Noma Chef René Redzepi Steps Down Amid Abuse Allegations, Sponsor Exodus

René Redzepi built Noma into the most decorated restaurant in the world, a three-Michelin-star institution ranked first on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list five times. He stepped away from it last week under the weight of abuse allegations spanning nearly a decade of his kitchen's history.

Redzepi announced on Instagram that he was stepping down from day-to-day operations at the Copenhagen restaurant he co-founded in 2003, and simultaneously resigned from the board of MAD, the nonprofit he established in 2011 to support people entering the restaurant industry. "After more than two decades of building and leading this restaurant, I've decided to step away and allow our extraordinary leaders to now guide the restaurant into its next chapter," he wrote. "An apology is not enough; I take responsibility for my own actions."

The announcement came as Noma's Los Angeles residency, a 16-week pop-up at the Paramour Estate in Silver Lake priced at $1,500 per person, was just getting underway. Reservations had reportedly sold out in under three minutes. Corporate sponsors pulled out anyway, after abuse claims and protests organized outside the venue coincided with the opening.

Those protests were led by Jason Ignacio White, a former head of Noma's fermentation lab who had been collecting anonymous testimonies on Instagram for roughly a month before Redzepi's announcement. Demonstrators from the wage-advocacy group One Fair Wage joined White outside the Paramour Estate. "To be honest with you, I think the repercussions of staying silent are worse than me speaking up and standing with my peers against violence," White said.

The testimonies White gathered were blunt. One unnamed person wrote, "I got punched in the face during service there." A New York Times investigation, published days before the Los Angeles pop-up opened, drew on accounts from 35 former Noma staff and described "psychological abuse, including intimidation, body shaming and public ridicule," as well as physical acts including stabbing, punching, kicking, and employment retaliation, with incidents alleged between 2009 and 2017.

None of it was entirely new. Redzepi had long faced criticism over staff treatment, including the restaurant's yearslong practice of using unpaid interns. Many of the allegations in the Times piece had appeared in previously published accounts.

Redzepi insisted in his statement that the restaurant would continue without missing a step. "For anyone wondering what this means for the restaurant, let me say it clearly: the Noma team today is the strongest and most inspiring it has ever been," he wrote, adding that the Los Angeles team would carry on without him. What the statement did not address is how the industry's most celebrated kitchen allowed those conditions to persist for as long as the allegations suggest it did.