New York City’s famed Gotham Restaurant has filed for bankruptcy after 40 years in Greenwich Village, two months after a $45,000 cyber fraud forced its owners to close the popular eatery.
Gotham Restaurant owner Brett Chensitz filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week, according to court documents.
Chenchits decided to close the restaurant in July after the payroll fraud, but the filings say the eatery, formerly called Gotham Bar and Grill, was in financial trouble even before the scam.
According to court records, the company owes the city more than $450,000 in back taxes and also owes nearly $200,000 to suppliers Dairyland and Baldor Specialty Foods.
Gotham also owes money to credit card companies, utility companies and other service providers, according to the filing.
The large debt load “is evidence that the restaurants were ‘cash-strapped’ before the cyberattack,” Adam Stein Sapir, a distressed asset expert, told The Post.
“That incident really pushed them over the edge.”
The restaurant is owned by a group of six investors, including Chenchits, and “no one was willing to put any more money into it,” Stein Sapir added.
Chenchits could not immediately be reached for comment.
Gotham opened on East 12th Street in 1984 and, under the direction of founder and former chef Alfred Portale, earned a Michelin star in 2005, but accolades alone weren’t enough to keep the passion burning in the kitchen.
Cenchitz had worked as the restaurant’s general manager since 2007 and became managing director after Portale retired in 2019.
Gotham’s problems were compounded on May 10 when thieves sent an email to the company’s human resources department, posing as the company’s payroll provider.
The email address was nearly identical to that of a legitimate company, and the company had told Gotham it was changing its banking information due to an “internal issue,” Chensitz previously told The Post.
“We became the victim of someone interfering in our ongoing discussions with the payroll company,” Chenchits said in late June when he temporarily closed his restaurant and contacted the FBI about the scam.
His company doesn’t have cyber insurance, he said.
It’s unclear whether the restaurant will reopen during the bankruptcy.
The employees were laid off in June.
Gotham was closed for more than a year during the pandemic, reopening in November 2021 with about half its previous staff, The Post reported.
