A federal extortion trial in Boston last week showed that Teamsters members haven’t lost their knack for cooking up trouble. It all began in June 2014, when the reality TV kitchen competition Top Chef visited the city to film. Let’s just say things got a little hot in Beantown, and we’re not talking about the sesame-sriracha glaze on local cod.
Turns out the Bravo show was using a non-union crew, poaching, as the Teamsters saw it, their work. The union men were boiling mad and didn’t mince words. Top Chef stars and crew endured taunts, threats, and slurs. Crew members testified that Teamsters members peppered them with nasty epithets: Host Padma Lakshmi was called “towel head”; other women on the shoot were repeatedly called the c-word.
When the production vans arrived at the restaurant where Top Chef was to film, the talent and crew were confronted by Teamsters who had clearly been stewing. “Oh, looky here, what a pretty face,” one man said, menacing Lakshmi. “What a shame about that pretty face.” She told jurors she took it as a threat. “I felt he was saying ‘I might hit you.’ ”
Longtime Top Chef judge Gail Simmons testified that one man stuck his head into her van and yelled at the occupants. “I remember him being very aggressive, animated,” she said. “I remember being afraid of what he was saying.” Fortunately, just to clarify, there was no actual batter-y.
While the show was taping, someone filleted the tires on all the vans, leaving the vehicles like so many fallen soufflés.
