Superb piece. Thought provoking. Thanks for sharing.
Not Rosner’s best work. To be fair, it was just a blog post, so she didn’t benefit from the print magazine’s fact checking.
Nancy Silverton and Lidia Bastianich, both legendary chefs in their own right, were elevated to vague “leadership roles” in Batali’s former company, the B&B Hospitality Group, a change that was announced in the same press release that stated that Batali would no longer be involved in operations.
Bastianich and Silverton weren’t “elevated”: they were (and are) co-owners of the company and each was (and is) chef of several of its restaurants. That was not a press release but a letter they and Joe Bastianich wrote to their employees (one or more of whom passed it along to Eater). The additional leadership roles the women took on themselves are clearly defined:
First, Mario is no longer involved in any of our restaurants’ operations, and that includes not coming into any of our properties.
Second, Nancy and Lidia will now take on leadership roles in the company. Apart from steering our culinary direction, they are intent on making sure that no one experiences sexual or any form of harassment and that, if they do, our policies will be strictly and swiftly enforced and offenders will be held accountable. They will also help ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity for promotion within the company—and that ours is a company where you want that opportunity.
The rest of the letter makes it clear how serious they are about reforming their businesses.