FULL BOIL: Chef Kyle Connaughton (right) says Chipotle’s Steve Ells (below) ripped off chef David Chang (left).
FULL BOIL: Chef Kyle Connaughton (inset, top) says Chipotle’s Steve Ells (inset, bottom) ripped off chef David Chang (left). (
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A plan to do for Asian noodles what Chipotle did for Mexican grub has spawned a nasty food fight.
British reality-TV cook Kyle Connaughton has filed suit in Manhattan Supreme court against Chipotle CEO Steven Ells, accusing him of getting him mixed up in a scheme to steal the culinary ideas of star New York City chef David Chang, of the Momofuku noodle-bar empire.
The UK cook said he was hired to develop a ramen-house equivalent to Chipotle for a Union Square space.
He claims Ells failed to tell him he had already signed a nondisclosure agreement with Chang and then stole Chang’s ideas without compensating him.
The alleged pilfering came in 2011, when Ells teamed up with Chang to create a Southeast Asian eatery called ShopHouse in Washington, DC, but then cut Chang out of the deal, the suit says.
“Mr. Chang and Mr. Ells could not agree upon financial terms for the implementation of the ramen concept,” Connaughton says in legal papers. “Mr. Chang refused to do so.”
Chang alluded to the incident last summer when he said a “fast-food company approached us and, quite frankly, took our intellectual property.” He did not name the company.
Connaughton said he found out about Ells’ trouble with Chang only when a Chipotle marketing director let slip last year that “Momofuku will sue Chipotle when the ramen concept opens but that Mr. Ells made a decision to proceed anyway.”
The Brit was aghast, worried “his professional reputation would be ruined” if he were sued by Chang for swiping ideas, the court papers say.
When Connaughton confronted Ells with the allegedly duplicitous dealings, he was fired, the papers say. The Brit wants unspecified monetary damages for his ousting.
A spokesman for Chipotle declined to comment on pending litigation.
Reps for Chang could not be reached.