Prompt Cast
Toxic Work Environment and Racial Injustice at Bon Appetit Magazine
TLDR The Test Kitchen series explores the toxic work environment and racial injustice experienced by people of color at Bon Appetit magazine, revealing a culture of favoritism, bias, and lack of support. The hosts of the series have decided to leave Reply All due to troubling behavior from the hosts themselves.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
This episode is part of a series called The Test Kitchen, which explores the structural racism and toxic work environment at Bon Appetit, but due to recent revelations about troubling behavior from the hosts, the series will not continue and the hosts have decided to leave the Reply All team.
04:49
This story is about the toxic work environment and racial injustice experienced by people of color at Bon Appetit magazine, which came to light after a photo of the editor-in-chief in an offensive Halloween costume circulated online.
09:41
Adam Rappaport is hired as the editor-in-chief of Bon Appetit and is given the opportunity to completely reinvent the magazine, resulting in a younger, snarkier, and more irreverent publication that is successful both commercially and within the food industry.
14:57
The test kitchen at Bon Appetit is a drab space where newbies cross-test recipes before they go into the magazine, and at 2 p.m. every day, there is a tasting of recipes that are being developed or will be in the magazine.
19:47
The test kitchen at Bon Appétit is a high school-like environment where the editors taste and critique recipes, some editors treat people's ideas with disdain, and there is little support or recognition for freelancers and temps.
24:38
Alison Roman, an internet famous recipe writer, was seen as the boss's favorite in the Bon Appétit test kitchen, receiving all the good recipe assignments and having a close relationship with the boss, which left her colleagues conflicted about her success.
29:56
Alison's former colleagues at Bon Appétit are grappling with the question of how much of their success was earned and how much was due to their white privilege, and are also questioning the behavior of their bosses, the top editors, who made decisions about assignments and hiring.
35:24
Rick Martinez, a Mexican-American food writer, found a way to publish Mexican recipes at Bon Appetit without much oversight by putting them on the website, but faced pushback from top editors who questioned the authenticity and complexity of his recipes.
40:32
Deputy editor Andrew Nolton, who was in charge of the hot 10 restaurants list at Bon Appetit, consistently placed white chefs in the top spot, even when a Chinese American chef who made everything from scratch was ranked third, and made inappropriate comments about the wife of the Chinese American chef, revealing a subconscious bias towards seeing him as a Chinese chef rather than just a chef.
45:23
Bon Appetit editors, including a white editor, rejected a Chinese American chef's idea for a soup dumpling column, assigned it to a white friend instead, and later added a byline to the recipe after the chef left, suggesting that an Asian name on an Asian recipe was considered undesirable until recently.
50:58
Bon Appetit seemed uninterested in hiring non-white staff, even when qualified candidates were available, and when Yawande was eventually offered a position, it was for a job that she felt was beneath her level of experience and expertise.
56:00
Yawande and Sue had to unlearn the negative experiences and biases they faced at Bon Appétit, but now they are working on their own recipes and are successful in their careers.
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