Jewish celebrity chef says unhinged vegans are targeting him in hate campaign that’s hurting business
An Israeli-born celebrity chef says he’s the target of a searing hate campaign that is damaging his business and targeting his kids — and blames unhinged vegans for heating up the effort against him.
Guy Vaknin, who competed on Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” and also appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” told The Post he’s been receiving disturbing, anonymous messages with photos of his young children.
“Beautiful child. Did you feel bad when you went to kill the Palestine children? Hope your child doesn’t die like the children you killed in Palestine,” one said, according to a screenshot provided by Vaknin.
“You’re done,” it ominously concluded.
The message came amid what he called a “daily” barrage slamming him for failing to condemn Israel amid its war with Hamas after the terror group murdered 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023.
Vaknin, 42, served in the Israel Defense Forces and immigrated to America 21 years ago. He now owns eight vegan restaurants under his City Roots Hospitality brand, including Reverie and Le Basque.
He said he tried to ignore the messages, deleting most as they came in and blocking the senders.
“I didn’t want to scare my employees. … I thought it would go away,” he said, noting the hate included the vandals scrawling “Free Gaza” all over the bathroom of his West 37th Street restaurant, Beyond Sushi.
Business got worse after a Sept. 4 Instagram post from the group Vegans for Palestine, which called out Vaknin for his service in the IDF and pushed a boycott.
“Dining at these restaurants not only normalizes (and contributes to) israel’s [sic] oppression of Palestinians, but it also helps with the #VeganWashing of israeli crimes,” the group wrote.
Vaknin said the haters are only hurting his more than 200 employees. He issued a statement this week calling out the “hateful online attacks.”
“Other than my place of birth, which is Israel, I have no connection to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” the statement read in part, adding, “But my political views have never been shared publicly, and it is unfair and destructive to target our family and livelihood over assumptions.”
In response, Vegans for Palestine doubled down.
The group slammed his statement, dismissing Vaknin’s call for peace as “both-siding the suffering” and claiming “multiple people who worked with him” have spoken up.
They cited messages from Sabrina Dahlmann, a vegan influencer who posts under the Instagram handle @Sabrina.the.vegan, who wrote that she no longer supports Vaknin and claimed she’d heard from others that he used Arab slurs.
Vaknin denied using slurs. He acknowledged sending the influencer private messages with videos from his friends back home, who live close to the Gaza border and whose communities were devastated in the Oct. 7, 2023 onslaught.
“I out of grief responded in a way — I sent to her, ‘Hey look at this, this is what is happening.’ They were still figuring out body parts of my friends that were killed,” he said.
He said the two shared a meal and appeared to be at peace until Dahlmann’s post this week, which Vaknin contends amplified the hate he’s experiencing.
“As I put the statement out there, all of this blew up. I’m getting threats over here I’m getting boycotted over here,” he said. “It just became worse … the mob woke up I guess.”
A spokesman for Dahlmann declined comment. Vegans for Palestine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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