Alison Roman: ‘The issues brought to light by this whole thing won’t be fixed overnight’

Alison Roman is the now-suspended New York Times chef and food columnist who beefed with Chrissy Teigen a couple of weeks ago. I maintain that Alison Roman sucks as a person and separately from that issue, Chrissy Teigen also sucks as a person. Roman shouldn’t have attacked Teigen and Marie Kondo’s empires in an interview. Teigen shouldn’t live on the internet or insult children. Which woman will see her career take a bigger hit in the long-run? Probably Roman. As I said, she was already suspended from her job at the NYT, and she hasn’t been providing new content on her Instagram for the past few weeks. Which is good, actually – it’s good for someone in a media storm to take a break and reassess and figure out their next moves. And that’s what Roman has done. She posted this to her IG, along with a photo of compost waste:

HI! I want to thank everyone who’s reached out and taken the time to write to me over the last few weeks. I am still working my way through each email (of which there are…a lot!), so if I haven’t gotten back to you yet, please know I will.

The kindness, empathy, tough love, vulnerability and, honesty demonstrated by everyone who wrote in sharing experiences, book recommendations, anecdotes, and thoughtful advice has been overwhelming in the best way. I’m genuinely excited to turn this moment into positive, actionable change and so insanely grateful for even having that opportunity.

This was a huge shake-up for me both personally and professionally, and I’m still processing so much, but know that I’m working on it and thinking about it 24/7. The issues brought to light by this whole thing won’t be fixed overnight, and the healing process for many will be long, but I’m committed to doing the work to make it better.

As for the other kind of work, for the foreseeable future, you can find me in that newsletter I started 3 years ago and never sent out lol. There will be recipes, reader emails, recommendations, and discussions about things that I hope you will like or find helpful. In lieu of the comments section or DMs, I encourage you to submit questions/comments/concerns to qcc@alisoneroman.com, the idea being to share some of them in the newsletter (I am learning “the comments section” is not the best place for public discourse). Anyway! I haven’t been cooking and won’t pretend I have, so here’s a bowl of compost, which- a metaphor in there somewhere, I think!

[From Alison Roman’s IG]

A lot of people have pointed out that it took several days and several apologies for Roman to actually “get” why people were outraged over her New Consumer interview. Which doesn’t bode well, but I appreciate the fact that she eventually got there and she’s trying to figure some sh-t out. Is the bar very low for hipster women? Yes. It is. But I’m not going to yell at someone who was confronted with her own white privilege and ingrained racism and is now taking some time to think about it and figure out what’s next.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Instagram.

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22 Responses to “Alison Roman: ‘The issues brought to light by this whole thing won’t be fixed overnight’”

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  1. Andrew’s Nemesis says:

    No, dear, you’ll have to pull the stick out of your arse and unwind the racism from your double helix before your issues are ‘fixed’.

    • charo says:

      CT is fun, I don’t know how she “insults children” but she’s irreverent and spontaneous-seeming. When I notice her.
      She seems to have a SENSE OF HUMOR.

      The others, I dunno. But they don’t seem to have a sense of humor.

      SO, which one do I prefer? CT.

      Can we just say, a woman w/a sense of humor these days is the superior one? We need that.
      Can we quit judging each other for a moment? What’s w/all this MEAN GIRL s**t?

      Or is this just political?

  2. Tanguerita says:

    is she going to remind us every two weeks that the issue hasn’t been resolved yet?

  3. damejudi says:

    “The issues brought to light by this whole thing won’t be fixed overnight, and the healing process for many will be long, but I’m committed to doing the work to make it better.”

    Idk. She’s making this about “the issues,” instead of her own actions. She’s going to work to make “it” better, not work on herself to change her actions.

    For me, it still doesn’t land as sincere-the bar is very low.

  4. Roma says:

    Not sure how many bachelor fans there are on here, but while Alison’s IG post leaves a lot to be desired, it’s about 300% better than how Hannah Brown has handled her singing the n-word on insta live. At least Alison is acknowledging she has a lot of learning to do on the subject, and appears to be taking it seriously.

  5. Peanutbuttr says:

    One thing this mess and Central Park Karen has brought to the forefront is the casual racism of many white liberals. Sure, they’re woke, post BlackLivesMatter hashtags, and join in the outrage of any shooting but heaven forbid if a POC becomes rich and successful, moves in to your swanky neighborhood, wants to be able to enjoy a public park without your dog trampling all over other habitats, and made a living cooking the food their mothers and grandmothers cooked without altering it to meet their “standards”. That’s not acceptable.

    • Christina says:

      Amen, Peanutbuttr. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Do we have allies? Yes, we do. Is there much more casual racism in the liberal White community? Absolutely.

      So many of the Twitter comments for Roman’s apology were “accepted” by white women and not the Asian community she trashed. They see themselves in her behavior, so they want to excuse it.

      I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, the Karen’s are being outed, but they still win in almost every case. The woman at Central Park finally paid for what happens, but that was one video, and people still defend Amy Cooper because they feel she was justified in her fear “as a woman”. F(@& these people…

  6. lizardqueen says:

    I don’t know, I still don’t think she gets it. That whole post is vague about “the issues” and “the healing process” and smacks of a PR firm’s input, especially considering the level of Lizzie Grant she was giving us before. I might just be grouchy though.

  7. Faye G says:

    I still don’t think this is genuine, I think a crisis PR team is behind her apologies. If she truly wait a while, does the work, comes back and walks the talk, I may change my mind. I really hope she stays gone for a while though. I’m over all this fragile white woman bullshit.

    • Eugh says:

      I completely agree, especially given the anecdotal history of her behaviour with others. I won’t forgive because it does not seem genuine at all. She won and lost me all within 2 months of quarantine so I’m back to square one.

      For any food nerds, Carla and Molly from BA seem to not like her so i’ll run with that.

      • K.T says:

        Ohhhhhh, I’m a food nerdie and I like Bon Appétit YouTube too!! What’s the tea on Molly & Carla not liking Alison Roman? I remember Alison Roman was staying with Amiel & his wife, over the lockdown, and Andy had a tone to his friend when he referenced Amiel’A ‘friend’ ….
        Alison Roman is just a wee bit too grating and self-regarding. (And this was before the racism, lol) Molly can go a little bit in that direction, really hope she can tone it down a little and not be another Alison!!

      • Eugh says:

        @KT Carla liked a critical post of Alison from Cherry Bombe (including Amiel, Christina, Gaby and Priya), and liked another post from a NYT critic who said the apology was not in her voice and means nothing. Molly’s sister in law left a comment on her post asking where the apologies are for her competitive behaviour in the industry. Saffitz sat this one out didn’t like anything or say anything, like a Taylor Swift

        Amiel’s friendship with her mystifies me especially when his wife is (half) Asian and Amiel is so likeable on camera eugh.

      • K.T says:

        @Eugh – OMG, thank you so much! That was a lot of great info and you really went into a deep dive lol! Just checked out Cherry Bombe IG and couldn’t find the post but that’s SO interesting what Molly sis in law commented about Alison Roman. Maybe she’s been really hard-nosed competitive person and has burnt a lot of bridges, it’s very interesting she doesn’t have a lot of chefs or food writers who defend her considering how many places she had worked.

  8. holly hobby says:

    Alison meet Amy. Both of you should stay in one room during lockdown and have a little self reflection. I call bull.

  9. Izzy says:

    “It’s gonna take some time for people to forget what a garbage person I am, so I’mma hover in the background here until it’s safe for me to rebuild my career up to my previous over-inflated sense of awesomeness.”

    There, I fixed it for her.

    • Kate says:

      ohhhh so that’s what “the healing process for many will be long” means. Thanks! I was wondering wtf she was on about

  10. Tiff says:

    “The” issue… not her own personal issues. Does she have the capacity for self reflection? Is she confronting her privilege? Nothing from that statement is convincing me she does/is.

  11. Truthiness says:

    You know, there are sooo many great chefs out there, I hope the NYT finds themselves a better candidate and never looks back. She came off as a shrill witch to (white) Jon Lovett and it went south and then some (!) from there. She revealed herself through her own actions and she blew her chance. Case closed. New York has AMAZING chefs, I have faith in the Times they can find one who can focus on just the food.

  12. AL says:

    I just.. can’t care about this anymore.. I hope she learns and grows. This was a very vague and eh statement…. I will gladly go back to not knowing much about her. I already know too damn much and I didn’t have any idea who she was before this!!! Exasperated!!!

  13. A says:

    I do not like Alison Roman, and I do not like her comments. I did not care for her apology. I do not find a lot of celeb chefs all that wonderful with the exception of a few. Alison Roman is no different, I actually find her especially grating for a lot of reasons. I find the whole Instagram aesthetic hipster food trend to be heavy on the aesthetic, light on the substance in general.

    That being said–I’m giving the NYT a big old f-ck you for this. You cannot convince me that found these comments worthy of suspension when they still have world class twats like Tom Friedman, David Frum, and Bret Bedbug Stephens on their op-ed payroll. They won’t get rid of those people, but they’ll suspend Alison Roman? F-ck out of here New York Times.