'Top Chef' Dale Talde Accused Of Scamming Brooklyn Restaurant Partners: Suit

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — A former “Top Chef” with a sports bar in Fort Greene cheated his partners out of millions of dollars, a lawsuit charges.

Dale Talde stands accused of using Atlantic Social resources to keep his other businesses afloat and his partners are demanding the “Top Chef” contestant hand over $3.5 million in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Talde teamed up with George and Steve Menexas to open Atlantic Social — a restaurant across the street from the Barclays Center — along with Talde’s Three Kings Restaurant Group in February 2016, according to the suit.

When the restaurant didn’t do as well as they had hoped, the Menexas brothers began to suspect Talde was using Atlantic Social equipment and staff to prop up his other restaurants, the suit says.

The lawsuit claims Atlantic Social employees were asked to clock in at the Atlantic Avenue restaurant then go work in other locations, that a $2,329 freezer — which the brothers believe is being used in another location — disappeared on Aug. 27, and that an Atlantic Social manager deleted data from the restaurant’s computer to cover Talde’s tracks.

“The objective of this fraud was to operate Atlantic Social for the sole purposes of enriching and benefitting their other restaurant ventures,” the suit claims.

A Three Kings Restaurant Group — which runs six restaurants in Fort Greene, Park Slope, Midtown Manhattan, Jersey City and Miami Beach — told the Daily News the suit was a farce.

“They are obviously doing this lawsuit in a transparent effort and bad faith effort to besmirch Dale Talde’s reputation in the press,” said Three Kings lawyer Jeff Schreiber.

The group added in a statement, “This entire complaint is preposterous.”

Photo courtesy of Will Yakowicz/Patch