New Arrest For Bergen County 'Chopped' Chef Yehudiel; 1 Victim Speaks

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — Teaneck-based chef Shalom Yehudiel, known for appearing on TV's "Chopped," has been arrested again on charges of sexually assaulting a minor, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office announced Tuesday.

The arrest of the restaurant owner on Monday was the result of a new indictment on Thursday, Aug. 31, according to the office of Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella.

The case against Yehudiel, 41, has wound through the courts since early 2022.

That year, the chef was arrested on charges of having assaulted a 16-year-old girl on multiple occasions.

Last month, the case was dismissed with prejudice due to a technicality, the Bergen Record reported.

But the next day, Aug. 8, 2023, Yehudiel was arrested again at Newark airport while trying to head to Thailand, reports said. Yehudiel was incarcerated on Riker's Island.

Days later, he was attacked in jail, said his lawyer in mid-August, in a plea to have him released.

A week after his arrest, he was released, pending a trial.

Then, on Aug. 31, according to the Prosecutor's Office, Yehudiel was indicted by a Bergen County Grand Jury on charges of sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

Yehudiel was arrested Monday in Aventura, Fla., on those charges, the Prosecutor's Office said in a release Tuesday morning.

Prosecutors said that on Friday, Nov. 19, 2021, the FBI contacted the the prosecutor's Special Victims Unit regarding the alleged sexual assault of a child in Teaneck on more than one occasion. An investigation by prosecutors and the New York office of the FBI resulted in the charges.

Yehudiel now awaits his first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.

Prosecutors did not release further information.

In a statement to the Bergen Record on Tuesday, Yehudiel's attorneys, Lee Vartan and Zach Intrater, said, "The state has just recycled the same flawed indictment with the same factual and legal holes."

However, a now-adult woman came forward last month to say that she was a victim of Yehudiel as a teenager.

She gave an interview to the Jewish Standard, saying she wants to give a face victims and prevent such a thing from happening again.

She said that she met Yehudiel in her congregation in Fair Lawn when she was 14.

She said, "I was very naive. I was sort of confident by default, because I didn’t know much about the world ... My mother told me that she was surprised this happened to me because when I was a kid I was extremely outgoing. I was the kid who tried to have a lot of friends.

"What my mom did not realize was that this confidence was effective only if people my own age were mean to me. But if someone 36 years old was crossing boundaries, I didn’t know what to do."

Yehudiel owns the Humble Toast and La Cucina Di Nava in Teaneck.

Women have filed more than one civil suit against him for sexual abuse. The suits were made public starting in 2021 by Za’akah, an organization that fights sexual abuse in the Jewish community, according to a story in The Standard.