‘Your husband’s been arrested’: After Alan sparked a national scandal, Rebecca was left to pick up the pieces

He was the restaurant baron arrested at a pro-Palestine rally. She was the partner left to save the business as hats were stripped. Now Rebecca Yazbek is taking control as one of the only female CEOs in Australian hospitality. AdvertisementThe restaurant tycoons‘Your husband’s been arrested’: After Alan sparked a national scandal, Rebecca was left to pick up the piecesFor years, the hospitality power couple sat at the helm of a successful culinary empire. But when an afternoon at a protest sparked a public firestorm, the foundations of their world began to crumble. In the fourth instalment of a special series profiling influential restaurant tycoons, we look at how Rebecca Yazbek is navigating the fallout of her partner’s arrest.By Myffy RigbyMarch 7, 2026“I think it was very easy for people to write me off, because I’m not a chef”: Rebecca Yazbek.Steven SiewertSaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.ShareAAA″The police called me and said: ‘Your husband’s been arrested’. Nothing can prepare you for that.”When Alan Yazbek was photographed and arrested in late 2024 at a pro-Palestine rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park, brandishing a handmade sign featuring a swastika and the words “Stop Nazi Israel” in the colours of the Israeli flag, his wife, Rebecca Yazbek, had to make some very quick – and public – decisions.The interior architect was suddenly running a multimillion-dollar group of restaurants, one of which had recently been awarded New Restaurant of the Year by the Age Good Food Guide. Just three weeks earlier, her head chef of 11 years, Jacqui Challinor, had given notice.Alan Yazbek at the pro-Palestine rally in Sydney.FacebookThe timing could not have been worse. “I lost Jacqui and Al on the same day for completely different reasons. So it was really finding my voice very quickly,” says Rebecca, who had spent the past decade building the business with her husband. “Within the space of 24 hours, it was over.”On Sunday, October 6, 2024, 10,000 people gathered at the protest. During that rally, Al was arrested and charged with knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol in public. It has been illegal to display the swastika in NSW since 2022. “He didn’t know that the symbol he used was illegal,” says Rebecca, who did not attend the rally.The night before the rally, Rebecca was out to dinner with friends. She says she had no idea what symbol her husband was painting on the sign, which he had made while she wasn’t home. Had she known, she says, she would have stopped him from leaving the house with it.AdvertisementRelated ArticleRestaurants‘Furious’: Alan Yazbek ‘no longer involved’ in Nomad restaurants after Nazi symbol scandal, says wife“I had some very close Jewish friends send me the picture, saying: ‘Please tell me this isn’t Al’. So, that’s how I found out about it. And then the police called me and said: ‘Your husband’s been arrested’. There’s nothing that can prepare you for that.”By the following Tuesday, Al, who has worked in hospitality for 30 years, was publicly out of the Nomad Group (he remains a shareholder), but the damage had been done. “For such a smart person, to not understand the consequences of your actions, I’ll never understand. But he thought he was a civilian with a right to free speech.”After the incident and before sentencing, Al Yazbek flew to India to stay in an ashram, and Rebecca stayed in Australia to deal with the aftermath. G.H Mumm pulled their partnership with their Melbourne restaurant Reine & La Rue. Law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler also confirmed to this masthead that it would no longer book corporate or work events at the two-hatted restaurant. Investment bank Goldman Sachs cancelled a Melbourne event that was scheduled with the Nomad Group. Upon the news, the Good Food Guide took away the Nomad Group’s hats. “It was a shitshow,” says Rebecca.LoadingOn Tuesday December 10, Yazbek pleaded guilty to the charges and was granted conditional release for 12 months.Yazbek, who had been silent until his plea, apologised.Advertisement“I apologise unequivocally for my actions at the demonstration on Sunday where I carried a sign that is deeply offensive to the Jewish community,” the then-director of Nomad group said in a statement.“You can be sure that [I] will do all I can to regain the trust of my wonderful staff, our loyal customers and the broader community.”Al Yazbek at court in October 2024.Dion GeorgopoulosBut Rebecca had to do what was best for the business – which, she says, was to remove Al.“I was very thankful that the media didn’t chase my children or weren’t outside my house,” she says, adding she experienced feelings of PTSD off the back of it all.“If I had accepted behaviour that didn’t meet respect and excellence, as a company director, I would have been failing my own values,” Rebecca says.Opening Reine & La Rue (the Age Good Food Guide described the restaurant as “gorgeously grandiose”) forced the business to grow up. Until then, they had run the easygoing, Mediterranean-inspired Nomad restaurants – one in Surry Hills in Sydney, and one in the Melbourne CBD.AdvertisementBut taking a lease at a heritage site and going from 200 to 300 staff