Why Mike Isabella may escape the fate of other celebrity chefs accused of sexual harassment
This story has been updated.
Chef and restaurateur Mario Batali, the celebrity sybarite in orange Crocs, acknowledged his bad behavior and removed himself from daily operations shortly after he was accused of sexual harassment in and out of his restaurants. John Besh, the retired Marine who became the poster boy for modern New Orleans cooking, did much the same when also confronted with allegations of sexual harassment.
Mike Isabella did nothing of the sort when a former manager sued the celebrity chef and his partners, alleging “extraordinary” sexual harassment at their restaurants. Instead, Isabella denied the allegations. “Simply put, the allegations of an unwelcoming or hostile work atmosphere are false,” Isabella said in a statement to the first of two lawsuits filed by Chloe Caras, former director of operations for Isabella Eatery inside the Tysons Galleria mall.
[Mike Isabella settles federal lawsuit with employee who alleged sexual harassment]
Isabella ultimately settled the federal lawsuit that Caras filed in April. Settlement details are confidential, aside from promises to improve sexual harassment polices and training at Mike Isabella Concepts. The burden of proof was on Caras and her lawyers, and in denying the allegations all along the way, Isabella may have avoided the same fate that befell Batali and Besh, say veterans of the hospitality industry who have been watching the case. The denials, of course, may reflect a basic truth: that Isabella and his partners are innocent of the charges. Or they may have been strategic. The denials potentially calmed investors, employees or managers who may have been looking to jump ship.
Hilda Staples, an investor and partner in the Graffiato locations in Washington and Richmond, emphasized that she doesn’t want to be associated with any of the decisions that MIC has been making recently. Staples said that Isabella and his company have effectively sidelined her in the past year or so.
“He wasn’t going to apologize, and he wasn’t going to admit it,” she said. “I think that was his strategy, and I think that it has worked. . . . He got some bad press. But I think that in a year, no one is going to be talking about this. Maybe not even in a year.” Staples said this with a tone of resignation, not triumph.
[Mike Isabella’s restaurants used nondisclosure agreements to silence sexual harassment accounts, lawsuit alleges]
Make no mistake: Isabella has been hurt professionally since the lawsuits were filed. The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington disqualified Isabella’s restaurants from its annual award ceremony, the Rammys. (Chef Michael Rafidi, who resigned from Requin at the Wharf and Arroz after the suit was filed, remains eligible in the category of rising culinary star of the year.) Isabella’s longtime publicist, Jennifer Resick Williams, ended her professional relationship with him. The Washington Nationals cut all ties with him. The food and dining website Eater removed Isabella’s restaurants from its lists and maps. And The Washington Post’s Tom Sietsema decided not to include Isabella’s restaurant Requin in his Spring Dining Guide after Rafidi left.
Requin in the Mosaic District has also closed, as reported by the Washingtonian, but it’s not clear if the closure was related to the sexual harassment allegations. One person connected to Tysons Galleria who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that sales at Isabella Eatery have slipped since the multi-concept dining hall debuted in December, but he described that as normal for any new establishment.
But unlike Besh and Batali, Isabella remains atop the org chart at MIC, along with partners Johannes Allender, the chief financial officer, and Taha Ismail, the beverage director, who were also named in the lawsuits. Compare that with Besh and Batali, who have both stepped back from the daily operations of their restaurants, though they both retain ownership in their businesses. (In April, the New York Times reported that Joe Bastianich is negotiating a buyout of Batali from Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group.)
That Isabella and his partners still control a $30 million hospitality empire may be the result of the company’s structure as much as their willingness to fight the charges, sources said.
[Lawsuit accuses celebrity chef Mike Isabella of ‘extraordinary’ sexual harassment]
Staples said that in the case of Graffiato, Isabella’s first restaurant in Chinatown, investor shares are divided into A and B classes: Those with Class A shares control business operations; those with Class B shares are investors with no say in running the business. Only Staples, Isabella and one silent partner have Class A shares in Graffiato in Chinatown, although Staples said she no longer has any say in day-to-day operations.
The funding for all of Isabella’s restaurants after Graffiato was structured to have Isabella as the only Class A member, according to a report by Rebecca Cooper in the Washington Business Journal (although sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity told The Post that brothers George and Nicholas Pagonis are probable Class A members in the Kapnos restaurants). What’s more, investors may have put as little as $17,000 into an Isabella restaurant, Staples said.
“They don’t follow this stuff that closely,” Staples said about investors and the sexual harassment allegations against Isabella. “They put in a little bit of money as an investor, and then they go about their own lives.”
But Mike Isabella Concepts also doesn’t have a board of directors, which could potentially hold the chef and his partners accountable for their alleged behaviors. “If he doesn’t have a board of directors,” said Denise M. Clark, a Washington lawyer who specializes in employment and employee-benefits law, “he doesn’t have anybody to answer to.”
If the allegations are true, investors could potentially hold Isabella accountable, despite their lack of say in daily operations, sources said. It would probably depend on a few things: investors’ ability to mobilize as a group; their willingness to confront a popular and powerful chef; and whether they had an employment agreement with Isabella that specifically included a morality clause, which would allow investors to fire the chef over bad behaviors inside or out of his restaurants.
Investors in the Graffiato restaurants have an employment agreement with Isabella, but it doesn’t include a morality clause, Staples said. No one contacted for this report knew whether investors required employment agreements with other Isabella restaurants. One reason investors may not have demanded such an agreement is that Mike Isabella Concepts allegedly kept investors separate and apart, said one former investor who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is pursuing legal action against Isabella and his partners. Investors, in other words, couldn’t collectively act because, by and large, they didn’t know one another.
Plus, the former investor said, many investors have contributed small amounts, perhaps $25,000 or less. They don’t want to get tangled up in a sexual harassment case over what, to them, is chump change. Nor do they want to fight with Isabella, the face of MIC and arguably the second most recognizable chef in the Washington area after José Andrés.
[José Andrés named (again) to Time magazine’s list of most influential people in the world]
“No one had any interest in confronting Mike about any of this,” said the former investor. “Isn’t that the secret to all this?”
Besides, said Staples, the Graffiato partner, these investors were enticed into the MIC fold by their attraction to Isabella, the chef who quickly became a major Washington restaurateur. They have little interest in firing and replacing him.
“Who would replace him? All the investors invested in Mike Isabella,” Staples said. “When it’s a chef-driven concept, you’re putting your money in a chef.”
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