Angela Dimayuga Explains Why She Left Mission Chinese

Apparently rising star chef Angela Dimayuga had a testy breakup with Mission Chinese chef-owner Danny Bowien. In a new profile on The Cut, Dimayuga says that she left after Bowien announced the new Bushwick location of the restaurant in October. The fact that she wasn’t included in the new development meant that Bowien wasn’t going to let her grow in the company, work on a new concept, or be a partner, she says.

“My sphere of ambition is just different and bigger,” Dimayuga says in the piece.

Her departure concluded her six year run at the restaurant including work on the opening teams of both New York locations of Mission Chinese Food. Last month, she essentially took credit for many aspects of the LES restaurant’s success, such as the eclectic look and several signature dishes. Bowien has not commented on her involvement.

Dimayuga — whose profile has only gotten higher with her recent political outspokenness — had been taking more of a “creative director” role at the restaurant for a while anyway, she notes in The Cut piece. She doesn’t have specific plans and is instead leaning into collaborations: projects that “caused friction” while she was at Mission.

Elsewhere in the profile, she comments on the rise in attention on sexual harassment in the world and in the restaurant industry. A manager at Mission Chinese was fired for an inappropriate comment; Dimayuga says she struggled on how to approach it, particularly as she was publicly lauded for progressive views.

On harassment in the restaurant, she says: “It was not something that I could have done on my own. And my issue, in reading about all these sexual-harassment cases, is that the work has to be done by women. Solely women. At the same time women are victimized, they’re asked to speak, and they’re asked to take action.”

See the full profile here.