Kissed without consent: Phoebe’s joy at Grossi Florentino job turned to tears

Phoebe Rizzoli was excited after landing a job at fine-dining institution Grossi Florentino.

“I felt like I’d made it,” she says of getting a spot at the glamorous restaurant just a few hundred metres from Victoria’s parliament house. “Then it went downhill pretty quickly.”

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Over the next 18 months, she says she endured frequent sexual harassment, with near-daily comments from male staff about her appearance and body.

The then-20-year-old brushed the comments off, but when a senior sommelier grabbed her face and kissed her lips without consent at work in 2022, she reported it to management.

After that, she says her normal duties were cut back and she felt as though she was “frosted” out of the business.

“I felt like I’d like lost the respect of senior staff,” she says. “It didn’t feel fair. It didn’t feel right.”

Rizzoli wrote a resignation letter filled with compliments, which she felt was the easiest way to leave on good terms. The email made no mention of her true reason for leaving, she says, or how hurt she felt by the process.

Through lawyers, Grossi Restaurants did not directly respond to a detailed list of questions about Rizzoli’s treatment, but denied she was demoted and pointed to her resignation letter to support this.

The company “was aware of, and appropriately dealt with, a complaint from Ms Rizzoli”, the lawyers said.

Rizzoli’s account of the culture at the Grossi Group’s restaurants is consistent with that of more than a dozen former employees, who in interviews described sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination, with limited avenues of complaint.

Former bartender Melissa Richardson said she also reported an incident of sexual harassment to her manager after a male employee became intoxicated and told her at a work function: “By the end of the day, I am going to f— you”.

Richardson says her complaint went nowhere. She left Grossi Florentino in 2015 after what she described as a “toxic” culture of long hours, partying and sexism that left her so traumatised she avoided the top of Bourke Street for two years.

“Women there were second-class citizens. If you weren’t Italian, you were a third-class citizen,” Richardson said. “They did a lot of damage, to me, to a lot of people. They’re toxic, and they spread their toxicity. They tell you [that] you’re the problem and you’re replaceable.”

This masthead revealed this week that one of Australia’s most prominent celebrity chefs, Guy Grossi, issued a public apology to a senior journalist over a claim he groped her breast at an industry event in 2022.

Grossi was not involved in the incidents described by Rizzoli, and she says he was always kind to her, but she described the fine-dining kitchen as a “locker room” where male chefs would “rile each other up” and sexism was rife.

Hospitality cultural change advocate Jamie Bucirde said “every comment matters” and that language “sets the tone for the workplace”.

“People do mimic and learn from behaviour,” she said. “People say, if it’s not as extreme as rape, it’s not worth exploring. But the spectrum of sexual harassment is so wide. No one should feel uncomfortable in their workplace.”

Bucirde said the hospitality industry has been trapped in a “trauma cycle” where chefs pass on bad behaviour to the next generation.

“There’s a really big celebrity chef culture and we glorify those people. So we really need people leading these conversations.”

‘Like a motto’

The upstairs kitchen at Grossi Florentino is at the end of a corridor, far from the view of guests.

Rizzoli said the chefs working in the almost exclusively male kitchen made regular comments about her body and appearance, such as “you’re sexy” or “I like the way you walk”.

One of these chefs started sending “excessive” messages to her private Instagram account – which she did not respond to.

Such behaviour towards female staff was routinely explained internally as “part of the Italian culture”, Rizzoli said, where kissing, touching and sexually charged comments were normalised.

“I’d heard that so many times,” she says. “It was like a motto.”

Eventually, the behaviour crossed a line when Rizzoli came on the radar of the sommelier, who she said was “always very, very touchy”.

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This claim was supported by two additional women, who declined to be named because they still worked in the industry, who said the sommelier was “really touchy” and “really Italian”.

“That’s how it was explained to me at first, and I felt a bit silly,” said one woman who worked at Grossi Grill from 2020 to 2022. “But as time went on, I was saying, ‘No, it’s not culture’. It started to be taken more seriously.”

Most shifts, Rizzoli says the sommelier touched her body, putting his hands on the small of her back, her cheeks, her hair.

During one evening shift in 2022, Rizzoli was alone in the kitchen when he approached her, grabbed her face and kissed her on the lips.

“Then he put his hand on my back to pull me towards him. The wall was right behind me,” she said. “It freaked me out. It was awful. He walked off as if nothing happened.”

She was encouraged by a coworker to report the incident to management, and in March 2022 set up a meeting with a senior manager.

The meeting lasted no more than 15 minutes and nothing was written down, Rizzoli said, who was almost in tears as she relayed what happened.

“It was a short meeting, [they] were like ‘Oh, that’s not good. We’ll talk to him. Anything else you need?’”

Two days later, Rizzoli came into work and the sommelier was there, “storming around” and avoiding eye contact with her, she said. “I was like, ‘Oh shit, they must have told him’.”

Rizzoli never received any updates about the status of her complaint, and says that over the next few months, her duties were cut back to polishing items out the back.

“I was good at my job, but then they essentially frosted me out.”

She started calling in sick for shifts, before eventually resigning in May 2022 with the complimentary email.

“I was just in tears the whole day before I sent that email, and after I sent the email. I was just sad and confused and overwhelmed, and felt like I’d been ostracised from something I loved and was good at.”

In response to questions, Grossi’s lawyers cited Rizzoli’s resignation email, which contained “the most flattering compliments including the support she felt she was given”, to undermine her claims.

“After Ms Rizzoli resigned, Grossi Restaurants reached out to her on multiple occasions enquiring as to her availability for work, which, on occasion, she accepted,” they said.

The lawyers did not respond to questions about whether employment lawyers were retained to deal with Rizzoli’s complaint, or whether the sommelier was disciplined.

Rizzoli said she went through a period of blaming herself for the incident, but now realises the company’s response was inadequate. She is speaking out to ensure other young women don’t have the same experience.

“I really don’t think it’s OK that he treated me that way. I worry that he will treat others that way. I also think it’s not really fair that I ended up essentially ostracised out of my job because I brought it up.”

Nine women interviewed by this investigation said “flirtatious”, “touchy” and “feely” behaviour by male chefs employed in Grossi’s kitchens was routinely dismissed as an expression of Italian culture.

I slapped one of the chefs across the face once, after he grabbed me inappropriately.

Former staff member

“Saying something in a jovial way doesn’t change the way you’ve just commented on someone’s arse. You definitely felt objectified, I felt objectified,” said one former waitress.

Through interviews, the former employees described multiple incidents: one chef “put his finger on my lip”, another bit the shoulder of a second waitress, another kissed a third waitress on the lips, and a fourth waitress said chefs demanded “massages” in the Florentino kitchen.

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“I slapped one of the chefs across the face once, after he grabbed me inappropriately,” another female employee said. “It was very incestuous.”

Rizzoli said it was an “effective shutdown” to use culture as a shield, but it’s only with hindsight she realises this was unacceptable. This view was supported by other women who were accepting of the treatment at the time, but now look back differently.

“It doesn’t really matter if it’s Italian culture or not. There is a professionalism that needs to transpire day to day. That didn’t happen,” said one woman who worked at the restaurant for almost a decade.

Male chefs also said the kitchen culture was problematic, citing various examples of aggression and bullying. One former male chef, who worked in Ombra and Grill from 2017 to 2019, said one former senior chef was well-known for such behaviour.

“I was sworn at, called a fat piece of shit, telling my mum to go f— herself. It was verbally aggressive,” he said. “He was notorious in that building for being aggressive, everyone knew he was a hothead. It wasn’t a one-off, it was constant.”

Integral to the branding and story of Grossi Restaurants is that it’s a family-owned and run business.

The line between the personal and the professional is blurred in many hospitality settings, but many former employees said this was especially so at Grossi restaurants, where staff romantic relationships were common, particularly between senior men and younger women.

Members of the family would also join staff for after-work drinks, and multiple former employees reported a culture of binge-drinking where groups would bounce between Spleen, The European, Siglo, Angel Bar and occasionally Crown Casino.

“We would stay out all night,” Richardson said. “Come back the next day and do it all again. That’s just how it was.”

Multiple interviewees said the informality of the family business structure meant staff did not always feel comfortable making complaints.

“There wasn’t really an HR system. It was definitely still family business,” said another woman who left this year.

One email obtained by this investigation, sent in 2023 by a waitress in her 20s, raised a bullying complaint about a male manager.

“I’ve dealt with verbal abuse and bullying in a workplace before and I do not want to be made to feel like I should just ‘put up with it’ again.

“I believe Grossi as an establishment should be able to do better. [The manager] has made me visibly upset in front of customers, he’s made me cry on shift and he makes me dread coming to work which is very disappointing because I do enjoy every other aspect of my job.

“I do hope that this is taken seriously, you have a lot of young women working in this establishment and how they might get treated is something I worry about.”

After this, the waitress said she continued to be rostered on shifts with the same male manager. She resigned soon after.

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This investigation also interviewed female staff who had a different experience, with some describing working across Grossi Group restaurants as “amazing” and “empowering”.

One woman said she felt supported by Guy Grossi who told her “you can look at me like a father figure” once he became aware of an inappropriate inter-staff relationship. “He was really nice about it.”

Another woman, who worked at Grill and Ombra in 2016, said women were in senior roles, which had a positive impact on the culture, and the family business structure meant staff were treated better.

“[In] hospitality sometimes you just become a number,” she said. “They bring people along for the ride.”

At first, Rizzoli said she took her job at Grossi Florentino seriously, studying the menu, wine list and cooking style of the chefs. She attended all the training sessions and was committed to going the extra mile.

However, she noticed the male employees’ careers progressed much faster.

“When a man would apply for a front-of-house position, by the second shift he’d be taking orders, taking the champagne trolley, talking about wine. He would be on the floor immediately.

“A year-and-a-half into my position, I was still not allowed to take orders. It’s not the fault of me not being able to do it. I just wasn’t given the opportunity.”

This was supported by 14 women who have worked at Florentino over the past decade and described it as “male-dominated”, “a man’s world” and a “boys’ club” and mentioned career progression as a common factor.

“I don’t think the words gender equality ever got muttered between the walls of that building,” said one long-term former staffer. “Nobody questioned it.”

Grossi Restaurants’ lawyers did not respond to questions about gender-based discrimination, or requests to provide data about the workforce.

Both Rizzoli and Richardson now work in different industries and are speaking out in the hope of creating positive change in Melbourne’s hospitality sector. Richardson said the public image of Grossi Florentino does not match the reality.

“There’s no care for the staff,” Richardson says. “It’s all a facade.”

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