He says he’s a connoisseur of the “ass grab” — but this waitress just wasn’t on his menu.
A wealthy hedge-fund titan made a bungled attempt to defend himself against a claim that he fondled a waitress at a trendy Soho restaurant, by bizarrely bragging that he gropes other women all the time.
“I’ve grabbed plenty of girls’ asses in my life,” Brian H. Lederman boasted to The Post. “But I’ve never grabbed hers.”
The married moneyman went on the defensive Tuesday after server Laura Ramadei made a tell-all Facebook post saying he ogled her like a piece of meat as he fondled her derriere at Lucky Strike on Grand Street.
“When I asked you and your companion if you’d be eating, or needing anything else from me, you put your hand — ever so gently — ON MY ASS and asked if you could take me ‘to go,’ ” the 29-year-old wrote, adding that he left only a $2 tip.
Lederman, a 57-year-old managing director at Swiss Performance Management & Fiduciary, angrily denied any physical contact — and threatened to sue Ramadei for defamation.
But he didn’t help his case much by admitting he made a boorish comment toward her.
“I clearly remember making a joke when the girl said, ‘What would you like,’ ” he said. “I kiddingly said, ‘I would like you to go with nothing on it.’ ”
He said he was furious that she claimed he did more than spew sleaze.
“That f–king c–t, for her to do something like that is pretty ridiculous,” he told The Post.
He then threatened to make sure she doesn’t serve lunch in this town again.
“I will make sure she doesn’t get another job in New York City. I know everybody,” he raged. “The bar owners, the club owners — that’s a terrible thing to write about somebody.”
Ramadei, an aspiring actress who helps run an independent theater company, stood by her Facebook post.
“He placed what felt like three fingers on my left butt cheek,” she told The Post. “It was very subtle, but it was definite contact.”
She posted a picture of the money manager’s $15.24 bar tab on the social network.
Ramadei said she deals with customer harassment all the time working at the noisy bar and posted her story to “raise awareness about how common it is.”
Her rant has been shared almost 2,000 times since she posted it on Monday. “It was a small thing, but probably commonplace for women and servers,” she said.