French Laundry celebrity chef Thomas Keller left Twitter. On Tuesday, after tweeting praise to the late Sheldon G. Adelson, one of President Donald Trump’s biggest donors who was also a patron of Keller’s restaurants, he immediately saw a negative reaction.
Some called Keller deaf due to the recent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, or expressed disappointment with him for making money from “bad people. “Last night, people started to notice that Keller had deleted his Twitter account (The San Francisco Chronicle broke the news).
But this incident is far from Keller’s first contact with controversy in recent months. In April, after being nominated for the White House Economic Council for Restaurants along with Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud, Keller tweeted the following: “The honoree @realdonaldtrump asked me & @danielboulud @wolfgangpuck @jeangeorges to join join the @ whitehouse Great American Economic Revival Industry Group. Proud to work together on a strategy where the safety of Americans is the priority in conjunction with economic revitalization. “
Keller also thanked Trump directly in another tweet for a related issue, just a few days earlier. Online, some people were unhappy to see a direct mention of Keller’s Trump, and were also disappointed to see the composition of the Council for Restaurants being all male, mostly white and composed of representatives from corporations like Chick-fil-A and Pepsi, instead of small businesses.
“Am I still trying to understand how these chefs represent a true cross between restaurant owners?” answered one Individual. “Oh, wait, they don’t want to. Who in that room is going to speak for the workers? I feel like we’re all putting a lot of faith in this ‘relief’ when we’re not even through the storm yet.”
With criticism against his new show building up, Keller doubled down.
“This is not a party issue; millions are struggling to put a meal on the table. I am proudly alongside some of today’s great thought leaders; Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Ajay Banga, Condoleezza Rice, Adam Silver, Ann Mukherjee, Barbara Grimm and many others, “he tweeted on a topic. Another tweet said, “I urge all haters and cynics to stop and join in meaningful action. Scream less, act more.”
And while Keller himself was not at the center of all the heat that Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed took for dinner at the French Laundry during the pandemic, it certainly did not help his restaurant’s reputation. French Laundry also received more than $ 2.4 million in PPP loans during the pandemic, while smaller restaurants struggled to get approval for the federal program that … did not please many people, for obvious reasons.
Tuesday’s controversy on Twitter was perhaps the last straw that broke the camel’s back, but leaving Twitter seems like it took too long for Keller. The chef’s Instagram account, however, remains active.