After debuting at the end of 2022 to much fanfare, followed by a sudden monthlong shutdown, chef Berk Güldal and co-owner Katrina Schult of top new Seattle restaurant Hamdi are facing allegations of wage and tip theft from four former employees.
A lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court on Jan. 9 on behalf of four employees accuses the couple of violating the Seattle Wage Theft Ordinance and other state statutes, including failure to pay overtime, diverting tips intended for staff to themselves, failure to consistently provide meal/rest breaks and — in the case of some of the plaintiffs — unlawful wage deductions and failure to reimburse expenses.
The lawsuit came three days after the restaurant's surprising closure on Jan. 6, less than two months after it had opened.
Reached by phone on Friday, Güldal said, "We are still working on that [lawsuit]. To be honest, our lawyer is taking care of it, because we did everything right." He and Shult deny all the claims, stating that all employees were paid for hours worked including overtime, and that all received and took part in a provided "family meal" free of charge that constituted their break time on a given shift. Tips, Güldal and Shult said, were pooled and appropriately distributed to both front and back of house; their failure to document this at the outset of the restaurant is, they maintain, the only issue.
"We are one team," Güldal said. "... And we all work together, everyone helping each other. Our mistake was just not putting [that] on paper." The four now-former employees, Shult said, "just went straight to the lawsuit. They didn't come to us, maybe because they didn't feel like they could ... but we'd always been open, like, 'Come to us. If you have any issues, if you have any problems, we're here to fix things. We're here to improve.' " Güldal called the lawsuit "very upsetting."
According to the attorney representing the four former Hamdi employees, Damian S. Mendez, "The claims [that] are being brought are truthful, and [Güldal and Shult] didn't pay what they were supposed to pay" in terms of both overtime and tips earned, with breaks also not obtained.
"Obviously, there's enough evidence for me to have brought [the suit], and in that there will be more evidence through the discovery process," Mendez said. "Things will get sorted out right — the facts will speak for themselves."
Starting out as a pandemic pop-up, Hamdi opened in Seattle's Frelard neighborhood in mid-November. There was great anticipation about its Turkish and Anatolian cuisine in both local and national press, with Bon Appétit magazine naming it one of "The Most Exciting New Restaurants of November" nationwide. Güldal and Shult's multi-Michelin-starred resumes — his including work in the kitchens of Eleven Madison Park and SingleThread, hers front of the house for The French Laundry — made it the highest-profile restaurant opening Seattle had seen in years. Reservations were snapped up as soon as they were released.
Then came Hamdi's closure Jan. 6, with Güldal and Shult saying via Instagram that they were "taking this time to do some deep cleaning and to reestablish some things."
As far as the temporary closure that coincided with the filing of the suit, Schult said that going from running pop-ups to opening the restaurant was a "big step," one that they took with "high hopes." "We had this vision in our mind," she said, "because we know how the Turkish hospitality is, and that's what we were going for. And we quickly realized that it's a lot harder to find that same passion and that same understanding and that same respect in other people, and we just realized very quickly that we weren't accomplishing that."
Service was "going down" and one chef left due to a family situation, Güldal said, and then "we just wanted to just step back, and then figure out [how to] get a stronger team." An Instagram post from Hamdi three days before the temporary closure indicated that they were hiring for all positions, "looking for wonderful people who work with passion and love for this industry and are ready to push everyday no matter what!"
Hamdi reopened for business Feb. 8. "Things happened at the beginning and we learned lessons," Güldal said.
