The departure of the new pop-up of the iconic LA restaurant NOMA, a dinner series for 1.$500 per person planned to launch on March 11, Danish chef and “mastermind” of the venture, Rede Regepi, has announced after complaints resurfaced about his attitude toward employees ranging from hitting and humiliating behavior to threats of deportation.

In a video he posted on his Instagram profile, he even appeared to apologise to the restaurant staff. “I don’t think this represents our team,” the chef says in the video while the montage focuses on his colleagues. “To make sure you feel 100% safe, I’m going to leave,” Reggie adds.

As he says in the video’s caption, “The last few weeks have brought our restaurant, our industry and the way I’ve run it in the past into the spotlight. I have strived to be better and Noma has made great strides to transform its culture over the years. I recognize that these changes do not fix the past. An apology is not enough. I take responsibility for my actions. After more than two decades of creating and leading this restaurant, I have decided to step down and let the outstanding leaders lead the restaurant into the next chapter of its history. I also stepped down from the board of directors of MAD, the nonprofit I founded in 2011. For those wondering what this means for the restaurant, I’ll put it bluntly: the Noma team is now the strongest and most inspiring it has ever been. We have been in operation for 23 years and I am extremely proud of our people, our creativity and the direction Noma is taking. This team will continue together in Los Angeles, which will be an important time to showcase the result of their work and welcome guests to something truly special. Noma’s mission for the future is to continue exploring ideas, discovering new flavors and imagining what food might become a few decades from now. Noma has always been bigger than any one person. And this next step honors that belief.

The complaints

Former employees and interns detailed allegations of physical and verbal abuse by Rezjepi in an article published in the New York Times. The tangle began to unravel with a post last month by former NOMA employee Jason Ignazio White, followed by an extensive investigation by the well-known American medium.

The New York Times article focused on testimonies from 35 former employees, including instances of “psychological abuse, such as intimidation, physical humiliation and public ridicule,” as well as stabbings, punches, kicks and retaliation at work that occurred between 2009 and 2017. Many of the allegations were known from previous publications.

The allegations against NOMA: Hits in the cold and humiliation

One night in February 2014, in the middle of a busy dinner at Copenhagen’s famed Noma restaurant, founder and chef Rene Regepi ordered all kitchen staff to follow him out into the cold. He pushed a young sous chef in front of him who had put music techno inside the kitchen. A genre the restaurant’s founder did not like. At the same time, away from the dining room were the unpaid interns working 16 hours a day, performing tasks like gathering herbs and cleaning pine cones to decorate Reggie’s famed Scandinavian dishes.

The owner of NOMA taunted the chef over and over again, while about 40 cooks, in short sleeves and aprons, formed the usual circle around the two men. It was not the first time they had been forced to participate in a public humiliation, according to two chefs who were present. Reggie escalated his attack, punching his employee in the ribs and shouting that no one would come back inside until the chef said, loud enough for everyone to hear, that “he liked to give oral sex to DJs.” His colleagues stood in silence until he, out of breath, complied. Then they returned to the kitchen and resumed their work.

Several years after several incidents of abuse, his former employees claim he has never really been held accountable. Since 2004, Regepi has rewritten the rules of fine dining, promoting sustainable eating and creating jewel-like dishes that have earned Noma three Michelin stars and put it at the top of the list of the world’s 50 best restaurants five times. For effectively transforming the country into a gastronomic destination, Reggie was knighted by the Queen of Denmark. In 2013, Anthony Bourdain called him “without a doubt, the most influential, challenging and influential chef in the world.”

Jason Ignacio White, the former head of NOMA’s fermentation lab, made several Instagram posts last month saying he had witnessed physical and psychological abuse during his three years working at the restaurant. He posted complaints sent to him by several other former employees and it all quickly snowballed.

He even threatened employees with the deportation of their families

According to 35 former NOMA employees, between 2009 and 2017, Reggie beat employees in the face, punched them with cookware and pushed them hard against walls. They described the lasting trauma caused by multiple psychological abuse, including intimidation, physical humiliation and public ridicule. Dane, they also said, threatened them that he would use his influence to blacklist them from restaurants around the world, deport their families or fire their wives from their jobs at other businesses.

Restaurant kitchens have long been tough workplaces, as reflected in popular entertainment shows like “The Bear” and “The Menu,” and many chefs have admitted to bullying workers. However, former NOMA employees said Reggie has not acknowledged the extent of the violence they say he inflicted on them over the years. This, according to several, is why they are now speaking out. Reggie’s pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles and the high prices he charges, they say, remind them that his empire was built on their work and pain.

Ben, a chef in Australia who worked at the restaurant in 2012, said punishing all employees for one person’s mistake was common practice. “Just walking along the line and hitting us in the chest,” shouting profanities in their faces, said the chef, who asked that his last name not be used because he feared retaliation. “Even the interns who were upstairs picking flowers.”

When the Danish chef wanted to punish them, but there were customers in the dining room, several employees said they would duck under the counters in the open kitchen and hit them in the legs with a utensil, such as a barbecue fork.

Punched employee who left a tweezer mark on a flower petal

Another former cook said Reggie had physically assaulted him more times than he could remember during his tenure. He recalled that one night in 2011 the Dane noticed that he had left a small tweezer mark on a flower petal as he was putting it on a plate. Regepi said he grabbed the straps of his apron and punched him hard against the wall, and then punched him twice in the stomach. About 30 former employees said it was common for both Reggie and the senior cooks who ran the kitchen to be beaten.

Many dishes at Noma include 20 or more ingredients, and the signature style includes complex, fragile elements such as insects made from fruit and tiny plums wrapped in seaweed. Work was divided according to a hierarchy starting with the trainees, who reported to the chefs de partie, who reported to the sous-chefs who ran the kitchen during the service and often remained in their positions for years. In order to prepare sufficient quantity for each dinner, many of the cooks at each level started early in the morning and worked until the kitchen was cleaned out at dawn.

He hit her with so much force that he cut her hip on a metal counter

A chef in London, who had worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe, saved up for a year and sold her car so she could work at Noma in 2013. She said she couldn’t stop working to eat and lost 18kg during her first year. One night, she said, Regepi saw her using her phone, which was strictly forbidden during work hours. Without saying a word, she said, he hit her so hard in the ribs that she fell onto a metal bench and cut her hip on its sharp corner.

She was on the floor, bleeding and crying, she remembered, but no one said a word as she ran off running towards the dressing room. When a sous-chef finally approached her, he only asked her if she was okay to return to work. She returned to her seat and finished her shift.

Even after 2017, many former employees say senior chefs maintained a culture of abuse in the kitchen, with Reggie’s tacit approval. “Rene raised a generation of bullies, and they bullied us,” said a Turkish chef who worked as an intern at Noma in 2018.

Bede Svenzen, who was assigned to support the interns, was the only employee in the human resources department and coincidentally was also Reggie’s mother-in-law. Many former employees said she and other senior managers – including the Danish chef’s wife, Nadine, and longtime CEO Peter Kreiner – were told about the violence in the kitchen but did nothing to stop it.

Pop-up restaurant with $1,500 menu sold out in… a minute

The investigative report was published just days before Noma launched a 16-week pop-up in Silver Lake, with tickets costing $1,500 per person. Seats sold out almost immediately, with Reggie posting on Instagram in January that they “sold out in 60 seconds.”

A pop-up shop for Noma products, including coffee and hot sauce is also planned in Los Angeles. Noma has also held two collaborative pop-ups, first at Courage Bagels and then at Holbox, with the goal of making its cooking more accessible to Los Angeles residents.