I Fought the Scofflaw and the Scofflaw Won

Some restaurateurs and chefs are predators. Sexual predators. Racial predators. Employee welfare predators. And maybe least concerning, but still of great importance, predatory toward their customers. Follow the trail of orange clogs, and you’ll remember that the pandemic taught us this with myriad, some criminally prosecuted, examples. These were the proverbial tip of the mixologist’s hand-chiseled iceberg, the people who were ultimately too stupid, too famous, and too egregious not to get caught when the culture shifted to open season on predators.

There is another untouched layer still left, the less famous or powerful, or maybe most terrifying, the folks who were so smart or manipulative that they escaped scrutiny. I know of more than a few Chicago names we revere, who are somehow still safe, but probably shouldn’t be.