Maggie Moore, former John Besh assistant, says that the celebrity chef and restauranteur pressured her to go back to his hotel room with him during a business trip outing to a bar in Los Angeles, in an interview with WVUE Fox 8 News. According to her account, he refused, and he kept insisting. After repeated rejections, he “just stormed out of the bar.”

After that, her relationship with Besh soured, according to Moore. She says she told other employees what happened. She was moved to another office. Co-owner of Besh Restaurant Group, Octavio Mantilla, terminated her employment in 2016, with no notice or negative reviews, she said.

Moore says that she believes her firing was related to the refusal. The Besh Restaurant Group denies that the termination had anything to do with sexual harassment. Instead, the group says that she was laid off because her position was eliminated. They also say that she was offered a job at the company later and refused to take it.

The Besh Restaurant Group has been embroiled in a public tangle of sexual harassment allegations since a report was published on NOLA.COM over the weekend. Since then, John Besh has resigned from the company he founded. The report described a “culture of harassment” that pervaded the company.

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