Hell's Kitchen Chef Sowed Chaos In His Restaurant, Partners Say (2024)

A lawsuit accuses the chef behind a popular Hell's Kitchen restaurant of harassing customers, showing up drunk and serving spoiled food.

Posted Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 2:52 pm ET|Updated Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 5:46 pm ET

The suit was filed in state court this week against Crispin Mejia, the namesake founder of the Italian restaurant Crispin's, on 10th Avenue and West 52nd Street. (The restaurant renamed itself Sesamo last month.)

Crispin's first opened on the corner in 2013, before briefly closing and then reopening to customers in 2020. The complaint was brought by Mejia's former business partners, Nikita Levitan and Sabrina Gao, who reopened Crispin's with Mejia last year.

Mejia has denied the allegations (see bottom of story).

Problems first arose as the restaurant was undergoing construction in February 2020, when Mejia's construction plan ran months behind schedule and exceeded its budget by $15,000, the suit alleges. (Law360 first reported on the lawsuit).

Things escalated soon after the eatery finally opened last June. Mejia "always overspent" the $300 budget that the restaurant gave each partner to treat prestigious, "VIP" customers, and frequently invited his friends to dine at the restaurant without paying or tipping, the suit claims.

On a typical business day, Mejia would arrive at 4 p.m. and leave within four or five hours, according to Levitan and Gao, who later discovered he was working a second job at a rival pizza restaurant.

"Stay out of my kitchen!"

Meanwhile, they allege that Mejia failed to manage the restaurant's kitchen inventory starting in September 2020, causing Crispin's to run out of some ingredients and allow others to spoil. Customers soon began posting negative reviews of the restaurant online, and returned plates to the kitchen that had been undercooked or spoiled, the suit says.

When confronted, Mejia told Gao and Levitan to "Stay out of my kitchen!", they allege.

The suit also takes aim at Mejia's alleged penchant for drinking during work hours — leading to incidents in February and March of this year in which he allegedly slapped a female customer's bottom and tried to put his arm around another.

By March, the business implemented a rule that limited each partner's alcohol consumption to after their shifts. Mejia broke the rule within days, his partners allege; weeks later, while intoxicated, Mejia "got drunk and suddenly told all customers that they must leave the Restaurant at once," the suit claims.

Several more incidents and meetings between the three partners resulted in five rules being set for Mejia's behavior in September — resulting in his firing if he failed to abide by them.

One of the last incidents occurred on Oct. 20, when Mejia unilaterally allowed a mariachi band to "show up in the middle of dinner service" and serenade a customer at the outdoor dining area, prompting complaints from other patrons, according to the lawsuit.

On Oct. 21, Levitan and Gao voted to fire Mejia in a tense meeting. The following day, however, Mejia allegedly called kitchen staff and told them not to come to work, falsely claiming the restaurant was closed. The lawsuit says he attempted another act of sabotage on Nov. 6, calling the restaurant's bread vendor to cancel its orders.

In their lawsuit, Gao and Leivan ask a judge to formally dissolve their partnership with Mejia and award them at least $4 million in damages — plus an order forcing Mejia to repay much of his earnings from the venture.

Update, Dec. 10: Mejia has responded to the allegations against him in a statement issued to Patch and to W42ST.

In a statement, Mejia said the allegations against him were "lies," and accused his former co-owners of scheming to push him out of the business.

"I’ve been in Hell’s Kitchen for 20 years and this neighborhood knows me and the type of person I am," Mejia said. "We restarted Crispin’s during Covid and I built it in every way – with my name, my menu and my reputation.“