Earlier this year celebrity chef Mario Batali was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of different women. However, they weren’t the only ones with complaints against the chef. It turns out a male employee also decided to sue the chef “over claims of discrimination and sexual harassment.” The openly gay employee, Isaac Franco Nava, is a former pastry cook at Babbo, according to the lawsuit. In addition to suing Batali, Nava also filed the suit against Babbo and Batali’s partner, Joeseph Bastianich back in May, alleging that “he was harassed and ultimately fired for taking a pork chop home with him.”
Earlier this year celebrity chef Mario Batali was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of different women. However, they weren’t the only ones with complaints against the chef. It turns out a male employee also decided to sue the chef “over claims of discrimination and sexual harassment.” The openly gay employee, Isaac Franco Nava, is a former pastry cook at Babbo, according to the lawsuit. In addition to suing Batali, Nava also filed the suit against Babbo and Batali’s partner, Joeseph Bastianich back in May, alleging that “he was harassed and ultimately fired for taking a pork chop home with him.”
The lawsuit itself is set to carry over into 2018, though according to Nava’s attorney, Eric M. Baum, “a date has not been set for depositions yet.” But what happened, exactly? What kind of discrimination did Nava face? For starters, he alleges that “he left Batali’s restaurant Otto to start working at Babbo in November 2015, but was subjected to harassment during the entire first four months by a Caucasian manager, a Caucasian co-worker, and a Hispanic co-worker.” Additionally, in the lawsuit he claims “the manager and white co-worker targeted him for being Hispanic and gay, while a Hispanic worker only went after him for being gay.”
When detailing out the abuse he faced on a daily basis, the lawsuit reads, “the abuse was open and notorious … hostile, aggressive, threatening, demeaning and embarrassing, and the insults allegedly included calling Franco a ‘stupid Mexican’ and a homophobic slur.”
When discussing his client Baum said:
“Isaac was proud of his job as a pastry cook and was hoping to further his career at Babbo; however, shortly after he started working at Babbo, he was repeatedly harassed and mistreated because of his sexual orientation and race. When Isaac complained to management about the mistreatment, the company turned its head away from the extreme harassment and fired him.”
Now one might think that after voicing complaints to upper management over the treatment he was having to endure would have brought an end to things, but that wasn’t so in this case. Instead, Nava claims that after “complaining multiple times, his supervisor conspired with his tormentors to set him up to be fired.” How so? Well, according to Nava, he was allegedly “told he could take a raw pork chop home for dinner, since he did not have a chance to eat during his shift, but was fired for stealing the next day, on April 18.”
As a result of his discrimination and harassment, Nava is seeking unspecified damages for things like “back pay, front pay, past and future employment benefits, emotional distress and attorneys’ fees.”
On the other side of the aisle, Batali has denied Nava’s allegations and even requested that the court dismiss the lawsuit, which it did not do. Once it became apparent to Batali that the lawsuit against him was indeed going to move forward, he decided to “step down from day-to-day operations of his restaurant empire” and has since been let go from his “gig on ABC’s talk show ‘The Chew.‘”
Sources:
Lawsuit against Mario Batali moving forward into 2018
Mario Batali on leave from TV show and restaurant empire after 4 women allege sexual harassment
Join the conversation!