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Ken Friedman, Power Restaurateur, Is Accused of Sexual Harassment - The New York Times

posted onDecember 13, 2017
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Article snippet: Natalie Saibel, a longtime server at the Spotted Pig, a West Village restaurant with celebrity investors, didn’t quit in 2015 after the owner, Ken Friedman, ran his hands over her buttocks and then her groin in a room crowded with customers, joking that he was searching her pockets for a forbidden cellphone. Amy Dee Richardson, a bar manager there, didn’t quit in 2004, when she says Mr. Friedman bit her on the waist as he bent down to duck under the bar. Neither did Trish Nelson, a longtime server who said he grabbed her head and pulled it toward his crotch in front of Amy Poehler in 2007 as Ms. Nelson knelt to collect glasses from a low shelf. But one night in 2012, Mr. Friedman pushed Ms. Nelson too far, she said: He invited her into his car to smoke marijuana and almost immediately lunged forward and pushed his tongue into her mouth. “I was scared,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. I had worked for him for six years.” Ms. Nelson, 40, said she was pinned against the car door, but managed to open it and scramble out. She gave notice within days. “I was terrified to tell anyone why,” she said. “Ken bragged about blacklisting people all the time. And we saw it happen.” From almost the day in 2004 that it opened on West 11th Street with the backing of investors like Jay-Z, Michael Stipe and the celebrity chef Mario Batali, the Spotted Pig shot to the top of the list of New York City’s hottest restaurants and stayed there. A clubby place whose third floor is a ... Link to the full article to read more

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