Geoffrey Lee stepped away from the kitchen at all three of his San Francisco restaurants last month, but he can’t seem to step away from the internet. The disgraced chef, who made headlines in early January for heaping verbal abuse upon two local food influencers, is once again facing accusations of online harassment.
Lee quit as executive chef at Hamburger Project after screenshots surfaced that showed him attacking influencer Kat Ensign, who had posted a poor review of the Divisadero Street burger joint. Following backlash on Yelp and other social media, Lee also left his 10-year-old omakase restaurant Ju-ni and its less-formal spinoff Handroll Project. All three restaurants swiftly posted on social media condemning the chef’s behavior and distancing themselves from him, although the Ju-ni account later removed its message.
But the drama didn’t end there. In a video posted to Instagram on Wednesday, Ensign offered visual evidence to claim that Lee is still involved in Hamburger Project and Ju-Ni and has continued to harass women, including herself, online.
Among the screenshots she shared was one from an Instagram Story he posted about a ramen shop in Japan that allegedly placed a bounty on the heads of two people who left unfavorable reviews. Ensign also posted a screenshot of messages that appear to be from Lee in which he asks: “Should I have put a bounty on her head?” The language and post are similar to content Lee sent via Instagram to a Standard staffer.
This left Ensign shaken, she told The Standard. “If he thinks this is OK to put on the internet knowing that he got in trouble already, it showed me that he had no fear,” she said. “At that point, I feared for my life.” She has declined to take legal action, though she shared a picture of a report she filed with the San Francisco Police Department’s special victims unit.
In the same video posted Wednesday, Ensign reads aloud a Feb. 6 email from someone who claimed to have worked for Lee, accusing him of sexual abuse and online harassment. The language it used matched an email sent to The Standard from an anonymous email account, also dated Feb. 6, that outlined similar allegations.
In the video, Ensign also alleges that Lee set up an email account in her name and used it to harass another victim. That woman, Gii Ness-Chang, lives in Australia and has never visited the U.S., but she posted a critical review of Hamburger Project in support of Lee’s victims. Lee, she said, then contacted her several times on Facebook Messenger. She shared with The Standard screen shots, one of which shows Lee musing about whether he should have put a bounty on Ensign’s head.
“I answered once. He was quite animated,” Ness-Chang said. “He had a lot to say, making sexual comments, like asking me if I spit or swallow, then saying he wouldn’t fuck me anyway.”
She blocked him, but he began to message her over Instagram until she blocked him there, too. Ness-Chang says she then began receiving emails from a Gmail account that purported to be Kat Ensign, urging her to shoot her dog in the head. She believes those, too, came from Lee.
The Standard was not able to independently verify that claim. However, during a visit this month to Hamburger Project, staffers said Lee no longer worked in the kitchen there.
Ju-ni on Wednesday posted to Instagram a remorseful message reaffirming that Lee left Jan. 3 and has not been part of daily operations since. The restaurant apologized to Lee’s alleged victims and for taking down the earlier message announcing his departure. “Looking back, it was probably a mistake to delete that post,” the post says.
Tan Truong, Lee’s business partner at Ju-ni, offered no further comment Thursday.
Lee did not respond to several requests for comment. However, he denied Ensign’s allegations of continued harassment to Eater SF while acknowledging that he remains a silent partner in the restaurants, at which he continues to dine.
This story has been updated with an account from a second victim of Lee’s alleged online harassment.