Almost from the moment he opened his first restaurant in 2005, Charlie Hallowell was a culinary star.

Patrons and the national media were immediate fans of Pizzaiolo, the springboard for a trio of popular restaurants Hallowell would create in the East Bay. In his glowing initial review, Chronicle dining critic Michael Bauer noted Hallowell’s earlier tenure at Berkeley’s most celebrated restaurant, suggesting that Pizzaiolo, with its tattooed servers and distressed brick walls, “may well be the Chez Panisse of the new generation of diners.”

The review also happened to capture a server’s response when asked about the evening’s specialty pizza. "The chef just does whatever he likes at the moment,” came the reply.

More than 12 years later, that offhand remark carries a new, more disturbing connotation. In December, a Chronicle report detailed allegations of sexual harassment against Hallowell from 17 women who were former employees at Pizzaiolo and his other restaurants, Boot & Shoe Service and Penrose. They described a persistently degrading, at times threatening environment, where the chef-owner’s constant banter about his erotic fantasies and crude come-ons were an inescapable part of their work experience.

Initially, when presented with the allegations, Hallowell, 44, was contrite. His behavior, he acknowledged, was “unfiltered and often completely inappropriate.” He admitted to almost everything the women alleged. “I have participated in and allowed an uncomfortable workplace for women,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “I feel sick to my stomach that I was so blind to the real ramifications of my words and behavior.”

Hallowell quickly agreed to step away from day-to-day operations at his restaurants. He and his business partner, investor Richard Weinstein, hired an attorney to conduct an internal investigation and put a new chief operating officer in charge. The company held meetings with employees and began sexual harassment training sessions for managers. Hallowell also connected with an Oakland social justice organization to try to start making amends.

But even as those attempts to repair his reputation and preserve his 150-employee business were being made, more than a dozen servers, hosts, cooks, bartenders and managers who had worked in his restaurants contacted The Chronicle with new allegations involving Hallowell, including uninvited kisses and spankings in addition to caustic sexual language. The number of women accusing Hallowell of sexual harassment now totals 31.

Many of the allegations suggest that rather than being blind to the consequences of his actions, Hallowell was confronted with them time after time. In at least one instance, ex-employees said, he signed a complaint about his behavior, acknowledging he received it, while another claim of harassment was settled privately with a cash payment.

Additionally, 10 women have told The Chronicle that Weinstein, 68, who took charge of the restaurant group when Hallowell stepped away, also subjected them to inappropriate touching, propositions and lewd remarks.

Neither Hallowell nor Weinstein would agree to an interview for this story. A communications consultant their company has hired, Larry Kamer, said in an email that Weinstein did not recall any of the incidents alleged to involve him, and said he would be “mortified” to learn he had offended an employee. Shown specific additional allegations of harassment against Hallowell, Kamer said: “Charlie has admitted the things he has done and continues to take responsibility for his actions. He is not going to admit to things he has not done. Nothing you report here happened.”

However, when told that at least a dozen women said they had left Hallowell’s employ because of sexual harassment, Kamer said: “We deeply regret that these women felt they had no choice but to leave because of harassment or other workplace issues. … We cannot undo what happened, but we intend to learn important lessons from the experience and build a more responsive and humane workplace.”

So why did nothing appear to change before the allegations became public? Even friends and supporters interviewed for this story said they, too, had admonished Hallowell after witnessing his offensive behavior.

The company’s own protocol for dealing with harassment complaints appears to have played a part. Twelve women who resigned told The Chronicle they had reported their harassment to managers. But ultimately, the company’s official complaint process led up to the very men they accused. Four managers said they regularly confronted Hallowell about his own harassment of employees and, in some cases, about Weinstein’s.

Hallowell’s abusive behavior persisted until the story was published in December, said Karina Vlastnik, who resigned from her four-year post as a server at Boot & Shoe Service that same week. The 29-year-old said that Hallowell would single her out every time he came into the restaurant, demanding her attention even while she tried to carry hot plates to her tables.

"He feels like he can do anything," she said.

Hallowell is not the first nor the most famous chef to be accused of harassment. In just the past several months, high-profile chefs across the country have faced similar allegations.

But long before #MeToo became a movement, the problem had plagued the restaurant industry. A 2014 study by an industry watchdog nonprofit, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, found that two-thirds of nearly 700 female restaurant employees surveyed said they had been harassed by owners, managers or supervisors.

The “celebrity chef syndrome, where you have the overvaluation of certain people’s skills and they become stars,” is often to blame, said Joan Williams, a professor of law at UC Hastings and director of its Center for Worklife Law. “Many of the normal constraints disappear if you’re one of these restaurant star chefs. The only thing limiting you is character, and some people have it and some people don’t.”

Between 2005 and 2013, Hallowell’s popularity would help him build a mini-empire of restaurants in Oakland. Diners and critics loved them. They also loved him. He was passionate, about both food and social causes. He was endearing. He was funny, too, sometimes profanely so, but it seemed only to add to his restaurants’ boundary-pushing allure.

What dismayed many about the accusations that surfaced late last year was that they threatened to undermine all the good Hallowell had achieved. This was the same man, said friends and supporters, who provided employees with health care, who delivered meals to their homes after the births of babies. He held “Sunday Supper” fundraisers for local nonprofits. Yes, he’d been inappropriate, they agreed, but there was more to the man that should be considered.

“He’s more than just a loud-mouthed, vulgar person. That’s accurate, but I felt obligated to be a voice that he’s being depicted like a really bad person,” said a friend, Chris Crawford.

Crawford, 35, said she is not unsympathetic to the women who have spoken out about Hallowell’s sexual misconduct, but added: “I’m wondering what to do next. Do we throw Charlie aside and throw him away? He has a lot of growing up to do. But he is capable of acknowledging that he’s wrong.”

Others, though, suggested that Hallowell’s inappropriate conduct had been present for decades, stretching back to his first post at Berkeley’s farm-to-table temple, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse.

A native of Connecticut, Hallowell was raised on a diet of TV dinners and Chef Boyardee. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English and landed a low-level job in Waters’ kitchen, soon becoming a favorite of top management.

Russell Moore was one of Hallowell’s supervisors there. Now chef-owner of Oakland restaurants Camino and the Kebabery, Moore remembers that others thought of Hallowell as charming and enthusiastic at the time. He could be “offensive in just the funniest way,” Moore said. “And they would forgive him, because he’s like a puppy dog.”

But he often took things too far, Moore said. He had “difficult talks” with Hallowell about the way he used offensive language at work, especially with female co-workers.

“Everyone’s known about Charlie. Everyone’s got a gross story about him, and they think it’s funny,” said Moore, 54. “If you actually work there, it’s not funny. There is this dark side that is part of the deal.

“The hope was that when he was a business owner, a restaurant owner, he would be better. Instead, I think he got worse.”

Even as Pizzaiolo’s creative food, cocktails and hip vibe began drawing crowds in 2005, many employees say, its edginess often verged on lawlessness.

The restaurant’s first bar manager, Sarah Moore, said Hallowell would regularly slap her on the butt when she was in the kitchen cutting up limes and doing other prep work. While not corroborating these specific incidents, others reported seeing Hallowell spank female employees.

“I don’t think I felt like I had the right to be upset about it at the time. It was part of the culture,” said Moore, who was 24 then.

Catalina del Canto landed her first job as a cook at Boot & Shoe Service in 2012, at age 23. One of her duties was to put away the produce that Hallowell brought in each Tuesday from the farmers’ market.

“The walk-in was the place where things would get scary,” she said.

On several occasions, del Canto said, Hallowell would press himself against her backside when he helped her lift heavy boxes onto higher shelves. She said she only realized later how inappropriate that was, so she didn’t complain about it at the time.

She did report other interactions with him, however. Hallowell, she said, frequently made sexual advances to her in the walk-in refrigerator, including telling her: “Do you know how badly I want to f— you?” And, “Oh, you looked so great in that dress, but it would look even better on my floor.”

Del Canto’s mother and ex-boyfriend corroborated her account. At their prompting, she filed a written complaint with a manager, which she and the manager said Hallowell also signed in acknowledgment of receiving the grievance. After that, his behavior changed for a time, del Canto said, and she was promoted to a position that kept her from being in the walk-in with him.

Kamer, Hallowell’s spokesman, included these incidents among those he said never happened.

At least one employee who made a sexual harassment claim against Hallowell received a cash settlement, according to three people familiar with the arrangement.

Among the three is Laura Judson, 40, who learned of the incident as the employee’s manager at the time. In 2015, the employee, who was pregnant, went into Boot & Shoe Service with her fiance and a male friend for brunch before work, according to Judson. Hallowell came to their table and began speaking in graphic detail about how the employee’s body and the couple’s sex life would change during pregnancy and childbirth, Judson said. Stunned, the group walked out abruptly after Hallowell left the table.

In 2016, the employee settled a sexual harassment claim with the company over the incident, signing a nondisclosure agreement as part of the deal, according to Judson and others. But, according to Travis Vincej, 33, a line cook at Pizzaiolo and Penrose from 2011 to 2016, Hallowell spoke openly about the situation.

In an email, Kamer said: “This issue was taken very seriously and was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties,” Kamer said. “We continue to honor our part in that resolution, which includes not disclosing its details.”

Under both state and federal law, many of the actions alleged by the 31 former employees who spoke to The Chronicle are illegal. According to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, illegal harassing behavior includes touching, impeding or blocking movements, as well as making or using derogatory comments. State law also prohibits “leering” and “making sexual gestures,” as well as “graphic verbal commentaries about an individual’s body” and “sexually degrading words used to describe an individual.”

The employee manual for Hallowell’s restaurants spelled out these same provisions, noting “unlawful” and “prohibited” forms of sexual harassment, including “unwelcome touching,” “unwelcome sexual advances” and “verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

It also detailed the procedure for dealing with harassment complaints: They should be reported up the chain to the top managers, Hallowell and Weinstein. “In the event Richard Weinstein or Charlie Hallowell is accused of harassment,” the manual said, “neutral management level employees will be appointed immediately to conduct an effective and prompt investigation.”

Kamer said the company had conducted such an investigation before the one prompted by The Chronicle’s story, but he would not comment further on it.

A commercial real estate investor and principal at Citrine Advisors in Oakland, Weinstein is Hallowell’s only business partner. When Hallowell stepped away from company operations in December, it was Weinstein who called a company meeting to address the harassment complaints.

However, over the course of interviewing more than 70 people about alleged sexual misconduct in Hallowell’s restaurants, 10 former employees described how Weinstein, too, had subjected them to unwanted touching, kisses, propositions and demeaning remarks.

“Richard became the person I tried to avoid, because I knew he was going to touch me or say something about how I looked,” said Jadelynn Stahl, a server at Boot & Shoe Service for several years beginning in 2011. “Richard would pull me to him upon greeting me and, instead of kissing my cheek, would kiss the side of my neck, to which I finally said, ‘You can shake my hand and that’s it.’”

Claire Whitmer, 27, who worked as a server at Boot & Shoe Service for about three years beginning in 2013, said both men treated her and other women in demeaning ways.

“There was this culture of — ‘Whatever we want to do is allowed’ — and I just think that their behavior enabled one another,” Whitmer said. “Even though Richard had the financial power, there was a way in which he really looked up to Charlie as being the culture-setter, and having such complete access to me.”

Three managers who spoke to the paper said Weinstein’s inappropriate behavior with bartenders and servers was habitual.

Kamer, speaking for Weinstein, said: “Anyone who knows Richard will tell you that he would have been mortified, and would have apologized profusely, if he were either connected in any way to inappropriate behavior or had inadvertently offended an employee.”

While some said they found ways to cope, others walked away, stunned, from experiences in the Oakland restaurants.

Kathryn Rose Finley is a family physician in Philadelphia. In 2006, though, she was a 25-year-old who worked part time as a host at Pizzaiolo. She had left a doctoral program in molecular biology at UC Berkeley in preparation for medical school.

One January night after her shift, Finley said, she was seated at the bar with a glass of wine when a co-worker suddenly switched her drink for one in a different glass, saying, “This one’s for you.”

The next morning, awakening at home, Finley said, she could remember only flashes of what happened in the restaurant after that. But it was enough to realize that the co-worker who had switched her glass had drugged her and then raped her, she said. She called her boyfriend at the time and told him what happened. She also told two other friends and her mother, who flew out from Connecticut to provide support. All four have corroborated her account.

Three days later, after confronting the man she accused, Finley reported the rape to Oakland police. She said she was told it was too late to examine her for evidence of sexual assault, but officers took photos of bruises on her hips and collected the skirt, tights and sweater she had been wearing that night.

More than 12 years later, Finley’s anger is still fresh as she recalls the moment she went back to Pizzaiolo to meet with Hallowell and tell him what had happened.

“He said nothing for a split second, and then there was raucous laughter,” said Finley. “I felt like I had been slapped in the face. It felt like another assault — like I gotta get away from this guy.”

Finley never returned to Pizzaiolo. No one from the restaurant contacted her after she reported the rape to Hallowell, she said. “I left thinking, if Charlie’s not going to take this seriously, then the police will,” Finley said.

The case is documented in an Oakland police report that was forwarded to prosecutors, who declined to bring charges, police said. Because of that, and because the man Finley identified as her assailant could not be reached for comment, The Chronicle is not naming him.

Responding to Finley’s allegations, Kamer said the company investigated the alleged assault, disciplined the man she identified and fired him soon after. Kamer would not specify why he was fired. He said the company never heard from Oakland police, and that Hallowell had advised Finley to contact a restaurant lawyer. She says she has no recollection of that. “Charlie took Ms. Finley’s concerns very seriously and never belittled her or her complaints,” Kamer said.

“I was assaulted there, and treated badly,” Finley said, “and Charlie’s response to me was a double trauma.”

Over a week starting Jan. 21, all seven of the top managers and chefs at Boot & Shoe Service made good on a threat to resign if Hallowell refused to divest completely from the restaurant. At a Jan. 30 news conference in Oakland, nine of Hallowell’s accusers made the same demand. The group had retained Los Angeles civil rights attorney Mika Hilaire as a spokeswoman.

But as new allegations have arisen and pressure on Hallowell to exit completely has continued, supporters of the chef also have stepped forward.

In interviews, eight of his friends and family members said they have had to evaluate their roles, take sides and ponder what’s next. None denied the allegations against him, though some downplayed the severity of his actions. They all argued that he should be given a chance to make restitution and change his ways.

Meanwhile, others acting anonymously also came to the chef’s defense, in a series of threatening emails to The Chronicle and some of its sources for this story.

Those messages, which included some purporting to be from the hacker activist group Anonymous, were sent to a Chronicle reporter, some of the women who had made allegations, and a lawyer representing some accusers. The email to the newspaper claimed the sender had obtained “compromised information” about the reporting and stated that “the sources for your forthcoming article ... do not stand up to scrutiny.”

“If you have no conscience of your own,” it warned, “we are prepared to provide you with one.”

Hallowell’s spokesman said his client had no involvement in those emails, saying, “We certainly condemn that kind of behavior.”

Instead, he said, Hallowell is focused on making things right.

Hallowell has turned to a nonprofit called Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth to coordinate a series of “talking circles” — which draw on American Indian healing practices — with those affected by his behavior. The first circle took place Feb. 4 with Hallowell’s friends and family, said Teiahsha Bankhead, executive director of the organization, and included a reading of a letter written to Hallowell from a San Quentin inmate imprisoned for a sexual offense. Future circles, she said, will include any employees and accusers who wish to take part.

Bankhead said Hallowell was eager to set up the circles because of his “unbearable emotional pain.”

“He wants to make it better. He’s sitting with that pain right now,” Bankhead said. “He’s torn up about this. He’ll say, ‘How could I have been perpetuating this? I’m a feminist.’”

Some employees, too, have rallied around Hallowell. A Jan. 21 open letter from a group of staffers from his three restaurants expressed the intention to support him and stay in their jobs. “We believe the large majority of our restaurant family wants to unite, to look for a path that is supportive of all involved, and to provide a chance to heal, change and move forward, together,” the letter read.

Sent by Kamer to several media outlets, the letter subsequently was amended when several employees listed as signers said they had in fact not signed it.

At a news conference Jan. 30, Hallowell attorney Yasmeen Omidi announced that the company had completed its own investigation into the harassment allegations, including conducting interviews with 55 mostly current employees. (The accusers quoted in The Chronicle’s December report said they were not interviewed.) Citing confidentiality reasons, the company has not released any results, other than to conclude that “no criminal conduct was involved.”

Omidi also outlined “the multiple proactive steps that (Hallowell) has taken to repair the damage and stop any hurtful behavior that has happened.” She said that when Hallowell returns to his company, after a period of at least six months without a salary, it would be solely in a “creative capacity.”

Many who have accused Hallowell are doubtful of a positive outcome.

Sydni Skorich, who worked in his restaurants for nearly five years before quitting in December, said she believes it would be impossible to create a safe environment in Hallowell’s restaurants as long as he remains owner.

“In Charlie’s restaurant,” she said, “to survive was to avoid him.”