KITCHEN WARS
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay sues former Montreal business partners for $2.7 million.
The scrap between celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and his partners in the revamping of iconic restaurant Laurier BBQ has taken on the makings of yet another angry reality TV kitchen show.
Ramsay is suing Westmounter Danny Lavy and the popular chicken rotisserie on Laurier Ave. for $2.7 million for allegedly damaging the chef ’s reputation when the business relationship turned sour.
Reached Wednesday by phone, an upbeat-sounding Lavy said he was surprised by the lawsuit, but intends to defend himself.
“I actually like Gordon and have nothing against him,” the businessman said, adding he thought Ramsay’s agent might be behind the action.
“I haven’t spoken to (Ramsay) lately.”
Buried at the end of the 23-page lawsuit, filed in Quebec Superior Court on Wednesday, are revelations Lavy also is suing Ramsay.
Lavy didn’t want to talk about the suit filed last fall in Illinois, referring questions to his lawyer, but said the amount sought “was huge.”
“It’s thirty or forty times this one,” he said.
This latest lawsuit lists statements Lavy made to The Gazette in February, after his six-month partnership with the renowned and temperamental chef ended.
Lavy is quoted as saying that Ramsay, well-known for his reality TV shows Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, in which he often throws a conniption, uses vulgar language and reduces chef wannabes to tears, “just didn’t get it.”
In published articles, Lavy claimed Ramsay, who lives in London with his wife, four children and two bulldogs, was too busy to come to the restaurant, didn’t understand the owners’ vision or what was important to them and his team didn’t do anything that the owners couldn’t have done on their own.
They never got a “wow dish” but rather just “a few tweaks on what we already had,” the suit says Lavy said in February.
In the lawsuit, Ramsay claims his role in the deal was only to lend his name, image and recipes to the business, which was renamed Laurier Gordon Ramsay with much fanfare and some public skepticism.
It was Lavy, he claimed, who was “the controlling mind of the corporation” even though there was a coshareholder and three other directors of the restaurant.
As a result of the dispute, the restaurant has been known since Feb. 15 simply
Danny Lavy didn’t want to talk about the suit filed last fall in Illinois, but said the amount sought “was huge.”
as Laurier 1936 – the year the rotisserie opened.
Ramsay wasn’t required to provide advice, develop advertising or make regular appearances at the restaurant, the suit says.
Ramsay, who has published many books, including an autobiography titled Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen, claims his obligations didn’t include managing or operating the Outremont restaurant, which opened in August after a $1.5-million makeover.
Ramsay was among the 600 VIPS present on opening night, but Lavy complained he hadn’t been seen since and customers were asking for him.
He claimed Ramsay’s absence was hurting the bottom line.
Still, the rotisserie, which continues to sell its traditional chicken dishes and desserts, grossed $2.3 million in sales in its first five months.
The suit hints at a deeper, long-running quarrel between the two men.
Lavy and his company Sensio Inc., which deals with Ramsay kitchenware in the United States and Canada, launched a lawsuit against Ramsay last October in Illinois for breach of the sub-licence.
Lavy, the Quebec document claims, used his position as director and shareholder of the restaurant to induce it to breach its agreement as part of the “wider fallout between the two parties, rather than because of any genuine belief ” that Ramsay breached his contract.
Ramsay’s name and image are a brand that add value and credibility to the 21 restaurants worldwide that use it, as well as to the kitchenware bearing his name, the Quebec lawsuit says.
It calls Ramsay “one of the world’s most recognized chefs” and the value of his name depends, in part, on the success and public perception of the ventures associated with it.
Ramsay claims that in December the owners tried to break their agreement with the chef “on an improper basis and for false and fallacious reasons.”
His lawyers sent the defendants a letter at the beginning of March, demanding Lavy retract his public statements, but the request was refused.