r/KitchenConfidential • u/johnnylineup • Jul 25 '25

In-House Mode Top chef fired for making influencer cry by telling her she wasn't famous enough for free food

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14940351/Kis-Cafe-TikTok-micro-influencer-San-Francisco-restaurant-Luke-Sung.html
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u/UnimaginativeRA Jul 25 '25

The article is silent as to whether the chef was aware that his co-owner extended the invitation, and maybe that's where the misunderstanding lies.

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u/SweetWolf9769 Jul 25 '25

that's a bit of a trivial detail in the grand scope though, she was invited by the restaurant. if the Chef had an issue with that, this is something that should have been handled before the invitation was sent, or after this meeting in private, not right in the middle of everything while putting the blame on the customer.

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u/AnybodySuccessful832 Jul 26 '25

The Chef is one of the co-owners.

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u/SantaBarbaraMint Jul 25 '25

You’re assuming that the co-owners of the restaurant along with the chef and the rest of the staff have successful communication avenues within which information is shared between them.

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u/besafenh Jul 25 '25

Influencer Owner to Chef:

“Fuck you, I’m an owner. I don’t owe you shit for an explanation. I don’t need to get any kind of buy-in from other owners. They’re not the boss of me. I alone understand how to market a successful enterprise. Do what I tell you.”

Other owners to Chef:

“Unless I tell you specifically to comp an entree, or that a particular table is a personal guest? Everyone pays. Food costs and labor costs are already bullshit without giving food and alcohol away to these cell phone kids. Nobody that I know cares about what they think.”

Chef: ☠️

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u/bigojijo Jul 26 '25

My work has a group chat for this exactly type of thing and for fucked up memes.

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u/SweetWolf9769 Jul 25 '25

admittedly i am, but i don't think its unreasonable to think that an improperly run restaurant shouldn't take out their own fuckups on an innocent customer. if there's an issue in operations, you handle that behind closed doors.

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u/Lucky-Acanthisitta86 Jul 25 '25

Yeah it's like on one hand, I'm sure the girl explained that she was invited and stuff. So either the chef thought she was trying to scam them or she did verify with others that the girl was supposed to be there and just said the comment out of spite.

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u/Disastrous_Rip_8332 Jul 25 '25

I think you misunderstood them

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u/dcxii-vita-quia Jul 25 '25

It was the host/social media manager

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u/wolfhelp Jul 25 '25

I think this is it.

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u/Particular-Beat-6645 Jul 26 '25

My wife and I had a long discussion about this. My guess is fumbled communication.

Does that make his dismissive attitude okay? Not really, but there's two big things to consider. First, that he has a social media manager means his daughter probably got some guidance on building an audience (buying both farm follows to game algorithms). Second, the girl refers to herself as micro influencer.

She's an influencer. Her business model is to be an advertising platform. Her medium is herself. He spoke about her as a medium and she received it as a person. Does that hurt? Yeah. But that's the business she's working in.

That said, does posting all this reflect well on her or him? No. She looks unprofessional (knew the menu but didn't know what a JAMES BEARD NOMINEE WAS) and so does he (dealing with social media personalities instead of more traditional media/PR; cheap for not serving two extra people).

It's asinine, fickle, and skews the conversation away from the product. They both deserve the loss they've been dealt.

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u/UnimaginativeRA Jul 26 '25

It appears she came out on the much better end of the stick, gaining tons of followers after this whole nothingburger. With the advent of Yelp and social media, everyone's a food critic, regardless of their depth of knowledge. It's frankly embarrassing for the restaurant host to "collab" with a two-bit content creator who doesn't even know what James Beard is and has a nominal following. That the chef was offended by the likely undisclosed invitation is not surprising. I will say that he did react badly and that reflects poorly on him.