A discrimination complaint was filed this year against the Besh Restaurant Group with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
By Brett Anderson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Madie Robison said she was done with the uninvited touching from a male colleague, the comments about her physical appearance and the repeated requests by her famous boss to discuss his sex life.
That boss was celebrity chef John Besh, co-owner of Besh Restaurant Group, where Robison was hired as a graphic designer after graduating from Loyola University at 22. She resigned in February after just over two years on the job, alternately confused, angered and traumatized by a corporate culture where sexual harassment flourished – at least in her telling, though not in her telling alone.
During an eight-month investigation, 25 current and former Besh Group employees told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that they were victims of sexual harassment while working at BRG or at a number of its restaurants.
Nine women agreed to have their names published in this story, including Robison and two female colleagues who left BRG the same week she did: Vy Linh Ky, who held jobs in BRG restaurants as well as its corporate office beginning in 2012; and Lindsey Reynolds, the company's social media manager for six months.
Taken together, they and other women described a company where several male co-workers and bosses touched female employees without consent, made suggestive comments about their appearance and – in a few cases – tried to leverage positions of authority for sex. Several women said female colleagues, including in some cases their immediate managers, warned them to beware of "handsy" male supervisors – at times on day one on the job. Those who complained of sexual harassment were berated, ostracized or ignored, the women said.
In addition, two separate complaints alleging sexual discrimination and retaliation have been filed since December with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by Reynolds and by another former employee. Reynolds' filing said "vulgar and offensive comments, aggressive un-welcomed touching and sexual advances were condoned and sometimes even encouraged by managers and supervisors" at the Besh Group.
In the other EEOC complaint, a former employee said Besh "continued to attempt to coerce (her) to submit to his sexual overtures" during a months-long sexual relationship when she worked for him, and that some BRG employees engaged in "retaliation" when she sought to end the relationship.
In one instance mentioned in the woman's complaint, she alleged that during a summer 2015 work trip to Los Angeles, Besh "insisted (she) drink heavily" at a work tasting, and that afterwards Besh came to the woman's hotel room and "immediately started to kiss and fondle" her. The complaint said she "was barely conscious, and easily overwhelmed by JBesh (sic), who engaged in oral sex and fell asleep" next to her. NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune is not naming the woman, who declined a request for an interview.
Chef John Besh, co-owner of the Besh Restaurant Group. (Scott Threlkeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune archive)
During an Oct. 16 interview, Besh and BRG's general counsel, Raymond Landry, said EEOC rules prevented them from commenting on the woman's complaint. But in a written statement three days later addressing her assertions, Besh said it was "a consensual relationship with one member of my team."
"I have been seeking to rebuild my marriage and come to terms with my reckless actions," Besh's statement said. "I also regret any harm this may have caused to my second family at the restaurant group, and sincerely apologize to anyone past and present who has worked for me who found my behavior as unacceptable as I do.
"I alone am entirely responsible for my moral failings. This is not the way the head of a company like ours should have acted, let alone a husband and father," Besh said in his statement. (Read John Besh's full statement.)
In a separate statement on behalf of BRG, Landry said, "We have learned recently that a number of women in our company feel that we have not had a clear mechanism in place to allow them to voice concerns about receiving the respect they deserve on the job. I want to assure all of our employees that if even a single person feels this way, it is one person too many and that ends now." (Read BRG's full statement.)
A Besh Group spokesman said in the company's 12 years of existence not one of thousands of current or former employees has ever filed an internal complaint alleging sexual harassment. Besh and his business partner, Octavio Mantilla, said during the Oct. 16 interview that in the past BRG had lacked a human resources department to process such claims. The company has one now – its first ever director of human resources took the job Oct. 11, the spokesman said.
The women's description of BRG as a company that fostered a culture of harassment doesn't match their core values, Besh and Mantilla said in the interview.
"I've tried to build a culture based on valuing people," Besh said. "I would not characterize the values of this company in the way you just described," referring to the allegations of institutionalized harassment.
Referring to the 25 women who said they were personally harassed, Mantilla said that number represents a small portion of the thousands of people employed by BRG over the years who never pressed any grievances. Last year, Mantilla pointed out, BRG hired the consulting firm Postlethwaite & Netterville to evaluate the company's "structure, to look at everything, to see what we need to do to continue to improve."
"In their report," Mantilla said, "there was never any inkling of that kind of culture that you describe. That makes me feel comfortable to say I believe our values are otherwise."
Women say 'bro-culture' dominates Besh's company
Besh, 49, is one of the most recognizable and widely lauded New Orleans chefs of the past 20 years. A former Marine combat veteran who grew up in Slidell, he's an award-winning food world celebrity with a leading man's mien. His career began in the 1990s and took off with the opening of Restaurant August, in 2001 – the only still-open New Orleans restaurant to have been awarded five beans, The Times-Picayune's highest critical rating, since 2000.
Besh willed himself into a position of consequence in New Orleans' arduous rebuilding process after Katrina, expanding his company and becoming one of the faces of the city's tourism campaigns. His company operates 12 restaurants as well as a bar and an event space in New Orleans, employing a combined 1,200 people. The company operates three businesses outside New Orleans, with another restaurant under construction in Houston.
The women who spoke with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune claimed the Besh Group's reputation as a standard-setting hospitality company obscures behavior hidden from public view.
"After being immersed in the culture of the company, I realize my morals and values do not align with the daily practices," Robison wrote in her resignation email, sent to Besh and Mantilla, among others.
In multiple interviews, Robison described a tableau of dysfunction she claimed to have encountered at BRG. She said that included persistent, sexualized comments from peers and supervisors – including during workdays scheduled around a supervisor's pool and that Robison said she felt obligated to attend.
"All pool days that I participated in involved drinking in our swimsuits and the male chefs/Octavio coming to visit us at the pool," Robison wrote in notes she made listing what she called harassment she experienced or witnessed at BRG.
The second time she was working around the pool, Robison said a male chef began "talking about getting some naked massage. That was when I was like, ew, this is a little weird."
On another occasion, Robison said in an interview, Mantilla introduced her to a group of men in business suits as "our design goddess" as she stood in her swimsuit.
"I don't remember that," Mantilla said, referring to the "goddess" statement.
Octavio Mantilla, co-owner of the Besh Restaurant Group. (Dinah Rogers)
Mantilla described the pool days as constructive work sessions "with an agenda" created by another BRG executive. He said he only recalled attending once. "I never went in the pool," he said. "And I immediately left."
Robison claimed she also endured the uninvited touching of Mantilla for almost the entirety of her two years at the Besh Group.
"First it was your leg and then it was your lower back," Robison said of Mantilla's touching. "In my mind, it always got a little worse."
Another female BRG employee said on one occasion she witnessed Mantilla excessively touching Robison. When asked why she never explicitly told Mantilla to stop touching her, Robison said, "I didn't want to embarrass him. He was my boss."
Mantilla said he doesn't remember touching Robison.
"I don't remember touching her at all, not on intention or anything," he said.
Reynolds' grievances in the complaint she filed in June with the EEOC, the government agency responsible for enforcing federal workplace discrimination laws, accused the company of discrimination. Her complaint said she and other women at the company were "sexually harassed, and verbally assaulted almost every day."
She resigned in February because the "rampant sexual misbehavior and harassment by the owners and managers of BRG had become unbearable," her complaint said. "There was no human resources person available, only other supervisors who were either afraid of losing their jobs or saw no benefit in challenging the good old boys club."
In an interview, Reynolds said, "If they had a decent HR person, I would have gone to them."
The allegations involving Besh and BRG come as sexism in the workplace animates the national conversation like it hasn't for decades, fueled by gender discrimination controversies at Fox News, Uber and more recently involving movie producer Harvey Weinstein, among others.
Fractious gender dynamics have also roiled the restaurant industry, which remains persistently male-dominated, particularly in kitchens, despite notable gains by women in the past decade. A 2016 report by Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a restaurant workers advocacy group, said 37 percent of sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC come from the restaurant industry. The phrase "bro culture" came up repeatedly in interviews with a number of current and former BRG employees.
"I call them 'kitchen bros,'" said a woman chef who has worked in several BRG kitchens, and who asked her name not be used for what she said was fear of appearing "weak" in the eyes of male colleagues. "They think it's still the '90s, and you're fighting an uphill battle if you're not one of them."
A number of women interviewed said they either knew or were led to understand that BRG had no human resources department. One woman said when she contacted a manager she was told, "'You don't want to be a whistleblower, do you?'"
Several women alleged Besh and Mantilla's own behavior had the effect of normalizing harassment in the workplace – and stifling those who might object to it.
"They had hit on basically every woman in the office who was young and pretty," Reynolds said, referring to Mantilla and Besh. "It was like 'Mad Men.'"
Asked about the assertion that he hit on female employees, Mantilla in the interview suggested that his public reputation was sufficient to discredit the claim. "I think people know me pretty well," he said.
Besh and Mantilla denied the accusations Reynolds made in her interview and resignation email, emphasizing that she never complained prior to resigning. They said Mantilla responded to her email, which both referred to as a "manifesto," expressing concern and requesting a meeting to obtain more details.
"I never received a reply," said Mantilla.
Besh repeatedly cited a number of management level women at BRG as evidence contradicting the culture described by the women alleging sexual harassment. Referring to female managers still working at the company, Besh said: "These are talented women who wouldn't stand for that crap," meaning sexual harassment.
Asked where Reynolds should have taken her complaint if Besh Group lacked a human resources department, Besh said she should have brought her complaints to one of the women managers.
"I don't know how any of these things, because they're so drastic, would not get even a mention to any one of these ladies who are running the company," Besh said in the Oct. 16 interview. "To me it's unfathomable."
Besh's 'unwelcome sexual relationship' alleged in EEOC complaint
Ky said she was never personally harassed by anyone at BRG, but she was disturbed by the way some men treated women at the company. Ky, Robison and Reynolds all said that Besh's relationship with the employee, detailed in the woman's EEOC complaint, influenced their decisions to quit the company.
The woman filed her EEOC complaint against BRG in December, shortly after she severed ties with the company. In an attachment to her EEOC intake questionnaire, she described a "long-term unwelcome sexual relationship" with Besh that began when she was 24, in the summer of 2015. In the EEOC complaint, the woman alleged Besh worked to "coerce" her "to submit to his sexual overtures" on work-related trips.
The complaint said during the same 2015 California trip in which the woman alleged Besh came to her hotel room and had sex with her, he also "insisted on staying in her room at a hotel in Beverly Hills" one night, and that she "stay with him at his hotel in Culver City" the next two nights.
The woman's complaint said in a trip to Austin, in September 2015, Besh came to her room and "continued to attempt to coerce (her) to submit to his sexual overtures." In a trip to New York in October 2015, "after repeated pressure from JBesh to 'say you love me,' JBesh brought (her) back to his hotel and insisted she stay with him during the trip," the woman's complaint said. The document added: "From that time until at least May 2016, JBesh continued to expect (her) to stay in his hotel room and engage in a sexual relationship."
According to the complaint, the woman felt "overwhelmed and intimidated by JBesh's power, and she worked in a corporate culture that suggested (she) was expected to keep JBesh 'happy' so he could continue to cook 'happy' food."
In May 2016, the complaint said, the woman "began efforts to disengage from the sexual relationship with JBesh." The document added: "JBesh asked (her) to help him find her 'replacement.'"
A month later, the document said, she left Louisiana "determined to break away from JBesh's continuing efforts to engage in a sexual relationship." The complaint said "Octavio Mantilla... proposed that (she) exchange confidentiality for a small sum of money. When (she) attempted to negotiate for a higher amount of money, Mantilla told (her) to 'have your lawyer call our lawyer.'"
After that, the woman said in the complaint, a BRG chef "engaged in angry texts" with her, accusing her "of being disloyal to JBesh."
The complaint said the woman sought, and BRG approved, a medical leave of absence in July 2016, and that she decided not to return to work that November.
According to Robison, the woman told her about the first encounter with Besh soon after it happened. Robison wrote about it in her notes listing what she described as harassment she experienced or witnessed at BRG. She wrote that she was driving to work in New Orleans in August or September 2015 when she got a call from the woman, who was on the business trip with Besh.
"I remember driving to work and she called me and sounded scared. She said, 'You're never going to guess what happened. I slept with one of them I think. I woke up and he was in my hotel room and I don't remember how he got there,'" Robison recalled the woman saying.
In the phone call, Robison wrote, the woman identified the man as Besh. "She told me John slept in her hotel room," Robison wrote.
In his statement acknowledging a relationship with the woman, Besh did not address any of her specific allegations – other than to say the relationship was consensual.
During his interview this month, Besh urged NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune to contact women managers at his company on a list he provided, who he said would attest to the relationship with his former employee being consensual. The women on the list who were contacted all said that they perceived the relationship to be consensual.
Speaking in general about sexual harassment law, Merrick Rossein, professor at City of New York School of Law, said "having consensual affairs is not unlawful." Legal problems arise, he said, "when you're using the power to say, 'Hey, if you want to move up, you have to date me.'"
Some sexual harassment "has to do with sexual desire, but most of it has to do with abuse of power," Rossein said. "There have been cases where women slept with the boss because they felt like they had to."
Restaurant Luke, in New Orleans, in 2009. (David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune archive)
Problems extended to some BRG restaurants
Most of the women interviewed by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune said BRG's problems extended beyond the corporate office and beyond Besh and Mantilla's personal interactions with female employees.
The majority of the 25 women who claimed to have experienced sexual harassment at the company work or have worked in the kitchens and dining rooms of BRG's high-profile restaurants, including Domenica, Lüke, Shaya and Restaurant August. They said some male managers leveraged or tried to leverage their power for sexual opportunity; that other male colleagues harshly admonished female employees for minor mistakes while men went unpunished for baldly inappropriate behavior; and that much of this resulted in the marginalization of female chefs, who they say are often passed over for advancement.
"This is about treating people the way they should be treated," Landry, the company attorney, said after hearing details of specific complaints. "That is certainly what we thought we were doing. You've brought to our attention failures in that regard."
Mantilla and Besh both said the company's rapid growth, particularly since 2015, exposed operational deficiencies they're working to fix. "Prior to that, probably no one could make a move without me, without me knowing about it," Mantilla said, referring to BRG. "That has changed because we grew so quickly."
A BRG spokesman said about 60 of its 140 managers are women. "In addition, 15 women hold senior executive positions as general managers, heads of departments, Chief Operations Officer, or owner/partner," the spokesman said.
The owner/partners include two women: Emery Whalen, who co-owns a company that focuses on their businesses in hotels; and Kelly Fields, who is the only female chef-partner at BRG. Fields' restaurant is Willa Jean, a downtown New Orleans bakery. Several BRG employees described Willa Jean as being a particularly hospitable place for women to work.
"I'd be surprised if there were a more female friendly, queer friendly kitchen than it," said Susie Penman, a former Willa Jean cook.
"The fact that I am the only (chef) woman partner in the company, and John made that happen, it's a credit" to Besh, Fields said in an interview. "It enabled me to achieve my own dream. I don't know if that would have happened at any other restaurant group."
Several female chefs working in other BRG kitchens concede that restaurant work requires a thick skin. But they say the banter they encountered at BRG went beyond the pale, as some male colleagues went out of their way to make women uncomfortable and, as a consequence, create the false illusion of a gendered skill deficiency.
"There is no sugar coating on the line," said Melissa Montero, a sous chef at Lüke from 2013-14. "But there is a difference between yelling and screaming and punching walls and throwing things – outbursts that people in the dining room were disturbed by."
Montero said that was the behavior of one of her male colleagues at Lüke. When she complained, she said she was made to feel that if she didn't take things so personally, this wouldn't be a problem. But when she did something wrong, "I was vilified and humiliated," Montero said.
A current BRG employee said she witnessed Montero being singled out for verbal abuse. The employee asked her name not be used because she was still employed at the company and didn't want to jeopardize her job.
Besh and Mantilla said they had no knowledge of Montero's complaints, but that one of the employees mentioned "is no longer with the company."
Besh added, "I think we have good processes in place to minimize when these things do occur, with chefs that punch the walls or whatever that happened to be."
'These guys were grabbing me'
Meghan Wright worked as a server at Lüke during the same period as Montero. Wright said that what started out as innocent banter between herself and two male coworkers turned sexually abusive, verbally and physically.
"These guys were grabbing me," Wright said.
Wright said she complained and was told "they were good at their jobs." Wright said the men became more aggressive after discovering she had complained.
"The guys were like, 'We know what you said, you better watch your back,'" she said. Wright said she complained again. "'This isn't getting better. This isn't okay.' It got to the point where my boyfriend had to drop me off and pick me up at work. Like literally drop me off and pick me up at the door," she said.
Like Montero, Wright said she didn't want to be pushed out of BRG, whose collection of busy, high-priced restaurants represent attractive earning opportunities. She asked for a transfer to another restaurant and said she was told, "'No, I'll just schedule you when (they) aren't working.'" That never happened, she said.
"That's unacceptable," Besh said of the work conditions Wright described, although he said he couldn't recall ever having been made aware of them.
Montero and Wright both ultimately quit, they said, because of the harassment.
'He was my boss. I was scared s---less'
Several of the women interviewed said they came to understand that what they perceived as the company's male-dominated culture and the failure to address complaints about harassment was embodied by those at the top. A few of the women who have worked directly with Besh describe him as someone with outdated views on gender dynamics, in the workplace and otherwise.
Reynolds, BRG's former social media manager, said Besh commented on her appearance. "He said to me once, 'Do you have any idea how pretty you are? I'm sure you get that all the time,'" she said. "I mean, what am I supposed to say to that?"
"That is something that I don't believe I said," Besh said of Reynolds' claim.
Robison, BRG's former graphic designer, said Besh would ask her to speak with him about his affair with the former employee, the woman who later filed the EEOC complaint. "I never declined, because I didn't think I was allowed to. He was my boss. I was scared s---less in a way," Robison said.
In her notes about the conduct she said she encountered at BRG, Robison wrote this about the meetings with Besh: "He would cry and I would try and console him. One day he offered to buy me a $900 Billy Reid dress. I was uncomfortable and declined. I couldn't tell if that was my prize for staying quiet or if he was hitting on me or both."
"We talked through a lot of personal things," Besh said of Robison. He said he didn't recall offering to buy Robison a dress. "If I did, I didn't know it was $900," he said.
Dominique Ranieri, a server at the BRG event space Pigeon & Prince, said she was working at a party late last year when Besh called her over to where he was socializing with a group of guests. She was carrying a tray of fried oysters with caviar crème fraiche served in large spoons.
"He took one of the hors d'oeuvres and shoved it in my mouth in front of everyone," Ranieri said, referring to Besh. "It was a complete invasion of my personal space, and he laughed about it, and all of his friends laughed about it. It was like, 'Look at what I can do to this girl, and she can't do anything about it.'"
"Honestly, nobody gets up in arms when this kind of thing happens, because it's so commonplace," Ranieri said. "You can't complain about him. I wanted to for sure. But the work environment does not foster the kind of comfortability to complain about those sorts of things."
Ranieri was hired at BRG in February 2016. She is still technically employed, she said, but has not worked a shift since July and doesn't plan to return. "I just can't handle the misogyny anymore," she said.
In response to Ranieri's assertions, Besh said, "Never would it be my intention to ever make – especially an employee – feel like that." He added, "I put food in all sorts of people's mouths. Sometimes we're all together, it's just a party."
BRG says it's establishing HR department
In an early September meeting, Landry, BRG's general counsel, stressed that human resources was an area the company brass was targeting for improvement. He said it was a focus of Postlethwaite & Netterville, the consulting firm BRG hired last November, before any EEOC complaints were filed.
"We took a look and realized we're too big to continue with our approach. We need a full-time HR director," Landry said then.
For years, he said, BRG's approach was for the managers and executive chefs of individual BRG restaurants to address employee complaints in-house. "That worked great when we had one, two, three, five restaurants," Landry said. "Now, it's too much. We looked at it and realized we need some better structure here."
The company's first director of human resources, Dawn Peterson Hazen, began at the position Oct. 11, a BRG spokesman said. She will help to implement a new orientation program called Human Resources 101. Landry said in September that company managers had already started the program and that every employee would ultimately be required to go through it. A Besh Group spokesman said that "a significant portion of the program addresses sexual harassment related concerns."
In his statement on behalf of the company Oct. 19, Landry said, "Everyone at our company will be fully aware of the clear procedures that are now in place to safeguard against anyone feeling that his or her concerns will not be heard and addressed free from retaliation."
Yale law professor Vicki Schultz, who wrote an influential 1998 article that called for a broader legal definition of sexual harassment, explained that the courts have read federal discrimination law to encourage companies to set up human resources departments to police themselves – and that the law looks less kindly on companies that don't.
"It's kind of surprising that a company in this day and age, with so many employees, wouldn't have that kind of system set up," Schultz said in reference to companies of the size of BRG.
Alon Shaya, a multiple James Beard Award winner who until recently was chef at the BRG restaurants Domenica, Pizza Domenica and Shaya, said he asked Besh and Mantilla to set up a human resources department "on multiple occasions" since 2014, after the opening of Pizza Domenica.
"They responded no," he said.
"Alon never requested an HR Department, let alone on multiple occasions," Landry replied in an email.
Chef Alon Shaya in July 2015. (David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Besh-Shaya partnership ends
Shaya first signaled to a reporter that he was worried about BRG's fraught human resources apparatus when he requested a meeting in August.
At that meeting, Shaya said the restaurants he co-owns operated mostly independently from BRG as part of what he called Shaya Restaurant Group.
"If there were ever problems" with sexual harassment complaints, Shaya said, "we handled them appropriately." He continued: "Being inappropriate, that's never tolerated, not one single bit. That's not part of Shaya Restaurant Group culture, and it never has been."
The Besh-Shaya partnership ended abruptly less than a month later, when Shaya was dismissed as executive chef at all of his restaurants. "I do feel like I was fired for talking ... and for standing up," Shaya said in a follow-up interview Oct. 17.
BRG officials said Shaya's termination was triggered by a much more complicated set of factors, although Mantilla said, "I think (Shaya) saw this article was hurting him, and he wanted to distance himself."
While the parties involved dispute the details of the divorce, the Besh-Shaya split surfaced tensions the famous chefs agree extend back months, if not years.
Alon Shaya is currently negotiating to purchase BRG's share of Shaya restaurant and recently launched a new venture, Pomegranate Hospitality, although on Friday BRG launched a legal trademark dispute over the Shaya restaurant name. Alon Shaya has recruited several of his former BRG colleagues to join him, including Shaya restaurant's most recent executive chef, Zachary Engel, himself a recent Beard Award winner.
Restaurant Shaya in New Orleans. (Kathleen Flynn, NOLA.com l The Times-Picayune)
Current and former staff of Shaya's BRG restaurants say his restaurants were not the safe havens from sexual harassment that he described.
"While working as a line cook at Shaya, I heard daily 'jokes' about rape, including one joke about pedophilia," a former line cook wrote in a resignation email sent in January. Male colleagues, she wrote, "would call grapeseed oil 'rapeseed' and use that as an opportunity to joke about rape. They also would say in a weird accent, 'She run, but I always catch her.' A (male colleague) one time said a food item was 'dryer than an 8-year-old.'"
The former line cook, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of hurting future job prospects, said work conditions didn't improve even after she complained. Elizabeth Campbell, a former Shaya line cook, said she witnessed the abuse directed at the former line cook and it "made me feel very uncomfortable." Campbell said she now regrets not having complained herself.
"I saw this subtle violence that was in front of me," Campbell said. "I just accepted it because I thought it was okay. I thought the goal was to put out really delicious food."
Campbell said she was fired from her job at Shaya in June after 13 months, for crying during work.
Campbell said Alon Shaya told her when he dismissed her, "'It's really a shame, because you're talented, but you have to not cry at work. You really have to be stronger and don't let your environment get to you.'" She added: "It bothered me, because it was an environment that he created."
Alon Shaya, in his most recent interview, recalled both incidents. He said the employee responsible for the jokes referenced in the former line cook's email was disciplined. Both he and BRG provided documentation that the discipline occurred. Alon Shaya said he regretted that the disciplinary action did not change work conditions enough to keep the female line cook from quitting. He also said he did not intend to "make excuses" for the offending employee's behavior in his conversation with her.
"I'm not trying to minimize anybody's complaints or concerns," Shaya said.
As for Campbell, Shaya said "we worked to help her with her situation" but that her crying was "disrupting the customer experience in the restaurant."
Domenica restaurant in downtown New Orleans. (Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Another employee, a former Domenica waitress who asked to remain anonymous, said she complained multiple times over two years about a male colleague who made sexual comments and showed her inappropriate photos.
"He would say, 'Hey, you want to see a picture of a baby's arm?' And he'd show you and it would be his penis," the woman said. The woman, who quit Domenica just before her first child was born in 2015, said the same man repeatedly asked for her breast milk "because he wanted to drink it."
Eventually, the woman and others at the restaurant complained to management, said the woman and another former Domenica waitress, Allison Consoli.
Consoli estimated it was one of four times she herself tried to file an official complaint about the same male worker with Domenica's managers. That doesn't include the time Consoli said two superiors stood and watched the man harass her to the point of near tears without intervening.
Asked what the coworker said that made her cry, Consoli replied, "He'd always talk about anal sex with me or using toys on me or me being a 'backdoor beauty.' It was along those lines, but I don't remember exactly what he said. There were so many things, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it was that time."
Consoli said she was fired before the male server for reasons unrelated to her complaints about him.
Shaya said he recalled being informed by a Domenica manager that a male employee "was being inappropriate to some of the female servers. I recall making the decision to fire him with that manager."
Landry also said the male employee had been fired for "being inappropriate."
'He'd put his hand on my waist, or my butt'
In October, a 23-year-old recently hired busser at Shaya restaurant said she started to become uncomfortable with a male superior.
"In a restaurant, it's a tight space," she said. "People put their hand on your back to get by. But he'd put his hand on my waist, or my butt."
The busser, who asked to remain anonymous, said the man asked her out to drinks after work. She hesitated, but agreed, writing about it in her journal, which she shared with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. "Out of nowhere he starts telling me how beautiful he thinks I am and how I'm the most beautiful girl at the restaurant and how he 'clearly' thinks I'm attractive," she wrote.
"And at the end of the night he straight up asked me if we were ever going to make out. So I told him absolutely not!" she wrote.
In an interview, the busser said she eventually told him his comments on her physical appearance were "really inappropriate." The busser said she decided to reach out to a reporter after four other female employees told her the man was also harassing them.
One of those employees, a 21-year-old Tulane undergrad who asked her name not be used, said the same man repeatedly hit on her during work and over text messages. During one shift, the woman said, "I was bussing a table and he came up to me out of the blue and said, 'I bet you wear nightgowns to sleep, don't you?'"
The woman said the company had not offered her any guidance on how to handle sexual harassment or file a complaint. "I Googled it a couple of days ago," she said in an August interview, "and I couldn't find a form or anything."
In October, another female Shaya employee contacted NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune to report being harassed by the same manager. "I remember one time when he came up to me and said, 'Am I on your top three list of guys at Shaya? Because you're on mine,'" she said. "How do you respond to that when you're at work?"
Campbell, the former Shaya sous chef, said she had her own run-in with the man last Mardi Gras season. She said she had received a king cake from the restaurant but not yet paid for it. On the way out of work, Campbell said she told him, "I'll pay for it tomorrow." She said he replied, "Don't worry about it, as long as it involves the back of your throat.'"
"Had I known about any of these issues, I would have fired the (person) immediately," Shaya said of the man. Landry said Oct. 18 that BRG investigated and found reason to suspend the manager.
Reflecting on all of the complaints from his current and former employees during the Oct. 16 interview, Besh said, "I have to deal with the fact that I was not the best human being that I could be, that I had made mistakes, but even with the worst that I had ever been, I have never sexually harassed or tolerated such.
"I've had my issues in my life. But I've never tolerated that sort of behavior."
Brett Anderson is a reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Follow him on Twitter @BrettEats
How to contact a reporter or comment on this story
If you are a restaurant employee who is being harassed or has been harassed on the job, and you want to speak with a reporter, leave a message at (504) 826-3445 or email brett_anderson@nola.com.
A gentle reminder to everyone of our Community Rules before you begin to discuss this sensitive story -- we do not allow identifications of people alleging to be victims of sexual harassment in our comment streams. We also do not allow attempts to identify unnamed people who are claimed to be participants in alleged harassment.
As such, any comments that allude to the identities of anyone alleging harassment or the subjects of those allegations, including any identifying characteristics of either party, will be removed. If you see any of these remarks before we catch them, we urge you to flag the comment immediately.
This is a policy we take very seriously and we will not hesitate to suspend the posting privileges of anyone attempting to get around this rule. You're invited to email us directly if you have questions about this policy – feedback@nola.com. Thanks for everyone's cooperation.