Chef’s Desk at Brooklyn Fare, a extremely acclaimed restaurant with three Michelin stars, has closed amid a authorized dispute between its chef and proprietor, leaving a culinary void for patrons of high quality eating in New York Metropolis, the place the restaurant had been a top-dollar fixture of flavorful creativity for greater than a decade.
The restaurant, which served an intensive tasting menu impressed by Japanese seafood and French cooking strategies, closed in July after its chef, César Ramirez, was fired by the proprietor, Moneer Issa, based on court docket information.
In July, Mr. Ramirez filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court docket in Brooklyn towards Mr. Issa and the restaurant’s holding firm, Manhattan Fare Corp, claiming that he had been “arbitrarily terminated” and was owed tens of tens of millions of {dollars} for defamation, unpaid wages and different damages.
In an affidavit filed in August, Mr. Issa stated that he had fired Mr. Ramirez as a result of he had stolen firm property that was value greater than $100,000, together with dishware, oven elements and wine circumstances.
Mr. Issa additionally accused Mr. Ramirez of getting “actively recruited restaurant employees to depart” the restaurant and be a part of him on a brand new enterprise that he had been planning, which violated the stockholders’ settlement, the affidavit states.
Mr. Ramirez stated in his criticism that “at his personal private value,” he had bought “very excessive finish and costly gear” that might be appropriate “for probably the most elegant, luxurious and discriminating connoisseur tastes.” He added that the gear had been lent with out cost to Mr. Issa for the restaurant.
Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Issa didn’t instantly reply to calls in search of touch upon Friday.
The closure, which was reported by Business Insider on Friday, surprised followers of the high-end restaurant, which first opened its doorways in 2009 in Downtown Brooklyn earlier than shifting in 2016 to Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, the place Mr. Ramirez and his employees would prepare dinner in a small area behind a grocery store for a handful of friends every evening.
The restaurant had broadly been thought of among the many greatest high quality eating institutions in New York Metropolis. The New York Occasions named it the sixth-best restaurant in New York Metropolis this 12 months.
A spokesman for Brooklyn Fare Administration, which Mr. Issa owns, stated in an e-mail that the restaurant would reopen in October and {that a} new artistic staff could be introduced at a later date.
“We can have an announcement round a brand new artistic staff with a observe file that demonstrates they will meet and exceed our exacting requirements for service and culinary sophistication,” the spokesman stated.
It was unclear who the chef could be if the celebrated restaurant reopens.
Visitors of Chef’s Desk at Brooklyn Fare booked tables months prematurely, and the tasting menu value $430 per individual.
In 2011, The New York Times reviewed the restaurant and gave it three stars.
The overview described an intimate ambiance contained in the restaurant, with Mr. Ramirez and his employees showing “intensely centered, generally robotic” till it was time to current every dish, at which level the temper amongst friends would swing from “hushed to giddy.”
The only-bite dishes included Japanese snapper with an olive-oil ponzu sauce and crispy leeks; fluke with pickled daikon; a single kumamoto oyster suspended over a gelée product of oyster liquor.
