The Spotted Pig is stinking up the town again. The scandalized West Village gastropub — the city’s “hottest” restaurant for thirteen years — is back in the news after two big-name chefs tried to defend their involvement with the place.
Former Pig chef/partner April Bloomfield and Prune’s Gabrielle Hamilton, who tried to take over the Pig’s kitchen after Bloomfield left, are entitled to try and reclaim their once sacrosanct images. Bloomfield told the New York Times she was just another “victim” of owner Ken Friedman — not of the sexual abuse his employees have alleged, but of bullying and threats that made it impossible for her to help them.
Hamilton — who was vilified as a traitor to women for trying to save Friedman’s business — told New York magazine she only wanted to “clean up” the place, not get rich, but was frustrated because Friedman wouldn’t give up control or his pay.
But, for the rest of us, the issue isn’t the restaurant’s stomach-churning past, but whether this limping Pigsty should even exist anymore.
Although the food media was clowned into regarding the Spotted Pig as an “important” restaurant, the three-level joint full of cozy nooks and alcoves exemplified the twin curses of the New York dining scene — celebrity-coddling at everyone else’s expense and a culinary rep out of all proportion to reality.
Plus rampant sex harassment and abuse. Among other outrages, Friedman was accused of groping a waitress in the dining room in view of customers and of demanding sex from others. Chef Mario Batali, a Friedman pal and an investor in the Spotted Pig, hung out in a third-floor “rape room” where he was said to have groped and tried to kiss a woman who was apparently unconscious.
The Pig still has plenty of ordinary customers, no few of whom arrive via the nearby Holland Tunnel, who might care less about “rape room” antics. For years, they waited hours for the thrill of glorified bar food. “I thought it was ridiculous from the start,” veteran industry consultant Clark Wolf told me. “The cuisine was based on salt and fat.”
Yet, the Pig inexplicably earned a Michelin star every year from 2005 until it lost the twinkler in 2016. The James Beard foundation named Bloomfield — who in fairness turned out better food than the Pig’s at the Breslin and the John Dory — “Best Chef in New York” for 2014. Better than Eric Ripert, Masa Takayama, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and David Chang? Really?
Most astoundingly, in 2016, Friedman walked off with the “outstanding restaurateur in the nation” Beard honor.
Today’s Spotted Pig isn’t quite dead — but it’s not walking on all fours either.
Stephen Loffredo, president of Manhattan restaurant consulting firm Seasoned Hospitality, said of Friedman, “I don’t know how he’s going to weather the storm. The ship is sinking from multiple holes. April was his biggest asset but she’s gone.”
An insider told The Post that business was off around 25 percent after the revelations. Hamilton, who spent time there in August before the deal with Friedman collapsed, claimed at the time that it was “hemorrhaging cash.”
The state attorney general’s office has subpoenaed Friedman in connection with the sex-abuse claims. (Batali is separately being probed by the NYPD). Meanwhile, Friedman was just sued by former business partners at the Ace Hotel, who claimed he fraudulently misrepresented revenue at his and Bloomfield’s eateries there, The Breslin and John Dory Oyster Bar. (Bloomfield remains the chef at both but is not involved in the Friedman case.)
Who’s running the Pig’s kitchen? My question was bounced 3,000 miles west to Los Angeles-based Englander Knabe & Allen, a “strategic communications firm” whose specialties include “reputation and crisis communications.” The new chef is Skylar Mosca, we’re told — a name we couldn’t find anywhere online.
The Pig’s famous char-grilled burger, an oft-Instagrammed Bloomfield classic credited with launching the city’s hamburger craze, was bone-dry when I had it recently. My “40-minute” wait for a table turned out to be only 15 minutes. An acquaintance who gave up trying to get into Barbuto nearby tried the Pig a few Friday nights ago — “I did feel a bit guilty” — and was astonished to be seated right away.
Meanwhile, boldface regulars such as Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Jake Gyllenhaal, Madonna and assorted Kardashians have largely avoided the place, staff members said.
“Politically, nobody’s going to touch that place now,” said Loffredo. “What celebrity wants to be photographed walking in?”
The Pig’s future might depend less on bridge-and-tunnel customers and more on one of the boldfacers who lent the spot much of its mystique: Jay-Z, who’s not merely a minority “investor,” as often reported, but Friedman’s landlord as well. The music impresario (net worth $810 million, according to Forbes) led a group of showbiz luminaries who bought the building at 314 W. 11th Street under his real name Shawn Carter in 2005 for $2.6 million.
Jay-Z often hung out at the Spotted Pig and was photographed there many times — including on the infamous third floor although not in the “rape room.” His rep didn’t respond to questions about his role at the place or whether he knew of alleged sexual abuse there prior to the published reports.
The hip hop star is eager to burnish the image of his Roc-a-Fella Records and Rocwear “brands.” He’s contritely confessed to cheating on his wife Beyoncé in the past — most recently this summer on David Letterman’s Netflix show.
Surely, he wants nothing to do with the toxic stench of the Spotted Pig. And as the hot spot is no longer fooling scenesters into crowding its rooms, maybe Jay-Z should start looking for a new tenant.
