It only took an entire year for Mario Batali to have his #MeToo reckoning. Eater first detailed the chef’s verbal and sexual harassment and assaults against women back in December 2017, but only now has the onetime celebrity chef been bought out of the restaurant group he founded.
According to a report from The New York Times, the Bastianich family and Batali’s other partners in the group have bought out his stake in the Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group and regrouped as a yet-unnamed entity headed up by Tanya Bastianich Manuali, the sister of Batali’s longtime business partner, Joe Bastianich. California chef Nancy Silverton and Lidia Bastianich (the Bastianich matriarch with the PBS cooking show and owner of Manhattan staple Felidia) will also be partners in the new group as they were in the old one.
Batali has also reportedly divested his shares in Eataly, the rapidly growing chain of always freakishly crowded Italian supermarkets.
Through the recently defunct restaurant group, Batali owned a stake in a lot of restaurants across the United States (New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles) and around the globe (Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong). While he left day-to-day management of the restaurants in the group back in December 2017 after decades of alleged misconduct and an NYPD investigation into his reported behavior, he still financially benefitted from the restaurants through his stake in the group. That ends now, although terms of the sale weren’t made public—and they were probably hefty.
Whether this means it’s now okay to book a table at Del Posto is up to you and your conscience.
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