Sue Chef...

"As a restaurateur, my job is to basically control the chaos and the drama. There's always going to be chaos in the restaurant business". -- Rocco DiSpirito

I happen to believe that every chef on the planet wants to own their own restaurant. They will spend years working for others, but somewhere deep inside, they are plotting and planning – it's just a matter of time. It's been going on forever, and the best chance for success is to replicate a winner.

Ed McFarland worked for and with the owner of a very successful New York restaurant. And yes, Ed McFarland was like every chef you can name who went this route. Successful people learn from others and that is as basic as anything that has ever gone on in this business. It's real simple – you copy the people who know how to do it. The objective is to become the rich imitator as opposed to the poor originator. What else is new?

What is new is that this particular owner took exception to the actions of her student, and when Ed opened his own place, she determined that his restaurant was basically a clone of her concept (menus and all). Chef Rebecca Charles of the Pearl Oyster Bar decided to sue her former sous-chef (now the owner of Ed's Lobster Bar). In essence, she is suggesting that he stole her intellectual property.

I am not a lawyer, and perhaps it will be interesting to carefully compare the two restaurants, but I have already decided this case. Without knowing more, the sous-chef spent six years at the Pearl Oyster Bar, and he learned what he learned. There will be similarities, but this is to be expected. The man did precisely what everyone in this business does – and like it or not, he replicated a winner.

We are talking about food, and for the good of our industry, I would vote to keep the lawyers out of it. If chefs find it necessary to start trade-marking everything they do, then we are in for legal hassles too immense to contemplate.

The real bottom line is that if all it took was copying a concept, this would be a very simple business. It takes a lot more than that, and fortunately, talent, creativity, and an amazing amount of luck (and money) are critical elements in the ultimate fate of each and every restaurant.

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