Former culinary star Mario Batali has severed ties with his restaurant partners.
According to The New York Times, a new company will be created to replace the previous entity known as Batali & Bastianich (B&B) Hospitality Group. The news comes more than a year after Batali resigned from the company amid sexual misconduct allegations.
Tanya Bastianich Manuali bought Batali’s shares in all the restaurants. Terms of the buyout remain unknown.
Batali and the Bastianich family of restaurateurs were in business together for 20-plus years.
Batali “will no longer profit from the restaurants in any way, shape or form,” said Bastianich Manuali on Wednesday.
Manuali will head day-to-day operations at the new company, which has not yet been named.
The new company will operate the group’s remaining 16 restaurants under a new management and financial structure.
Batali is also selling his minority interest in Eataly, the New York-based chain of luxury Italian markets.
B&B Hospitality Group had been looking to buy out Batali last May.
According to The Associated Press, the company was "actively negotiating" to ink a deal after a "60 Minutes" special aired in which several alleged victims and witnesses who worked at The Spotted Pig, a restaurant in Manhattan's West Village, spoke at length about Batali and his actions.
Batali, who has apologized for inappropriate touching, denied the assault allegations. He was later sued.
B&B maintains that it had been unaware of the Batali allegations.
"I apologize to the people I have mistreated and hurt," Batali said at the time. "Although the identities of most of the individuals mentioned in these stories have not been revealed to me, much of the behavior described does, in fact, match up with ways I have acted. That behavior was wrong and there are no excuses. I take full responsibility and am deeply sorry for any pain, humiliation or discomfort I have caused to my peers, employees, customers, friends and family."
Online food publication Eater New York cited claims from multiple anonymous women alleging that Batali had inappropriately touched them, amid other allegations.
In addition to Eatlay, the Batali & Bastianich partnership owned dozens of other restaurants and food businesses including Babbo and Del Posto.
California chef Nancy Silverton and Lidia Bastianich, the chef and owner of Felidia in Manhattan, will be partners in the new company alongside Bastianich Manuali and her brother, Joe Bastianich.