Why Sohla El-Waylly Left Bon Appetit

Sohla El-Waylly joined Bon Appetit in 2019 only to leave the publication a year later – here’s why the chef and company parted ways. Chef Sohla El-Waylly’s history with the food industry dates back to her formative years being raised in Los Angeles by her Bengali parents, who ran a Baskin-Robbins store. El-Waylly later worked as a hostess at The Cheesecake Factory while studying economics at UC Irvine before she realized being a chef was her calling and enrolled at The Culinary Institute of America.

After graduating, Sohla El-Waylly started her career in the food industry proper, working at several acclaimed New York eateries including Atera and Del Posto before opening her own restaurant – gourmet Brooklyn diner Hail Mary – with her chef husband Ham El-Waylly in 2016. When Hail Mary closed its doors, El-Waylly made the transition to food media with a gig at Serious Eats before moving to Bon Appetit in the summer of 2019. This is where she worked as an assistant culinary editor and regularly appeared in videos on the magazine’s wildly popular YouTube Channel.

However, Sohla El-Waylly’s Bon Appetit tenure didn’t last long. In June 2020 a photo of Bon Appetit editor-in-chief Adam Rapaport in brownface was shared online, sparking widespread outrage and prompting conversations about the culture of racism at the company. El-Waylly herself highlighted how BIPOC employees weren’t compensated for their appearances in the brand’s popular YouTube videos and in a now-deleted Instagram story, said she felt “pushed in front of video as a display of diversity.” Others spoke out about the toxic environment experienced by BIPOC workers at Bon Appetit and its parent company Conde Nast, while further offensive photos and tweets from higher-ups – including Conde Nast VP Matt Duckor – emerged online.

Adam Rapoport and Matt Duckor resigned from their positions but that didn’t solve the culture fostered at the company so Sohla El-Waylly decided to leave Bon Appetit’s video channel (alongside two other POC employees, Priya Krishna and Rick Martinez) after failing to negotiate a satisfactory contract. Bon Appetit has since tried to address the situation by assembling a new, diverse leadership team – editor-in-chief Dawn Davis, executive editor Sonia Chopra and brand advisor Marcus Samuelsson – and hiring several new BIPOC hosts for its cooking show video channels including Jamaican-American chef DeVonn Francis and Filipino-born foodie Harold Villarosa. However, some have criticized Bon Appetit’s staff restructure and new hires as a woke-washing move that fails to address deeper issues of inequality in its workplace – just like the “display of diversity” that El-Waylly spoke of when the controversy first broke.

Meanwhile, Sohla El-Waylly’s career has gone from strength to strength since leaving Bon Appetit’s video channel. While she still freelances for the Bon Appetit magazine, she’s largely struck out on her own. In late 2020 she fronted her own ten-episode video series – Stump Sola, which was hosted on Andrew Rea’s YouTube channel Babish Culinary Universe – and nabbed her own column with foodie website Food 52. Currently, El-Waylly is busy writing a cookbook and hosting the History Channel’s YouTube series Ancient Recipes With Sohla.