Years before the debts and closures trailing his restaurants, chef Seth Stowaway was dismissed from Bar Agricole in 2019 over staff conduct complaints, the SF Chronicle reports.

Seth Stowaway — the San Francisco chef whose fire-cooked tasting counter Osito earned a Michelin star — was fired from the restaurant that first put him in charge of a kitchen, years before the unpaid bills and shutdowns that have trailed his own rooms. Stowaway was dismissed as executive chef of Bar Agricole in 2019, the San Francisco Chronicle reported this week↗ (external source, opens in a new tab), in an account not previously public.

Owner Thad Vogler put it plainly to the paper: "We terminated him." Stowaway had run the 11th Street kitchen since late 2016, the biggest job of his career to that point. Staff began raising concerns about his conduct by 2018, the Chronicle reported — that he gave unwelcome hugs and often told coworkers he loved them in ways that made people uncomfortable — and a formal warning followed. A further complaint the next spring ended his run. Reached by the paper, Stowaway said he could understand why the behavior would have unsettled colleagues and suggested his perspective as a large man differed from theirs. The account rests on the Chronicle's reporting and on Vogler.

That kitchen was Stowaway's calling card. A three-star Chronicle review in 2017 became part of his pitch as he built Osito, the Mission tasting counter he opened in October 2021 at 2875 18th Street under the entity Oso Pequeno LLC, per city business records. The $295 menu drew a Michelin star within a year; the room closed in May 2025.

The financial wreckage surfaced this year amid lawsuits, liens and worker complaints over paychecks that bounced or came late. Chicken Fried Palace, Stowaway's Southern-style diner, took a $100,000 city storefront grant and closed about a month later, as The Dissent reported. Bar Agricole did not survive either; Vogler closed it at the end of July 2024.