Restaurateur Louis Skibar is being sued by two partners he owns Toloache and other restaurants with (Google Maps)
Louis Skibar, a prominent restaurant group owner with two Upper East Side restaurants, has been accused of having “unlawfully and systematically diverted, converted, concealed, and misappropriated substantial monies and revenues,” according to a lawsuit filed by his longtime business partner and acclaimed chef, Julian Medina, who is seeking over $10 million in damages. Crain’s New York Business was first to report on the lawsuit.
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Skibar and Medina are co-owners of Amarena, the Italian restaurant located at 151 East 82nd Street. They also run Toloache, the Mexican eatery just steps away at 166 East 82nd Street, with a third partner, Ebrahim Sobhan, who is also named as a plaintiff in the suit.
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According to the suit filed by Medina and Sobhan, Skibar has been investing money into various side projects, including over $3 million to purchase and revive the historic Kellogg’s Diner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The suit also states that Skibar has been funding other business enterprises in which he holds a controlling or substantial interest, including a yet-to-be-named venture at 575 Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, which was previously home to the bar Jr. & Son. Court papers indicate that between these two ventures, Skibar diverted $1.4 million in money, property, and assets.
“Skibar was the one in charge, for the most part, of the books, and it worked that way for many years,” said Robert Calica, a co-managing partner of the Long Island-based firm Rosenberg, Calica, Birey, Liebman & Ross, and Medina’s counsel in the lawsuit. “But as he (Skibar) started expanding into some new restaurants, they started noticing that there were substantial diversions of money from the joint enterprises.” In a phone call with East Side Feed, Calica further alleged that Skibar was using his client’s share of profits for his own ventures over the last one to two years. “It’s a partnership accounting claim, to have him return the money, or have it come out of Skibar’s share of the restaurants themselves, which continue to be, as you know, very successful and with a good following.”
“I can promise you the complaint is not true,” wrote Skibar in an email to East Side Feed in response to the lawsuit. He noted that he did not want to litigate in the press and called the accusations “unfair and inaccurate.” He added, “I’m confident everything will be clear soon. Unfortunately, my reputation will be tarnished.” Skibar’s wife, Beatriz de Armas, was also named as a defendant in the suit.
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Skibar and Medina have both been significant contributors to the city’s culinary scene, both as a team and individually. The two first began working together in 2007 when they opened the first Toloache location in Midtown. More recently, Medina, who was on Iron Chef in 2011, opened Soledad—a tribute to his Mexican grandmother’s cooking—at 1825 Second Avenue, without Skibar.
Kellogg’s Diner is not the first restaurant Skibar has helped get back in business. In 2021, he bought the famed Old John’s Luncheonette on the Upper West Side, which closed a year earlier due to the pandemic. A Bolivian immigrant who arrived in NYC in 1984, Skibar got his first job making deliveries for Old John’s.
Calica told us they plan to bring the application before the court soon, possibly this week or next.
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