Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry. It turned into my most extraordinary night as a critic.

I totally get the uncharitable read of Keller, but a few points --

He removed her from her friends for 2.5 hours.

This doesn't seem to be accurate. In one part she writes "After 30 minutes in the courtyard, Keller decides it’s time to wrap up."; later, she writes "Our reservation was for 7:45, and now it’s past 9 p.m." She wasn't asked to head to the courtyard until at least 815 -- "Thirty minutes after our reservation time, we are ushered through the restaurant’s iconic blue door and up a narrow staircase to an intimate room with three tables. The opening salvo of truffle vichyssoise is served, and then a general manager walks up to the table..."

I'd be thrown off-balance too in her shoes, but it was for more like 30 minutes than 2.5h.

I can't help but notice the "she" connecting that previous critic to Fegan.

I don't really get this. How else should he have referred to the previous critic? In theory I suppose he could've said "the previous critic [we were just talking about] lied.", but that's not really how people talk.

He then tries to make himself look good by bringing up the fact that he has a female head chef, which just reads like "I can't be bad, women are good too" to me.

In the interest of clarity, he did not say this to the author of the article we're discussing. That was her reporting that he - allegedly, or per "whispers," in her words - told the previous critic that. Still very much "look! We have a woman!" energy, but it's not entirely fair to assert he brought that up in this conversation.

I think it's clear that Keller acted poorly, but I don't necessarily agree that he was trying to lord it over her. I get how you'd arrive at that take, though.

Even if Keller was unaware of the fact that Fegan can't accept a free meal when on the job, this to me is a clear show of power imbalance

I'd agree that it was a power play, yes, but the power balance feels more complicated. He undoubtedly has more money, but his fortune and reputation are built on running a Bay Area restaurant that is one of the most famous in the world, and she is the restaurant critic of SF's only major newspaper. She has a significant amount of power over him, and could easily do more damage to him than this bill would cost him. In (very justifiably) writing this article, she likely has, intentionally. This is now the lead story on the newspaper's website, with additional stories about it. Even people who might have felt the previous bad reviews of Per Se and French Laundry were trendy attempts to knock down prominent fixtures may see this as rather damning.

To me, his actions come off less as trying to lord himself over her, and more as desperately rash.

And of course the great irony of this is that if Keller had just treated her like a regular patron, this article would not have been written.

I feel it's likely no article would have been written even if he had done everything except the refund. The rest was bizarre, but the refund actually put her in a position where she likely felt some sort of public disclosure was required, at which point an article explaining her side of the story would be one of her best options.

It just seems astonishingly stupid on his part.

I think people read that the chef comped the meal but missed all the subtext that made the experience uncomfortable, so thanks for making it explicit.

However, even in your framing I think you're being too charitable to Kellner regarding the free meal. Kellner has been in this industry for decades; certainly he knows the rules of ethics for critics. And more to the point, it doesn't seem that he comped the meal as a reconciliatory gesture but instead to preclude her from writing about her experience. From the article:

Weeks later, after I had told Keller I was writing this piece, his publicist contended to my editor via email that the meal was “free of charge.”

Mind you, this statement came after she had begged them to allow her to pay for the meal, after she had admitted the possibility of losing her job if she didn't.

A while, I posted what I thought was a very moving piece by Roger Ebert about criticism. He pulls a quote from the film Ratatouille:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

Fegan can never dine as 'just' a mere mortal. This is not a sexism issue: she is a food critic for a major newspaper, and important critics hold godlike positions of power and judgment over chefs. They can and do end restaurants and careers.

I have sympathy for Keller. Even though Keller is at the top of his field, chefs put in 60–80 hour work weeks. To stay at the tippy top, chefs have to put in more. They pour in tens of thousands of hours and sweat and blood, and critics can cut them down with the stroke of their pens.