Good Chef, Bad Chef: Thief Chef Mario Batali Faces Sexual Misbehavior Charges

Previously, celebrity chef Mario Batali had plead settled a Class Action lawsuit instead of going to trial over substantiated accusations that he and his business partner had long been stealing employees’ pay. Now, he’s been credibly accused of sexual abuse and/or misbehavior – meaning that there was enough evidence for the city government prosecutor to bring charges against him.

He has paid dearly, financially, and reputationally.

Now, he has a lousy reputation.

And, it would not surprise me in the least to know that in some secret, surreptitiously clandestine way, he’s hiding, or protecting his money as best possible.

As I began to investigate the matter, I learned that on several occasions he has sexually abused female employees. At the hearing for one such incident, while he plead not guilty, and then paid several hundred thousands of dollars to settle, he said that, “My past behavior has been deeply inappropriate and I am sincerely remorseful for my actions.”

The first is a story from 2012.

The most recent story appears at the bottom, below the image of him, and is about his arraignment on indecent assault and battery charges stemming from allegations that he forcibly kissed and groped a woman after taking a selfie with her at a Boston restaurant in 2017.

Batali must see the light at the end of the tunnel… and, it’s a train headed straight toward him.

Mario Batali Exits His Restaurants

From March 6, 2019:

The 20-year partnership between the celebrity chef Mario Batali and the Bastianich family of restaurateurs was formally dissolved on Wednesday, more than a year after several women accused Mr. Batali of sexual harassment and assault.

Mr. Batali “will no longer profit from the restaurants in any way, shape or form,” said Tanya Bastianich Manuali, who will head day-to-day operations at a new company, as yet unnamed, created to replace the Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group.

The new company will operate the group’s remaining 16 restaurants under a new management and financial structure. Mrs. Bastianich Manuali and her brother, Joe Bastianich, have bought Mr. Batali’s shares in all the restaurants. They would not discuss the terms of the buyout.

Several famous chefs and restaurateurs have recently been accused of sexual harassment, but Mr. Batali is the first to surrender all his restaurants.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/dining/mario-batali-bastianich-restaurants.html

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Thief Chef Mario Batali

In Proverbs, the Good Book says “Excuses might be found for a thief who steals because he is starving.

“But if he is caught, he must pay back seven times what he stole, even if he has to sell everything in his house.”

I would hardly imagine Mr. Batali qualifies as “starving.”

What, then, should his punishment be?

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Mario Batali Agrees to $5.25 Million Settlement
Over Employee Tips

By Benjamin Weiser, Associated Press
March 7, 2012, 6:10 pm

“The celebrity chef and restaurateur Mario Batali and a business partner have agreed to pay $5.25 million to

Man finds GOD in Eggplant

Apparently, for some, the kitchen is their church.

From our “See? God IS real – this eggplant proves it!” files comes this item:

Workers at a Baton Rouge restaurant say they saw the word ‘GOD’ in their eggplant.

http://wapo.st/1mK5355

Baton Rouge restaurant employee finds ‘GOD’ in sliced eggplant

Posted: Jul 08, 2014 12:06 PM CDT Updated: Jul 08, 2014 4:19 PM CDT

By Amber Stegall – email

and Gerron Jordan – email

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) – When an employee at Gino’s Restaurant in Baton Rouge cut into an eggplant Monday, he found “GOD.”

Chef Jermarcus Brady couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I saw a miraculous image formed by the seeds,” said Jermarcus Brady. “It spelled out the word God!” Chef Brady has many responsibilities, one being cutting, salting and sauteing eggplants.

Jemarcus Brady holding the “GOD” eggplant (Source: Jemarcus Brady)

“When you sliced into it, the pattern showed from the seeds that were forming in the inside the letters G-O-D as God,” said Brady. “I couldn’t think of anything. I just had to tell somebody to come look at it.”

Brady showed the eggplant to the owner of the restaurant and fellow coworkers and took photos, but he believed it was meant to be shared with everyone.

Brady says he is

Could Climate Change help the Global Economy?

Raise a Glass of Scottish Wine to Global Climate Changes

By Rudy Ruitenberg Mar 25, 2014 11:00 PM CT

Thanks to climate change, Christopher Trotter will make history later this year by pairing a Scottish white wine with the local spoots.

The razor clams harvested from the nearby shores of the North Sea will go down nicely with the first bottles from Trotter’s vineyard north of Edinburgh. The 2014 vintage will be special for Scotland, where Highlanders have distilled whisky and brewed ale for centuries.

“Scotland has probably been more of a beer-drinking nation than anything else,” said Trotter, a chef and food writer. Wine hasn’t been part of the culture, he said, “until now.”

Christopher Trotter, Scottish Chef, Vintner and food writer, stands in his vineyard in Fife, Scotland
– Source: Christopher Trotter via Bloomberg

Trotter might as well pour a splash on the ground in memory of a vanishing world. Climate change, which scientists say is caused by heat-trapping gas accumulating in the atmosphere, is transforming dinner tables and scrambling traditions in the $270 billion global wine industry. In Europe, warmer seasons are chasing Italian and Spanish vintners up hillsides, making a winner of Germany, encouraging growers in Poland and spreading the cultivation of wine grapes to latitudes friendlier to belly-warming whiskies and ales. And it’s raising the alcohol content, and altering the flavors, of famous wines in France.

Vitis vinifera, the common grape vine, is a finicky crop. Vineyards flourish where average annual temperatures range from 10 to 20 degrees Celsius (50 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit). Too much dry weather, hail or too much rain can downgrade or wreck a vintage.

“Scotland has probably been more of a beer-drinking nation than anything else,” said Trotter, a chef and food writer. Wine hasn’t been part of the culture, he said, “until now.”

Trotter might as well pour a splash on the ground in memory of a vanishing world. Climate change, which scientists say is caused by heat-trapping gas accumulating in the atmosphere, is transforming dinner tables and scrambling traditions in the $270 billion global wine industry. In Europe, warmer seasons are chasing Italian and Spanish vintners up hillsides, making a winner of Germany, encouraging growers in Poland and spreading the cultivation of wine grapes to latitudes friendlier to belly-warming whiskies and ales. And it’s raising the alcohol content, and altering the flavors, of famous wines in France.

Vitis vinifera, the common grape vine, is a finicky crop. Vineyards flourish where average annual temperatures range from 10 to 20 degrees Celsius (50 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit). Too much dry weather, hail or too much rain can downgrade or wreck a vintage.

Fine Wine

“Wine is very responsive to climatic factors,” said Karl Storchmann, a professor of economics at New York University and managing editor of the Journal of Wine Economics. “This is especially true for fine wine, when weather-induced vintage-to-vintage price variations can exceed 1,000 percent.”

Over centuries, growers in the top producing countries — France, Italy and Spain — selected grape varieties that now account for 75 percent of the world’s wine plantings, according to a database prepared by the University of Adelaide in Australia.

New Research Proves Obesity is Related to…

The Humble Crockpot
The crockpot is a ‘set it and forget it’ cooking tool. In fact, when placed on the “high” setting, food is often cooked overnight, and ready the next morning.

Excess Food Consumption.

Big surprise, eh?

Yeah.

NOT!

Seriously, there is only ONE time-tested way to lose weight.

It has two, very simple steps.

They are:

1.) Eat Less, and;

2.) Exercise More.

Or if you prefer, Step #1 can also be considered a form of exercise – Push Aways.

Push Away from the table.

Now that we have the levity out of the way… let’s look at the news.

Some have promoted various forms of diet as an adjunct to weight loss. Many of the more successful models have revolved around variations upon a theme, that being increased protein intake in conjunction with decreased carbohydrate intake, also more popularly known as the “Atkins Diet.”

To give Dr. Atkins his due,

Why Herman Cain and the GOP can’t be taken seriously

First, forget the “vast right-wing conspiracy” to oust Hermie. Everyone wants to shoot the messenger.

Sometimes, it’s easier to let the “other side” do the talking – whatever side that is!

It’s not as if we can’t see it, it’s not as if we can’t identify it, and it’s not as if we have no name for it. For we can see, identify and name it – whatever it is.

Let’s just ask one reasonable question – and then, you can get to the heart of this matter. If you were in a position to hire an expert – at least someone with even limited ability or experience – would you hire someone whom has no experience? Again, if you were a restauranteur, would you hire someone whom has not even been to any cooking school to be executive chef? Would you expect Herman Cain – while CEO of Godfather’s Pizza – to have hired regional managers, who hired store managers, who hired folks with utterly no experience in the food service industry to manage a local Godfather’s Pizza store? If your answer is an obvious “no,” then why would you – or any rationale person – support, or take Herman Cain’s run for the GOP presidential nomination seriously? Why, he’s never even run for Dog Catcher… much less the county line!

Is it not sad, that one watches Fox News for humor, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the Comedy Channel for news?

From: TheAmericanConservative.com

by Rod Dreher

Cain campaign as a sign of decadence

Rod Dreher     November 2nd, 2011

When Herman Cain sang at the National Press Club the other day, I thought it was absurd. There he goes again, the clown. Looking at the performance in greater context, I found it easier to smile at, and not in a hostile way. Still, if you think about it, it says something bad about America that here we are, facing the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and looking at a future of crippling indebtedness unless our leaders take drastic action … and the top candidate for the Republican nomination a year from election day is a charming businessman with no political experience, who knows nothing about the world (and makes jokes about his own ignorance), and who is given over to camping it up on the campaign trail. If times were great, there would be serious reason to doubt whether America could afford a man like Herman Cain in the Oval Office. But times are terrible, and could easily get far worse. It’s really quite an indictment on the unseriousness of our country, or at least the conservative electorate, that Cain is at the top of the polls now. The media play their own role in perpetuating this circus. Conservative James Poulos writes in the Daily Caller: