The Chapter 7 petition by the celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian may help him to fend off more than $1 million in legal claims from his former kitchen staff at Country. Zakarian, a judge on the cooking competition show "Chopped," faces claims that he failed to pay the workers properly for overtime, falsified pay records and deducted from paychecks for staff meals not given.
Geoffrey Zakarian has made all the right moves for a celebrity chef. He is a fixture on four Food Network programs, including "Chopped." Over the years, he has operated a number of high-profile restaurants, three of which have won three stars from The New York Times. He now has two places in fashionable New York hotels and plans to expand his portfolio to Miami Beach and Atlantic City.
But his latest step doesn't follow the script.
He has filed for personal bankruptcy, a move that could help fend off more than $1 million in legal claims from his kitchen staff at Country in the Carlton Hotel, along with a former partner in the restaurant, which closed nearly three years ago.
Of the 179 creditors listed in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition he filed on April 6 in federal court in Bridgeport, Conn., 152 are former cooks at Country. They are part of a class-action lawsuit against Zakarian, an owner of the restaurant and its chef, and his management firm that claims he failed to pay the workers time and a half for overtime, falsified pay records to shortchange them and deducted from their paychecks for staff meals they were not given. They are seeking $1 million in damages and $250,000 in penalties.
Neither legal action has been widely reported in the news media, nor has the bitterness between Zakarian and two former partners that has led those two men to take the workers' side and face off in court against him.
In a statement, the chef's publicist, Jaret T. Keller, said: "Geoffrey Zakarian filed for bankruptcy due to the enormous costs of defending a class-action lawsuit by former employees of a restaurant in which Mr. Zakarian is no longer involved. Mr. Zakarian denied the allegations in the lawsuit but it would cost him several hundred thousand dollars to defend the action." Keller said Zakarian was "sequestered" in Los Angeles taping "The Next Iron Chef" and would have no further comment.
After being sent emails detailing the allegations in the legal papers, Zakarian replied by email: "As a respectful practice, I will not comment on business partnerships or pending litigations. I realize and understand the responsibility that as a public face of a business, one can become a target. I remain focused on my craft and delivering great meals to my diners."
The bankruptcy filing, which lists assets of no more than $50,000 and liabilities of up to $1 million, automatically puts a hold on any litigation against Zakarian, including the class action lawsuit, said Scott A. Lucas, the plaintiffs' lawyer.
"Isn't it interesting that a TV celebrity chef, who opens multiple new restaurants around the country, can file for bankruptcy?" said Lucas, who said he would move to have the class action go forward.
Since Country closed in 2008, Zakarian has opened the Lambs Club restaurant in the Chatwal Hotel off Times Square and the National Bar and Dining Rooms in the Benjamin Hotel in Midtown. He oversees food and beverages at the Water Club at Borgata in Atlantic City and will soon open the Tudor House restaurant in the Chatwal group's Dream South Beach Hotel in Miami Beach. He rents a four-bedroom house in Greenwich, Conn., that is listed on the market for just under $3 million.
Chefs and restaurateurs have faced lawsuits over pay issues like overtime and distribution of tips with increasing regularity in New York, although bankruptcy does not seem to be the usual outcome.
What is striking about the suit involving Country is that a former partner in the restaurant, Adam Block, has filed an affidavit in support of the workers, and that another partner, Moshe Lax, has said in a separate suit that Zakarian violated labor laws.
The two men agreed to a $200,000 settlement with the cooks in December. But Block, a restaurant developer who helped bring Per Se and Masa to the Time Warner Center, said in a legal filing on behalf of the plaintiffs last November that the settlement was not the reason he was speaking against his former partner. It was, he said, "because I know that Geoffrey Zakarian's narcissistic behavior and arrogance caused Country to fail and inevitably allowed whatever wage and hour violations occurred while he was Country's operator."
The workers say in their lawsuit that they were underpaid in a variety of ways. The suit says that when one worker asked when he would get the overtime pay, Zakarian's response was, "Go peel some asparagus."
The chief plaintiff, Prince Breland, said in legal papers that line cooks like himself were generally short-changed on lunch and dinner duty by two to three hours a shift. After Country started paying by the hour, he said, when he worked long shifts he would get $7.50 an hour rather than the $12 an hour he was due. (Breland, a 44-year-old Bronx resident who has worked in restaurants and catering for years, said in an interview that even when he became a salaried sous-chef at Country, he earned no more than $33,000 a year.)
He said he told Country's bookkeeper: "'You're ripping everyone off with the hours. You'll feel better if you just quit."' He said the bookkeeper began crying and said, "They're making me do this all the time."
Breland also said in the suit that in Country's first year or so, the restaurant was so busy that "lunch and dinner shift cooks had to stuff food (usually a piece of bread or a leftover scrap of food) in their mouths while standing." Nevertheless, he said, $2 a day was deducted from the cooks' pay for staff meals.
The end came for Country in the summer of 2008, sooner than might have been expected considering that it won three stars from Frank Bruni in The New York Times in April 2006. The closing seems to have stirred up more animosity in what was already a rocky relationship between Zakarian and his two main partners, Block and Lax. Their partnership was dissolved in April 2008, with an agreement that called for Zakarian to be paid $380,000 and for him to leave soon after that.
But on July 3 of that year, the workers filed suit. And two weeks later the city health department shut down Country for several days, largely because of problems with sous-vide procedures that the department had brought to Zakarian's attention more than two years earlier.
These difficulties do not seem to have sat well with Lax, who had guaranteed the $380,000. He apparently did not make scheduled payments and in March of last year, Zakarian sued him for the sum. Last month, Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich in State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that Zakarian must be paid.
But by then Lax had filed his own suit against Zakarian seeking more than $2 million in damages, charging "breaches of fiduciary duties and misappropriation of funds." Because Zakarian had "ignored applicable labor laws," the suit says, Lax "was dragged through the proverbial mud in the class action." Country grossed about $9 million a year at its best, but never made a profit, according to the lawsuit, which said that Zakarian received a management fee of 4 percent off the top, and paid his wife a $70,000 salary for marketing services. The suit also accuses Zakarian of failing to make payments for rent and sales tax. (There is a $51,318.40 state tax warrant against Country on sales from Sept. 1, 2005, to Aug. 31, 2008.)
Zakarian, in a legal response to Lax's lawsuit, said he committed no wrongdoing, was paid what he was owed and was not legally responsible for some of the problems cited in the case.
Lax's accusations were amplified by Block. In his declaration in support of the workers' lawsuit, Block said Zakarian gave away about 10 percent of the restaurant's revenue in free meals to friends, family and associates. "I also learned that Mr. Zakarian was dining out at other restaurants on the company's credit card," Block said, "and had reimbursed himself monthly for thousands of dollars in expenses unrelated to Country."
Within months after Country opened, Block said, "I had come to realize that Geoffrey Zakarian was using Country as something of a personal fiefdom."
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