The system behind the names everyone wants

The X-Rated List for Restaurants is coming.

(Are you on it?)

That’s the tone of the moment… Across the industry, there is a growing appetite to identify the next restaurant or chef to be publicly exposed. Conversations are now unfolding online, often in real time. We’re aware about the power of this, and how these stories are necessary. They bring visibility to restaurant industry labor practices that, for years, went unchallenged.

But alongside that shift, something else is happening.

The idea of “who’s next” has become speculation. In some cases, it has become entertainment. Attention narrows to individual cases. Outrage spikes, names circulate, and then the conversation moves on without addressing the conditions that allowed those situations to exist in the first place.

However, this didn’t happen overnight. The modern restaurant industry is the result of layered systems and pressure built over time.

Before it became an industry, cooking was already tied to power. In Europe, royal and aristocratic kitchens operated within rigid class hierarchies, where cooks worked under strict control with little autonomy. Across the Americas, including the United States and Latin America, enslaved and forced labor played a central role in shaping food traditions, with cooks producing foundational cuisines without recognition or compensation. In many parts of Africa and Asia, cooking existed within informal economies, family systems, and colonial structures, where labor was tied to necessity rather than choice.

These were different systems, but they produced similar dynamics. Cooking was rarely just a craft. It was structured around who serves and who is served.

As the industry developed, those dynamics were not removed. They were reorganized. In the late 19th century, Auguste Escoffier formalized the brigade system, bringing efficiency and organization to professional kitchens while reinforcing hierarchy, discipline, and control. In the early 20th century, the Michelin Guide introduced a system of recognition that turned restaurants into places of competition, where standards, comparison, and pressure became part of the experience.

Over time, training systems normalized long hours, strict leadership, and high-pressure environments. What began as structure evolved into culture. By the late 20th century, the hardest kitchens had become the most respected. Endurance was treated as proof of commitment, and surviving those environments became a form of validation. What should have been questioned was often admired and repeated.

In the 2000s, media amplified that culture. Chefs became public figures, and restaurants became stages where complexity, precision, and performance were rewarded. The harder the work appeared, the more valuable it seemed. What was shown was the plate, while the labor behind it remained largely invisible.

By the 2010s, social media accelerated those expectations. Dishes became content, and precision became currency. The demand for more detail, more technique, and more perfection continued to rise. Visibility scaled faster than sustainability.

Then, in 2020, the system was forced to pause. Restaurants closed, staff left, and burnout became visible in a way that could no longer be ignored. For the first time in years, the industry was forced to confront a basic question: what happens when people stop accepting the conditions that held everything together?

At the same time, a long-standing belief began to weaken. The idea that the customer is always right had defined hospitality for decades, often placing the guest experience above the well-being of the people delivering it. During and after COVID, that assumption started to shift. Boundaries became more visible, and the idea that hospitality should come at any cost began to lose ground.

In 2026, situation like Noma boosted conversations about labor, burnout, and working conditions. Workers have more tools to speak publicly, and the industry is facing a level of exposure it has not experienced before. At the same time, that exposure has become immediate and, at times, driven as much by attention as by a desire for change.

This system did not run on its own. It was built by people, sustained by people, and, in different ways, supported by people. If you worked for free to get into a better kitchen, you moved through it. If you admired the hardest kitchens without questioning them, you reinforced it. If you have ever liked, shared, or glorified a dish that takes dozens of steps to make without thinking about what that requires, you have been part of it too, at least in some way. That does not make everyone equally responsible, but it does mean fewer people are completely outside of the system than they might think.

The question is not who got it wrong ten years ago, the question is who is reinforcing it today. Who still believes these conditions are necessary, who continues to operate within them, and who still celebrates them as the standard. This is not something that gets resolved by naming individuals and moving on. It changes through smaller, less visible decisions: how kitchens are run, what gets valued, and what people are willing to accept or reject. Real change does not happen all at once. It happens gradually, built over time, decision by decision.

The idea of a list suggests that responsibility can be identified and resolved by naming a few actors. In reality, the issue is more distributed. If there is a list worth paying attention to, it is not limited to people; it is made up of practices, expectations, and standards that continue to shape how the industry operates. Many of them are still present, still accepted, and still reinforced in different ways. Seen that way, the more relevant question is not only who would appear on such a list, but how much of what it represents is still active today—and what, if anything, is being done to change it. Where can we start and what needs to be change from the inside out to last.