‘It was mental warfare.’ What former staffers say about Michelin-starred chef
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Former Localis and Betty staff alleged inappropriate behavior by Barnum-Dann.
- Former employees reported disputed tip pooling at the restaurants
- Developers were reported to be 'taking a pause' on deals with Barnum-Dann amid allegations
Following a social media firestorm, former staff of the restaurants Localis and Betty Wine Bar + Bistro are detailing to The Sacramento Bee allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior, belittlement and wage tampering by chef Chris Barnum-Dann, with one describing him as manipulative and “abusive in all kinds of ways.”
Barnum-Dann is a rising star in the food industry. He’s the chef and creative force behind Localis, the Michelin-starred restaurant in midtown. He took over Betty in 2024. And last year, he received Michelin’s California 2025 Sommelier Award.
Most recently, he’s looking to expand. He announced plans in March to open four new properties in Sacramento, including three at the new Tower Broadway building at 1600 Broadway. According to KVIE’s Abridged news site, the developers behind that project are “taking a pause” in light of the allegations, though they weren’t as definitive about that when asked for comment by The Bee.
While many were eager to speak out on social media and in interviews after the expansion plans were announced, few were willing to go on the record by name — either to criticize or support Barnum-Dann. In a statement provided to The Bee on April 8, chef Barnum-Dann called the accusations “baseless” and noting, from his perspective, “they stem from events that allegedly occurred between 2018 to 2020.”
Stories of harassment are not uncommon in professional kitchens. Accusations of physical and emotional abuse have recently surfaced against Rene Redzepi of Noma, the world’s top-rated restaurant. After the Sacramento allegations became public over the weekend, Barnum-Dann told The Bee he knows he “pushed people in ways that were not always constructive and (he) regrets that.”
In the course of The Bee’s investigation, five people shared their experiences on the record. Former chefs and front-of-house staff, from both restaurants, recounted their experiences spanning from Localis’ opening in 2015 to interactions at Betty as recent as 2025.
The Bee provided a list of their specific allegations to Barnum-Dann. He responded that he takes “responsibility for his actions” without addressing most of the allegations directly.
Allegations span nearly a decade
Jennifer Millsap attended culinary school with Barnum-Dann from 2009 to 2011 at the now-defunct Art Institute in Sacramento. She was among the opening crew for Localis, working the wood fire station next to him.
“In the beginning, the idea of what we were trying to create was amazing, but it just quickly became a very toxic environment,” Millsap said. “There’s no boundaries whatsoever, no leadership in terms of knowing what’s appropriate, what’s not appropriate.”
In the restaurant’s early days, Millsap became romantically involved with another staffer, who left the restaurant after their relationship crumbled.
“(Barnum-Dann) started calling me the ‘black widow.’ Like when any guy would come to Localis, I would kill them off. So he started just treating me really poorly, not giving me the same opportunities,” she said.
Millsap later developed a relationship with another employee. They’re still together and have a child.
According to Millsap, Barnum-Dann saw the two talking.
“(He) is so paranoid that he actually called us outside to have a conversation with him, because he thought we were talking about him. We were like, ‘no, actually, this doesn’t have anything to do with you,’” she said.
Still, his attitude toward her continued to sour, Millsap said. It culminated in an outburst during a meeting after one dinner service. The name of Millsap’s earlier boyfriend came up in conversation.
“And (Barnum-Dann) literally screams at the top of his lungs in front of everyone, ‘then, why did you f--- him?’” Millsap said.
While embarrassed, Millsap said she was never sexually harassed. But she observed behavior that made her uncomfortable.
“One of the games he would play while people would walk by (the restaurant’s windows) would be to rate them, to talk about their physical appearance,” she said. “He would refer to people’s backsides as their ‘cake.’ And he was rating people’s cake. And just always judging, always, always just making really terrible comments.”
Millsap left in 2016.
Allegedly drove staff to tears
Larrissa Liberko worked at Localis from 2018 to 2020. She was the one who mirrored the initial Reddit post onto Instagram to amplify its message. Liberko said she and other coworkers struggled in that environment over time.
“When I started, I was early in my career and eager to learn,” she said. “At the time, I overlooked certain behaviors that I would not accept today.”
Liberko said she was spoken to harshly in front of others on multiple occasions, including one instance that prompted a guest to intervene, telling Barnum-Dann not to speak to her that way.
Barnum-Dann’s behavior would frequently drive staff to tears, including her, she said. Once, he reportedly said he liked when he could “break someone.”
Liberko said she witnessed Barnum-Dann physically bend a sous chef over a table by pushing her head and subject her to sexualized physical contact in front of others. She said she witnessed multiple other instances of unwanted sexual comments, touching and propositions — including repeated comments about employees’ bodies and requests involving threesomes with his wife.
She said Barnum-Dann and his wife’s relationship was discussed openly in the workplace in ways that made staff uncomfortable. Liberko said in one incident, Barnum-Dann and his wife went into the restaurant building’s garage and returned looking flushed, after which he announced to staff, “I just smashed.”
Says the chef triggered PTSD-related anxiety
Justin MacClanahan said he approached Barnum-Dann in 2021, looking to expand his skill set in the kitchen. A former co-owner with his wife Jennifer of the now-defunct Brü Co. Taproom, MacClanahan was not new to professional kitchens.
He is also an Army veteran with PTSD, which he said disclosed to Barnum-Dann.
Due to his physical and emotional restrictions, MacClanahan said he wasn’t looking to work the grueling shifts required of line chefs. He just wanted to learn from a more refined kitchen.
Barnum-Dann initially brought him on as a prep cook for six hours a day in the morning and early afternoon. Within days, he MacClanahan said he was moved onto the line when one of the other chefs didn’t show up for work.
He said he was asked to do tasks he was not yet trained on, then berated for not knowing how to do them. It triggered MacClanahan’s PTSD-related anxiety, which would make him stammer.
This aggravated Barnum-Dann, according to MacClanahan, telling him, “oh, you’re so weird man. Like, why don’t you f------ just say something like a normal person?”
MacClanahan said Barnum-Dann also belittled his military experience, repeatedly referring to it as his “little soldier thing” or “little army thing.”
When directly asked to comment on MacClanahan’s reported experience, Barnum-Dann said he has “a deep respect for anyone that has served in the military.”
‘It was always a roller coaster with him’
Diego Garcia was a contemporary of MacClanahan in the Localis kitchen. He said he also experienced Barnum-Dann’s volatility.
Barnum-Dann would fly into rages, he said, if line cooks made mistakes — yelling at them and having them step off the line to reprimand them.
“He once burst out of the back door with such fury he ended up breaking the metal swing door and left us to handle service,” he said. “It was always a roller coaster with him. In a way it was mental warfare going into work dreading, was he going to be in a good mood or was he going to go off?”
Garcia also corroborated Barnum-Dann’s repeated sexualized comments to staffers. He said Barnum-Dann made comments that women were lesser “because they came with a slit.”
Zayn Skinner started at Betty Wine Bar + Bistro the year before Barnum-Dann took it over, in late 2024.
“One shift, three of us were male coworkers in the front of house. (Barnum-Dann) walked up, and most of the clientele was mostly female. He says, ‘you guys must be walking erections right now.’ And I walked away,” he said.
Both Skinner and Garcia also said there were instances Barnum-Dann would smoke cannabis in Localis and Betty.
Skinner said Barnum-Dann would smoke cannabis in the kitchen while cooking. He’d also stay in the dining room late in the evening smoking at the tables to where Skinner said, “you open the next day, and then you’ve got to, like, air out the place.”
Skinner left Betty in 2025.
Pay transparency issues go back to at least 2019
Skinner said one of the first changes Barnum-Dann announced to the Betty staff was moving to a tip pool policy. Both the kitchen and management would be paid out of the pool and the managers would also receive a pay raise.
The Fair Labor Standards Act expressly prohibits employers, including managers and supervisors, from keeping employees’ tips.
Skinner went on paternity leave in 2025, at which point he left Betty. Then, he filed a complaint with the California Labor Commissioner’s Office. When this got back to Barnum-Dann, he backpedaled on the tipping policy and said he would issue checks for back tips, Skinner said.
Skinner presented an accounting statement to The Bee and said both the amount of hours and tip wage were arbitrary, coming to about $2.70 per hour. Barnum-Dann sent checks to all employees, past and present, affected.
However, Skinner said the staff were told they would receive a $2-per-hour-pay-cut as a result of the reapportioning of the tips — and that anyone who didn’t like it could leave.
Barnum-Dann addressed those pay issues in his April 8 statement to The Bee. He said the restaurant “identified a tipping issue.” And he said he was cooperating with the Labor Commissioner to resolve the “single administrative claim.”
Former employees Liberko and Garcia said tipping transparency issues arose at Localis when they worked there.
Liberko noted one from March 11, 2019. She retained the “burrito sheet” — an accounting slip for each cover — and receipt from a service showing a $2,000 tip on a large table. The burrito sheet included handwritten notes indicating that $500 was taken out of that tip for the split between back of house — kitchen staff — and front of house — servers and host. But no further breakdown accounted for the remaining amount.
Garcia also highlighted pay issues. He recalled a private event from his time working at Localis between September 2019 and January 2022.
“I remember where the host came up to (Barnum-Dann) and handed him a stack of hundreds and said to tip us out $1,000 each. We never saw a dime,” he said. “He would claim that this tip money was going into a ‘dream fund’ toward a Michelin-starred restaurant that we wanted to go to. None of the employees knew how much of our tips were being put in said fund. We dined at Quince, a great experience. Yet, we were so brainwashed we hadn’t realized that we in fact had paid for this meal.”
Barnum-Dann denied these accounts happened. “I have never taken tips,” he said.
Pushback, reaction, what’s next
In light of the controversy, a handful of employees at Betty issued a statement, distancing themselves from Barnum-Dann.
“We are disappointed to learn about the news, and frankly, we are not interested in defending him, or offering an opposing opinion to anyone’s experience,” it said. “We don’t care to speak on Chef Chris, because to us, he’s not Betty.”
Not everyone said they had negative experiences with Barnum-Dann. Several people stepped forward in his defense, though nearly all did so after Barnum-Dann became aware of this reporting.
Anderson Sutton was a contemporary of Millsap’s as part of the opening crew in 2015. By his account, working at Localis was a career highlight.
“A lot of us would go and hang out after work. We were like a family. The restaurant environment felt more like a family rather than a job. We were really close-knit, wonderful,” he said.
Sean Bier worked at Localis for three years, including when it received its star in 2022.
“Was it always easy to work there? Of course not,” he said. “Did he sometimes get upset that we weren’t up to par and ask us to be better? Sure did. Was he ever abusive? Not in the slightest.”
Ramon Gonzalez describes his three years there from 2022 to 2025 as “the highlight of (his) career in the restaurant industry.”
“I often observed (Barnum-Dann) teaching and mentoring the cooks on the fundamentals of knife skills, seasoning and temperature,” he said. “I saw several employees achieve their ‘dream job’ or career goal: A glassware polisher became a bar manager, a line cook became lead pastry chef and an intern became a lead server.”
In the face of the allegations and with future projects in the balance, Barnum-Dann said he is doing the work to create a better environment.
“I had some significant personal changes that happened over a half a decade ago, and since then I have made meaningful changes in how I lead, communicate, and support my team,” Barnum-Dann said. “The growth took time, but we have built the restaurants’ culture into something that the team and I are proud of.”
Whether the allegations will affect Barnum-Dann’s expansion into retail units at the new Tower Broadway building are unclear. The Abridged story said that the developers working with Barnum-Dann are “taking a pause” on their business relationship with the chef.
Jon Gianulias, who heads Core Commercial, the developer behind the project, declined to confirm the report. He would say only in an email to The Bee, “Allegations are vague. I have no comment as I don’t know anything about what occurred or didn’t.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 3:15 PM.
