From the Pantry: The Cult of Chef Ep 2

Meat + Three

In episode two of The Cult of Chef, producer Hannah Chouinard digs into the reality of workplace abuse in food service and argues that focusing on the people in positions of power comes at a cost to everyone else who makes a restaurant run. Through interviews and features from Julia Moskin, Reem Assil, and Saru Jayaraman, she finds that the media’s disinterest in workers’ issues has enabled abuse. She calls on journalists and writers to expand their ideas about what makes a compelling story, noting that toxic systems are bad for everyone, including the chefs they privilege.

The Cult of Chef is written, produced, and edited by Hannah Chouinard. It is hosted by the one and only Taylor Early.

Cover art for The Cult of Chef is designed by the incredible Michael Hampton. For more art, comedy, and silliness, you can find him here.

You can find Julia Moskin’s work for the New York Times here.

To find out more about Reem Assil, you can check out her website, here.

Read her op-ed on the toxicity of chef culture here.

Listen to Saru Jayaraman talk fair wages on ShiftWork here.

Be sure to check out the rest of the series, which you can find here.

For more information about wage theft and how the tip credit came to be, you can download the full report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics here.

Learn about connections between racism, misogyny, and the tipped sub-minimum wage, you can read studies here, here, and here.

If you’re looking for a more personal take on these connections, you can find Michelle Alexander’s op-ed on the topic here.

To read Teófilo Reyes’s statement on the impacts of Trump administration policy on food workers, you can find it here.

You can find even more info on issues impacting the lives of food service workers on ROC United’s website, here.

More information on One Fair Wage lives here.

You can read about the impacts of ending subminimum-tipped wages here and here.

Read an overview of challenges to mental health in food service here.

For more pointed critiques, you can find a piece on the late Bernard Loiseau here, and a profile on late chef Benoit Violier here.

If you’re a hospitality worker struggling with mental health, you can get in touch with no-cost counseling through Southern Smoke here.

To get in touch with a suicide and crisis hotline, you can call 988 or visit their website here.

An extra special thank you to Joey Freeman, Roan Shea, Safieh Moshir-Fatemi, Sarah Gabrielli, and Alex Groher-Jick for all their help on this arc.