Grub Street Grub Street New York

More bad news for the LeRoy family: Per Diner’s Journal, a Southern District Court judge has ruled that Warner LeRoy “made deliberate misstatements and omissions” when he fraudulently acquired the Tavern of the Green trademark (valued at $19 million) in 1981. The restaurant had been known as Tavern on the Green for 40 years before LeRoy came onboard, something he neglected to mention to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. As a result, the city gets to keep the name if and when the restaurant reopens under Dean Poll.

Judge Rules the City Owns the Name Tavern on the Green [Diner’s Journal/NYT]

Anyone who said Mayor Bloomberg’s voluntary sodium reduction initiatives were a slippery slope should feel pretty vindicated (and terrified) by this: New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has introduced a bill that would outright ban the use of any salt in the preparation of restaurant food. “In this way,” Ortiz babbles maniacally to Nation’s Restaurant News, “consumers have more control over the amount of sodium they intake, and are given the option to exercise healthier diets and healthier lifestyles.”

Things not to do if you want your lounge to be the new Beatrice: tell the Observer that your lounge is the new Beatrice. Nevertheless, the owner of De Santos points out that his basement is “a very similar place, and now that [Beatrice] closed, this is a perfect place to come and hang out because it's the same music and people who used to go to Bea.” Plus it has a lady name: Janis! Just like Chloe! And the Jane!

Katy Sparks tells us she’s not the person behind rumors that Bussaco is in financial trouble, which owner Scott Carney accused her of being yesterday. “I haven’t spoken to the press at all about anything having to do with Bussaco,” says Sparks. “That I was waging some kind of campaign against it makes no sense because I was given 10 percent of the business upon joining the company and I only wish the restaurant survives.” Sparks declined to comment on how Bussaco is doing, and won’t say anything about why she left except that, “We really didn’t see eye to eye and didn’t have a meeting of the minds, and sometimes you can only find that out by working with each other.” Still, she wishes Carney well. Sparks will now continue focusing on her consulting business, though she says she wouldn’t rule out returning to full-time work with another restaurant.

Bussaco owner Scott Carney was quite vocal when he parted ways with opening chef Matthew Schaefer, and now that his relationship with more recent chef Katy Sparks has gone sour, he’s really opening his mouth. Last week Eater floated an anonymous rumor that Bussaco is in trouble (plummeting sales, bouncing checks), and today Carney tells the Brooklyn Paper that his business, which is doing quite well thank you very much, is being “endangered with gossip and lies.” Sparks, he tells the paper, “is exploiting your medium [print media] in a malicious and libelous manner to destroy my family’s business.” That said, he wishes her well!

‘Sparks’ fly at Bussaco! Owner responds: We’re being defamed! [Brooklyn Paper]

Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis had better head to whatever aisle the aspirin is in, because he has a new headache on his hands. A gender-discrimination complaint that was initiated in 2006 has finally been certified as a class-action suit. Three plaintiffs (Susan Duling, Margaret Anderson, and Lakeya Sewer) are alleging that the store violates the civil rights of its female employees by considering them only for dead-end cashier and bookkeeping jobs, while men get clerk positions that lead to promotions. (Anderson claims that when she asked about stock-clerk positions during a job interview, a male manager told her he needed “big guys.”) The lawsuit also alleges that the supermarket chain’s “tap on the shoulder” method of promoting employees gives an undue amount of discretion to its mostly male managers. Read the complaint below, which estimates that class member claims exceed $5 million.

Hill et. al. vs. Gristedes et. al. [PDF]