TERRIBLE RECIPE

Feud leaves Soho eatery and top chef adrift

A bitter food fight has crippled a high-profile Soho Italian restaurant and left its former chef unable to work at any food establishment in town — even at a hot dog stand.

The fight burst out into the open earlier this month when a judge barred talented toque Adam Leonti from continuing to work at Sessanta, in the trendy Sixty Soho Hotel on Thompson Street.

Leonti had been executive chef at the restaurant since April. Sessanta’s opening two years earlier had drawn celebrities such as George Clooney, Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Piven, but it needed new blood.

“It’s a death blow to the business,” groaned Sessanta owner John McDonald, a respected Manhattan restaurateur who spent millions to open the place two years ago and is also behind popular Lure Fishbar, El Toro Blanco and Bowery Meats. “I’m handcuffed.”

Leonti, a veteran of Philadelphia’s critical-darling, highend Vetri, was earlier supposed to head up a grains-andvegetable eatery called Harvey in Brooklyn’s new Williamsburg Hotel. He signed a $130,000 a year contract with owners-developers Toby Moskovitz and Michael Lichtenstein in mid-2015.

The deal came with a oneyear non-compete clause, and a salary bump to $150,000 when Harvey opened. But Le- oni had no intention of leaving — Eater.com had called the Harvey one of the city’s “mostanticipated new restaurants” — because he believed the owners’ promises that it would open “in three months,” he said in court papers.

But the hotel project fell far behind schedule. The Wil- liamsburg finally opened one of its eight guest room floors in January 2017 — but not Harvey, a pool or a rooftop bar built around a water tank. On Saturday, an unfinished terrace was used as a flea market.

While Harvey remained stalled, Leonti pitched in at Brooklyn Bread Lab, a Bush- wick pop-up bakery and “test kitchen” that Moskovitz and Lichtenstein also owned.

“I basically had no staff ” for Harvey, Leonti said. In December, Harvey still lacked a kitchen and city permits. As a result, cooks had to be fired, he said.

The Williamsburg’s failure to timely open the Harvey breached his contract, Leonti said.

Moskovitz said she offered Leonti a raise not to leave, but he bolted in February for Sessanta. McDonald’s lawyer, Anthony LoPresti, said, “No one ever thought [the non-compete clause] would be a problem. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and nobody’s ever seen such a broad non-compete.”

The Williamsburg’s lawyer declined to comment.

As Leonti and McDonald began replacing a Sicilian menu with a more broadly based Italian one and planning a relaunch of Sessanta this fall, Moskovitz and Lichtenstein accused Leonti of appropriating “trade secrets” and causing “destruction of the Williamsburg Hotel’s brand.”

Leonti says he had no access to “secrets.” He and McDonald claimed that Sessanta and the Harvey are in different hotels four miles apart in different boroughs and are not rivals.

A judge let Leonti stay at Sessanta last spring because Harvey had yet to open, but he reversed the ruling on Aug. 11 when Moskovitz displayed in court papers photos of food on tables. (As of last week, it was serving only breakfast and a mostly pizza “bar menu.”)

McDonald is now scrambling to set up an “interim concept” for Sessanta. As for the Harvey, he said, “She [Moskovitz] doesn’t want Adam back. She just wants to hurt him.”