Beefing over chicken satay is back on the menu in the hospitality industry.
Upscale Chinese eatery Jue Lan Club is raging a new restaurant war by suing newcomer Sei Less for allegedly stealing its menu and celebrity patrons, Page Six has learned.
Jue Lan Club filed a complaint on Apr. 15 accusing former employees Dara Mirjahangiry, Ivi Sharno and others of “operating and promoting a competing restaurant … through theft of trade secrets, deceptive and confusing means.”
Mirjahangiry opened Sei Less earlier this year in the Garment District, and it has become a hotspot for athletes and rappers such as Kanye West, who celebrated his former fling Julia Fox‘s birthday there in February. Other celebs who frequent the spot include Angela Simmons, Busta Rhymes, Cardi B, 50 Cent and Omari Hardwick. Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has also been photographed hanging out with Mirjahangiry at the restaurant.
In addition to allegedly stealing celeb customers, Jue Lan also claimed in the lawsuit that Sei Less owners distributed “false, misleading and infringing promotional materials” to appear as if they are affiliated.
The suit further claimed Sei Less owners “logged into OpenTable with the intent of sabotaging Jue Lan from December 22, 2021, and every day after” and that Sei Less linked their account “to the Jue Lan OpenTable account as an affiliate [so] Jue Lan would appear to be fully booked and Sei Less would be available, coercing clientele of Jue Lan and deceiving the public to go to Sei Less.”
This isn’t the first time Jue Lan has been at the center of a New York Chinese food war. Former owner and Philippe Chow founder Stratis Morfogen launched the restaurant in 2015 at the tail end of a nasty restaurant war with Michael Chow’s Mr. Chow. Morfogen parted ways with Jue Lan in 2017 and has since found greener pastures with several Brooklyn Chop House locations and dumpling cookbooks.
Sources tell us Mirjahangiry was a key player in developing the Jue Lan brand after Morfogen left, but Mirjahangiry describes the claims as “lies.”
“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,” Mirjahangiry tells us.
A rep for Jue Lan declined to comment.