A report from the restaurant trade — Fine dining comes with a human cost

Last month when Noma, the restaurant said to be the world’s best, announced it would close in 2024, it got a lot of people’s attention.

Not because they intended to eat there; it’s hard to get a reservation, even if you can afford to go to Denmark and pay more than $500 for the meal. Noma’s chef, René Redzepi told the New York Times that Noma would close because the restaurant was too hard to sustain, and asked too much of the people who worked there, a truth that resonated with people who do restaurant work everywhere, including Shelter Island and the North and South forks.

Taylor Knapp owns the Peconic Escargot snail farm in Cutchogue and creates surprising and refined menus using locally-sourced meat and produce served at the Lin House in Greenport with the help of his wife, Katelyn. Their two-person operation offers fine-dining, but it’s a far cry from Knapp’s days in the kitchens of wd~50 in New York, Azurmendi in Spain and Noma.

“I did a stage [an unpaid internship] at Noma for three months in 2010,” he said. “It can be a very toxic environment. I witnessed Rene himself. His angry outbursts were shocking, to say the least. He had one of his cooks by the throat, pinned up against the wall.” 

Mr. Knapp says there isn’t a restaurant on the East End where the staff is under the kind of pressure of expectations and performance as at Noma, but said, “There are plenty of other restaurants that are not at that level that have chefs who can be pretty terrible.” 

Fortunately, the workforce on the East End is small enough that word gets around if somebody’s kitchen is a toxic workplace. “Out here, you have to treat workers well,” Mr. Knapp said. “You don’t have a desk-full of resumes like they do in New York, and word gets around about who is treating their people well and who isn’t.”

Jason Casey works as a private chef on Shelter Island and Florida and has worked at Café Centro in New York and the Havana Restaurant in Bar Harbor, where he once cooked for the Obamas.

He agrees that there is little tolerance for abusive behavior in restaurant kitchens, even during the busy summer season. “There are not enough employees and they can go to another restaurant where they’re appreciated and maybe even make more,” Mr. Casey said.

What the East End hospitality industry does have is some of the same problems as the rest of the country, such as a lack of housing that restaurant employees can afford, lack of paid time off and inadequate pay, especially for those at the bottom of the kitchen hierarchy, such as prep chefs and dish-washers.

“The worst conditions fall on the lowest people; the longest hours and the worst pay and the least time off,” Mr. Knapp said. “The whole structure is pretty messed up.”

Affordable housing for restaurant employees is a factor that, while not unique to the North and South forks and Shelter Island, has become so dire that many restaurants, especially on Shelter Island and the South Fork, feel they must provide housing or housing stipends for employees in order to stay viable.

Ali Katz and Fritz Beckmann own Ali Katz Kitchen in Mattituck. For years they worked in high-pressure kitchens in New York; Alison worked in pastry production at the New York caterer, Abigail Kirsch, and Fritz at Morimoto. They have their own business cooking pastry, take-out and prepared foods, and as private chefs. Ms. Katz says they try to avoid the staffing problems that plague East End restaurants by depending on each other.

“The minimum wage should go up so that restaurants that hire staff are forced to pay them appropriately, but it’s already almost impossible to make money running a high-end restaurant on the East End,” she said. “That’s why we’ve kept our operation small enough that we can do it without staff.”

Gayle Scarberry was executive chef of Red Maple, the restaurant at the Chequit on Shelter Island before the grand old hotel was bought and restored by the Soloviev Group. She’s now back at the Chequit cooking at The Tavern. She said the new owners made housing available for some of the staff. “Unless you have a huge amount of financing,” Ms. Scarberry said, “I don’t think that it’s a sustainable thing out here, without housing for your staff.”

Ms. Scarberry has seen the stress of restaurant life take its toll on employees’ health, with drug use a recurring problem in some Shelter Island restaurant kitchens, especially in the summer. “There’s always going to be some level of substance abuse in kitchens. You’re constantly pushing yourself. I see a lot of drinking, and cocaine. You get tired of burning the candle at both ends. You’ve got to turn that table, get those tips, earn as much as you can to prepare for winter.” 

The adrenaline-charged rush of a busy dinner service, the late nights, and the long hours combine to make restaurant work a physical and mental challenge even for those who love it.

“The restaurant industry will burn you out,” said Mr. Knapp, explaining why he stepped away from it, “With PawPaw and the snail farm, I found a way to do what I love to do without it sucking my life away.”

Paul Eschbach was the executive chef for Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants in China and Hong Kong before he became executive chef for Jean-Georges at Topping Rose in Bridgehampton. He described the South and North forks, (he lives in Peconic) as an entirely different environment for fine-dining, particularly the combination of a lack of skilled labor, and high customer expectations, even though expectations were tempered somewhat during the pandemic.

“People want the same experience they have in New York except out here,” Mr. Eschbach said. “That window of tolerance is starting to close. The grace period is over.”

As for whether fine-dining on the East End is sustainable, “It depends on the tolerance of pain,” he quipped. “People love restaurants, and chefs and restaurateurs and people who work in restaurants love working in them, and it’s creating that balance to where can you meet guest expectations and be profitable.”