The storied Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel is closing soon, but not without a good old fashioned sexual harassment suit first. Former pastry chef Melissa Rodriguez has named the restaurant and her former boss, ex-executive chef Eric Hara, in a $25 million lawsuit claiming, among other things, that she was canned on a daily basis. As in literally picked up and put in a garbage can.
The 27-year-old Rodriguez tells the Post that Hara, who now runs the restaurant called "9" in Hell's Kitchen, "would literally pick me up and throw me in the garbage can—just because he thought it was funny." And that's not all she says Hara did to her. She also claims he would pour food in her hair on a regular basis ("heavy cream, chocolate sauce, honey"), he would sometimes break eggs and "rub it into my chest." Also he nicknamed her "whore" and would regularly tell her that she was "one-night-stand material, the type people sleep with but don't marry."
Rodriguez, who was one of two women working in the kitchen at the time, says she wasn't the only object of Hara's abuse. According to the lawsuit, when a male employee boasted of the size of his penis, a female chef was ordered to measure him with a ruler for verification.
Hara, for his part, denies all of it. "It is a money move," Hara told the Post. "I have been cooking for 16 years and never had a problem." Reps for the Oak Room have not yet responded to our request for comment.
