” or controversy surrounding the event. I mean, without the NYT in the equation this happens the exact same way and maybe 20-50 people in Mr. Leiber’s circle of friends hear about it. It becomes a great story to tell the next time Mr. Leiber is out to dinner with friends and that’s about it.
The truly unique aspect of this story is that with the instant connection the web gives us along with the power of the NYT forum, this has becoming a legit newstory in the food community. Grubstreet and EATER both picked it up and as of the writing of this post there were 439 reader comments on Mr. Leiber’s original NYT article. That’s probably more than on any of the oil spill articles that have been dominating the news in the past few days.
The amazing thing is the amazing split of people taking each side. People are enraged that Mr. Leiber would take matters into his own hands. Others are livid that he was kicked out of the restaurant by the Chef. People have found certain aspects of the story that they find unbearable, annoying, terrible and despicable. It’s actually quite awesome that one event can elicit such a dizzying variety of emotions.
So max had to go and he closed the phone call with this: Obviously all this pr is good for this chef and his restaurant in the long run, I’m sure.I mean, I had never heard of this place until today. So maybe some people go into to check out the food and others go in to check out the ”psycho” chef. Let’s hope people don’t go in with the mindset of “getting tossed.” So I guess the old adage still rings true, all press is good press.
And all along you thought a person’s palate was the only way a restaurant could divide a room.
You can read Mr. Leiber’s article here: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/why-i-got-kicked-out-of-a-restaurant-on-saturday-night/
Chef Forgione responds via Grubstreet here:http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/05/marc_forgione_flips_out.html
LA blogger Food Woolf’s (a 15 year restaurant veteran) take on the situation here: foodwoolf.com/2010/05/nyt-writer-in-forgione-kitchen.html
Comments»
Thanks for the shout out link! You’re right, it’s great to see how much talk this incident has created. As someone that takes service VERY seriously, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the discourse.