LOS ANGELES, March 9 — Abuse allegations tied to Copenhagen’s famed restaurant Noma have resurfaced days before its chef René Redzepi begins a high-profile pop-up in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake district this week.

The controversy flared with the New York Times’ report over the weekend, citing accounts from dozens of former staff who described physical and psychological abuse inside the Michelin-starred kitchen between 2009 and 2017.

The renewed attention comes after former Noma fermentation lab head Jason Ignacio White began sharing allegations from past workers and his personal experience at the restaurant on Instagram and announced plans to organise a protest outside the upcoming pop-up.

White said the demonstration is supported by labour advocacy group One Fair Wage and aims to highlight what organisers describe as exploitative conditions in elite restaurant kitchens.

The LA pop-up is set to run from March 11 to June 26, with tickets reportedly priced at about US$1,500 (RM5,946) each and sold out almost immediately earlier this year.

Noma’s main Copenhagen restaurant – which Redzepi has described as Noma 3.0 – is currently on a break and scheduled to reopen in 2027.

Redzepi has also responded to the renewed criticism on Instagram.

“I cannot change who I was then,” he said.

“I knew I needed to change, and I wanted to change,” he said, adding that he has worked to address those issues over time. 

“The organisation we are today is very different from the one we started with.”

Redzepi’s statement quickly sparked responses across the hospitality world, including from sommelier and industry commentator Lisa Lind Dunbar, who has used social media to amplify workers’ experiences and encourage wider scrutiny of kitchen culture.

“A confession of abuse should not be applauded. It is not heroic. It is not admirable. It’s a post-exposure performance of virtue-signalling, structured around Redzepi’s own story of redemption and ‘self-growth’,” she wrote on Instagram earlier today.