Gordon Ramsay’s Montreal kitchen nightmare has turned into a $2.7 million lawsuit after the celebrity chef accused his former business partners of damaging his reputation.
Ramsay is suing the popular chicken rotisserie Laurier BBQ and Westmount restauranteur Danny Lavy, his former business partner in the revamping of the eatery.
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.
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 co-shareholder and three other directors of the restaurant.
As a result of the dispute, the restaurant has been known since Feb. 15 simply as Laurier 1936 – the year the rotisserie opened.
the rotisserie, which continues to sell its traditional chicken dishes and desserts, grossed $2.3 million in sales in its first five months.
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