Jordan, Edouardo

Impact on the world

Trained at the acclaimed French Laundry and Per Se before opening Seattle's Salare in 2015 and the Southern-focused JuneBaby in 2017, becoming the first African American chef to win the James Beard Foundation's Best New Restaurant award for JuneBaby in 2018, the same ceremony at which he also won Best Chef: Northwest for Salare and delivered an acceptance speech naming pioneering Black chefs including Patrick Clark, Rodney Scott, Nina Compton, and Dolester Miles, all already profiled in this collection, as predecessors who had 'been pounding their knives against the walls' without similar recognition; in June 2021, following a Seattle Times investigation in which 15 women described being groped, kissed without consent, or subjected to unwanted sexual comments by Jordan, allegations the paper reported were corroborated by 28 people in total, nearly his entire remaining restaurant staff resigned and both Salare and JuneBaby closed, with Jordan publicly denying many specific allegations while issuing a broader apology acknowledging he had caused real harm and pledging to take accountability.

Life & background

Born around 1980, Jordan built his early career in some of America's most demanding professional kitchens, including Thomas Keller's French Laundry and Per Se, before relocating to Seattle and opening Salare in 2015, a restaurant centered on French and Italian technique that helped make him the first African American named to Food & Wine's Best New Chefs list; he followed it with JuneBaby in 2017, a Southern-focused restaurant built explicitly around his own upbringing that the New York Times called the hottest new Southern restaurant in the country, eventually earning a three-star review from critic Pete Wells and broad recognition as an advocate for ensuring Black chefs were not erased from the larger story of American cuisine. His public reputation collapsed in June 2021 when the Seattle Times published an investigation detailing accounts from 15 women describing incidents between 2012 and 2019, including four allegations of groping, one allegation of forced kissing, and ten allegations of unwanted sexual comments or touching, corroborated by ten coworkers and several outside chefs; nearly all of his remaining 18 employees resigned within a day of publication, with workers describing the decision as a collective, unanimous moral stand rather than an individual choice. Jordan responded by denying many specific allegations while acknowledging broader harm, writing publicly that he was in a state of reflection and remorse and would step back from his restaurants; he closed both Salare and JuneBaby, lost most of his corporate partnerships, and was largely removed from promotional materials by companies he had previously partnered with. He reopened JuneBaby roughly seven months later after what he described as extensive conversations with community and industry mentors, framing the broader scandal as evidence of a systemic 'celebrity chef' culture within the restaurant industry that had long enabled this kind of behavior to go unaddressed, while continuing to participate in subsequent media interviews addressing both his own conduct and what he has described as the industry's broader need for accountability.

Sources

1. Seattle Times; KING 5 News; Restaurant Business Online; Robb Report; Nation's Restaurant News; MyNorthwest; FSR Magazine