A trendy TriBeCa restaurant is stiffing suppliers and hiding behind a corporate restructuring to ditch debt, a lawsuit alleges.
Bar Artisanal sprung in April from the ashes of Trigo, which closed three months after opening, leaving a $27,000 debt to Julius Silvert Inc., a Philadelphia food purveyor.
But Bar Artisanal has “the same owner, same telephone number, same address and the same management staff” as Trigo, according to court papers.
The lawsuit, filed last week in Queens Supreme Court, demands the $27,000, plus another $6,000 in lawyers’ fees.
In a statement, The Artisanal Group said, “Based on a management agreement between The Artisanal Group LLC and 268 West Broadway LLC, The Artisanal Group has no liability exposure in this matter.”