New York City’s long-running restaurant war between upscale Chinese hotspots is getting more tangled than a bowl of lo mein.
Nearly a decade after two top popular Chinese eateries got into a scalding feud over poaching employees and recipes, a whole new beef is heating up, Page Six has learned.
Owners of Midtown restaurant Sei Less are fuming after three top executives from a rival restaurant, Philippe Chow, were allegedly spotted acting suspiciously while dining at Sei Less on Jan. 16, sources exclusively tell us.
We’re told Fernando Rodriguez, the director of operations at Philippe Chow’s parent company, Merchants Hospitality, made the reservation and was then joined for dinner by John Villa, senior vice president at Merchants Hospitality, and James Belakh, Merchants Hospitality’s chief operating officer.
Security footage exclusively obtained by Page Six shows the three businessmen at the Manhattan hotspot, taking their phones out immediately after they were served to snap a pics of their dishes.
We’re told the foodie photos raised eyebrows among Sei Less staffers, prompting their server to later tell Sei Less co-owner Dara Mirjahangiry that Rodriguez, Villa and Belakh allegedly also asked unusual questions about their dishes.
“They started asking the waiter questions about the restaurant’s proprietary information such as, ‘Can you ask your manager what are your most popular dishes?’ and ‘Which dessert sells the most?’” a source alleges.
That’s when Mirjahangiry began to keep a close eye on the allegedly nosy patrons.
We’re told that after the three men finished their meals and paid, Villa — who is a chef in charge of Philippe Chow’s menu and food quality — stopped by the kitchen to allegedly “snoop” some more.
“Do you know what’s in the lobster noodle sauce?” he allegedly asked a busboy, whom we’re told could not provide the info Villa was allegedly seeking.
The employee told his higher-ups that the executive chef then also asked, “Do you know if any of the kitchen staff are former Philippe employees?”
This prompted Mirjahangiry, who had been monitoring from afar, to allegedly walk toward the group to stop them from entering into the kitchen further and interrupt the line of questioning.
We’re told Villa explained that he was “simply saying hello to a former employee,” referencing the busboy who’d previously worked at Philippe Chow.
Mirjahangiry tells Page Six: “We’re flattered that they came to our restaurant.”
But he added, “The reality is we have no issues with customers asking general questions about our menu items, but where we draw the line is when direct competitors attempt to go into our kitchen and ask our employees for recipes.”
Belakh, however, claimed it was all a misunderstanding, and tells Page Six it’s a common practice for them to snap some pics “when visiting a new restaurant.”
“We also enjoyed cocktails at the bar, where we gave some feedback to the wonderful bartenders on some of the hits and misses,” he also commented, throwing some slight shade!
Belakh claims that he and his fellow diners also asked their server about which dessert sold the most because they had a playful bet going.
“Unfortunately, I lost,” the restaurant exec said. “Apparently, chocolate mousse still rules the world, whereas I thought the yuzu dessert would take the cake.”
Belakh also confirmed that Villa made his way into the kitchen — but backs up his colleague’s assertion that he was only trying to say hello to, “one of many former Philippe Chow alumni,” they encountered during their visit.
“After exchanging pleasantries and fond memories, he was able to catch a cursory glance of the hard-working kitchen staff manning the woks preparing some rather familiar looking dishes,” he said.
Belakh summed up, “We wish our friends at Sei Less nothing but success and invite them to stop by Philippe Chow anytime to check out our delicious chicken satay, succulent Peking duck and expansive dumpling selection anytime.” He also said: “Our staff will happily walk them through the menu and give them a personal tour of the kitchen.”
This spicy feud comes more than a decade after Philippe Chow was embroiled in a heated dispute with Mr. Chow — another high-end Asian restaurant. That beef even made its way to the Florida court system.
In 2009, food icon Michael Chow sued Philippe Chow founder Stratis Morfogen for trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition for allegedly taking a 27-year veteran staffer and his menu.
However, a federal appeals court ruled in Morfogen’s favor, and ordered Mr. Chow to pay Philippe Chow more than $1.1 million in legal fees and costs, we previously reported.
Morfogen is not involved in the latest battle with Sei Less, as he left Philippe Chow in 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Adding to the spicy story, Sei Less has also been accused of ripping off recipes.
In 2022, another upscale Asian eatery, Jue Lan Club, filed a complaint against Mirjahangiry, Ivi Sharno and others for allegedly, “operating and promoting a competing restaurant… through theft of trade secrets, deceptive and confusing means.”
Mirjahangiry, who played a key role in developing the Jue Lan brand — coincidentally, after Morfogen left that spot in 2017 — told Page Six at the time, “It’s a frivolous lawsuit. We are focused on building Sei Less into the premiere hospitality brand that it has quickly become.
“We’ve never claimed we are [Jue Lan]. I left. I opened a new concept. There’s nothing they do that we need. We focus on our business, not other people’s businesses.” That case was settled in February 2024.
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