Some excerpts from the NYT article:
As the human cost of the industry comes under scrutiny, Mr. Redzepi’s headaches have multiplied, with media reporting [a link very much worth opening] and online activism critical of Noma’s treatment of foreign workers and reliance on unpaid interns. In October, Noma began paying its interns, adding at least $50,000 to its monthly labor costs...
...The Finnish chef Kim Mikkola, who worked at Noma for four years, said that fine dining, like diamonds, ballet and other elite pursuits, often has abuse built into it.
“Everything luxetarian is built on somebody’s back; somebody has to pay,” he said....
.... In interviews, dozens of people who worked at Noma between 2008 and 2021 said that 16-hour workdays have long been routine, even for unpaid workers.....
....For most of that time, Ms. Hegde said, her sole job was to produce fruit-leather beetles, starting with a thick jam of black fruit and silicone stencils with insect parts carved out. Another intern taught her how to spread the jam evenly, monitor the drying process, then use tweezers to assemble the head, thorax, abdomen and wings. Ms. Hegde repeated the process until she had 120 perfect specimens; each diner was served a single beetle in a wooden box.
She said the experience taught her to be quick, quiet and organized, but little about cooking. “I didn’t expect that I would use my knife only a couple of times a day,” she said, “or that I would be told I didn’t need my tasting spoon because there was nothing to taste.”
Ms. Hegde said she was required to work in silence by the junior chefs she assisted (Mr. Redzepi was rarely in the kitchen where she worked), and was specifically forbidden to laugh...
“I thought an internship was about me learning, as well about.....
nytimes.com
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