After #MeToo, Noticed Pig Proprietor Ken Friedman Helped Open Horses in LA

Ken Friedman, the restaurateur behind a string of smash-hit eating places that closed within the wake of extensively reported #MeToo allegations, was a quietly influential participant within the creation and early days of Horses, one in every of the most well liked eating places to hit Los Angeles in years.

Friedman helped to safe the preliminary lease for the property, strolling chef-owner Liz Johnson via the constructing in September 2020, simply months after he publicly settled harassment claims with 11 girls for practically 1 / 4 of one million {dollars}. He additionally remained in communication with Johnson, accomplice Will Aghajanian, and investor Stephen Mild via no less than the restaurant’s opening in September 2021, pursuing what he believes to be an agreed-upon 20 p.c stake within the income from the restaurant.

Johnson, Mild, and Aghajanian acknowledge Friedman’s early presence at what would finally develop into Horses, however are adamant that he has no present attachment to the enterprise, the constructing, or the day-to-day operations. “Ken Friedman is on no account concerned with Horses as an proprietor, accomplice, or earlier investor,” a rep for Horses stated in an announcement.

Friedman maintains that he’s a profit-sharing proprietor of what’s one in every of Hollywood’s most darling new eating places. “I personal 20 p.c of Horses,” he says. “It simply doesn’t make any sense for me to say anymore that I’m not [an owner] … Folks know, the phrase’s out. Why ought to I cover it?”

Friedman is just not listed on the lease, the restaurant’s opening working settlement, or the working settlement for the LLC that now oversees the restaurant. Nonetheless, he claims that Mild assured him he would maintain a silent profit-sharing piece of the restaurant as fee for his involvement in bringing Horses to life, which included the facilitation of the lease and early design work. The Horses staff acknowledges that some conversations surrounding possession did happen, however say that they have been solely “discussions, nothing extra, nothing concrete.”

In texts reviewed by Eater, Friedman and Mild seem to have an ongoing dialogue about profit-sharing agreements and Friedman’s public relationship with the restaurant that spans greater than a 12 months. In a dialog from September 2020, Mild refers to himself and Friedman as “members” of the LLC that might oversee the restaurant, with ongoing discussions over potential proportion breakdowns on future revenue from the restaurant.

In later texts, dated to October 2021, shortly after Horses had opened, Friedman seems involved concerning the state of their obvious off-the-books settlement. “I’m a accomplice,” he writes. “You’re excluding me from this undertaking. Are you taking the place that I’m not a accomplice?”

“No, that isn’t my place,” Mild responds. “You’re a silent accomplice serving to the proprietor as an ‘knowledgeable’ till this will get off the bottom and finds its footing. Then [you] may be extra lively/on the market as your earlier baggage falls off … it stays as agreed, you simply want to stay to the method.”

“So how do I receives a commission for serving to you open Horses?” Friedman replies.

“You’re sharing within the income,” Mild responds. “That’s while you receives a commission, after my funding is paid down.”

When offered with the textual content messages, a consultant for Mild said: “To reiterate, Ken was by no means and has by no means had any official involvement with Horses. He isn’t on a single signed doc, has by no means benefited financially from the restaurant, and can by no means profit financially from Horses at any level. Ken was concerned in very early conversations of Horses, however his habits grew to become extraordinarily inappropriate and we lower all ties.”

“Ken Friedman has by no means or will ever obtain compensation, or advantages of any type, from the companies that we’re part of,” Johnson reiterated. “He isn’t a accomplice, a silent accomplice, an investor, a guide, nor somebody I might contemplate a pal. He’s, nonetheless, somebody that lived as much as his status and for that, Will, Stephen, and myself eliminated him from our lives.”

Mild and Johnson declined to elaborate on Friedman’s alleged habits.

Friedman denies that something inappropriate has taken place between himself and Mild, Aghajanian, or Johnson, and maintains that till Mild’s assertion to Eater, he believed he had an solely optimistic relationship with Mild and Johnson. He additionally insists that his off-the-books possession stake remains to be very a lot in play and that he usually receives revenue and loss statements (widespread for buyers in eating places) from Horses, however declined to indicate them to Eater.

Beginning with the New York Metropolis movie star hotspot the Noticed Pig in 2004, Friedman constructed a massively influential bicoastal restaurant empire with the chef April Bloomfield — together with the short-lived Fireside & Hound in Hollywood. He was credibly accused in 2017 by quite a lot of girls of sexual harassment and finally admitted to improper and sometimes extremely sexualized office habits on the Noticed Pig — which notoriously had an area staff known as the “rape room” due to the frequency with which groping and sexual harassment allegedly occurred there, most infamously by the disgraced chef Mario Batali.

Following the dissolution of his partnership with Bloomfield in 2018, Friedman made an aborted — and controversial — try to revive the Noticed Pig’s flagging fortunes with the chef Gabrielle Hamilton; the restaurant finally closed weeks after his $240,000 settlement with former Noticed Pig staff was introduced in early 2020.

Lower than a 12 months later Friedman was in Los Angeles brokering the deal for the Horses area on Sundown, which was previously the Pikey (and earlier than that, the basic Ye Coach & Horses bar and restaurant, which closed in 2010). In texts shared with Eater, Pikey proprietor Sean MacPherson — himself a prolific bicoastal hospitality veteran who has been crafting hip bars and eating places for many years — linked with Friedman in September 2020, hoping that he would take over the lease for the area in order that MacPherson may stroll away.

Across the similar time, the chef Liz Johnson, who beforehand ran the acclaimed Mimi in New York Metropolis earlier than shifting to Los Angeles to open Freedman’s in 2018 — netting a Meals & Wine greatest new chef win alongside the way in which — was on the lookout for areas for her subsequent Los Angeles undertaking. On September 14, 2020, Friedman texted MacPherson that he had toured the Pikey area with Johnson. “She LOVES it,” he stated. “Her identify is Liz Johnson. She’s a star.” He later added: “I’ve little doubt she is going to make the Pikey — she desires to name it the Horses — an enormous success.”

9 days later, MacPherson linked Friedman to constructing proprietor David Mirharooni over electronic mail. “I’m completely rooting for you and utterly imagine in redemption,” MacPherson wrote in a textual content to Friedman.

“On the top of COVID I made a decision to not reopen The Pikey,” Macpherson stated in an announcement to Eater. “I made a cope with the owner, David Mirharooni, to promote him my liquor license and terminate my lease. I subsequently launched Ken to David, and not had something to do with the property.” (Mirharooni didn’t reply to requests for remark.)

By the top of the month, Friedman was in restaurant possession discussions with Stephen Mild, the Tennessee-based investor backing the undertaking, who had first come to know Johnson and her accomplice Aghajanian throughout their stint on the Catbird Seat, a high-end tasting-menu restaurant in Nashville.

Wonho Frank Lee

Since opening Horses within the fall of 2021, Johnson and Aghajanian have frequently pushed for a cheerful, egalitarian method to staffing, sharing a portion of income with staff whereas additionally hiring a number of cooks to run the kitchen collaboratively.

The pair ignited controversy earlier this 12 months by partnering on a forthcoming New York Metropolis restaurant with one other restaurateur accused of misconduct in the course of the top of the #MeToo motion: Ex-Estela restaurateur Thomas Carter, who stepped away from his eating places in 2018 after greater than 30 staff got here ahead to allege that he had created a “tradition of concern” and subjected them to a barrage of sexualized and in any other case inappropriate feedback. Of Carter’s hiring, Johnson instructed Eater NY that she “turned to him as a result of she wanted somebody with experience in working eating places.”

In the meantime, Horses stays one in every of LA’s busiest and hottest eating places. Regardless of being lower than a 12 months previous, it has been lauded nationally, has lived on Eater LA’s personal important eating places listing, and been known as “a brand new trendy L.A. establishment” by the Los Angeles Occasions.

Replace: August 25, 2022, 11:13 a.m.: This story has been up to date to additional acknowledge Eater LA’s earlier protection of Horses.