Chef Vs. Restaurant Owner In Brooklyn Smackdown

With all the food fetishism and foodie-ism out there, here's a bracing serving of the restaurant business underbelly.

A drama at well-received Brooklyn restaurant Porchetta has been playing out over the past few days, with a round of he-said, he-said on Eater, where owner Marco Rivero said there was a warrant for out for recently resigned chef Jason Neroni's arrest on Tuesday, only for Neroni to deny it hours later. But then Neroni turned himself into the police to face forgery charges.

Rivero says Neroni forged $900 worth of checks, a claim Neroni's spokesman doesn't deny. Steven Hall told the NY Times, "[Neroni] has written checks before and the owner has never said anything. He’s paid his staff, vendors, delivery people with checks, and the owner has never said anything.”

Ah, the duties of a chef. But apparently Neroni wrote the checks after leaving the employ of Rivero, feeling that the money was owed to him, and signed Rivero's name once again. The Post sarcastically calls Neroni "brilliant" after depositing the checks into his own account.

Neroni, whom Gothamist visited in January, faces petit larceny charges. And Hall also said, "If Marco didn’t want anyone signing checks, including Jason, he should have put the checkbook in the safe.” Yeah - so you people who park your cars o the street, if they get stolen, you're the suckers!