New Jersey restaurants are famously competitive, but a battle between two Lincroft strip mall eateries — one a longstanding Italian restaurant, the other a new breakfast and lunch spot — may top them all in rancor.
Luigi’s Famous Pizza has accused Tatum’s Table — just three doors apart — of infringing on its right to exclusively sell certain Italian dishes, which Luigi’s said is detailed in their lease.
Tatum’s Table owner Tatum Menake told NJ Advance Media her dishes are not alike and that Luigi’s Famous just wants to put her out of business. Tatum’s Table opened last September, marking then-20-year-old Menake as one of New Jersey’s youngest restaurant owners.
Earlier this month, a Superior Court judge sided with Luigi’s, issuing a temporary injunction that bars Tatum’s from serving food after 4 p.m., effectively stopping its attempt to offer dinner service with pasta options, as reported by APP.com.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Now, each Monmouth County business is accusing the other of bullying and intimidation, and are heading back to court. Luigi’s co-owner Jason Emerson alleges Menake’s father, Danny Tenake, has threatened him, saying Tatum’s would install their own pizza oven to put Luigi’s out of business.
Requests for comment from Danny Menake were not returned Thursday.
Meanwhile, Tatum Menake said she has received menacing phone calls, with one anonymous caller saying “I’m going to kill you.”
”I can’t sleep,“ Menake said, noting said has not been at the restaurant for 10 days because of the threats.
Luigi’s said in a now-deleted Facebook post the dispute “has nothing to do with Tatum Menake” and everything to do with her dad.
Tatum Menake says her father “has no involvement” in her restaurant, which she financed entirely through an inheritance from her grandfather.
“He doesn’t know anything about the restaurant business,” Menake said of her father. “He doesn’t even know how to cook a piece of toast.”
A hearing on the new lawsuit is scheduled for March 24, APP.com wrote.
Boiling over
The dust-up started a month ago, when Tatum’s Table announced on Facebook and Instagram that it would soon be serving dinner. Pasta dishes would include truffle tagliatelle, a gnocchi flight, spaghetti and zucchini, and bolognese with pappardelle. The dinner plans have been put on hold.
Jason Emerson, co-owner of Luigi’s, told NJ Advance Media his restaurant has “the exclusive right on every item (Tatum’s) put on their proposed menu that looks like Italian or pasta cuisine.”
Menake fired back: “There’s nothing like that on their menu,” referencing the proposed pasta dishes. A review of Luigi’s online menu showed an overlap only in pasta bolognese.
”The bolognese we told them we would take off as a courtesy, even though our bolognese is completely different from theirs," Menake said.
Menake added she “had no knowledge” of any such provisions in her lease, noting the only the item her restaurant isn’t allowed to sell, per the lease as she understands it, is pizza.
A request for comment from the strip mall’s property manager, HomeTown Property Group, of Oakland, was not returned Thursday.
Both sides acknowledged they had been friends.
“I had a wonderful relationship with Tatum, Tatum’s mother, her brother and her father,” according to Luigi’s Facebook message, written by Kelly Emerson, Jason Emerson’s wife.
The dispute predictably became a hot topic on social media, with commenters taking sides.
“We never want to see anyone fail,” Jason Emerson said. ”The fact that some people just jump to the side of someone spewing out lies and false information and airing it on social media for the town to know before getting the facts straight hurts."
That being said, Emerson vows to be “fighting to the end on the Italian items.”
Tatum Menake said if she is compelled to move out of the strip mall, “Don‘t worry, I won’t be far.”
Stories by Peter Genovese
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Peter Genovese may be reached at pgenovese@njadvancemedia.com. On Twitter, @petegenovese. On Instagram, @peteknowsjersey and @themunchmobile.
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