The fraught legal battle over a late celebrity chef’s Bay Area restaurant empire intensified this week, as the chef’s family attempted to regain control of his flagship Napa Valley restaurant from investors who acquired it last spring.
The estate of Michael Chiarello, the chef and Food Network star who died in 2023, filed a motion to vacate arbitration on Wednesday night in San Francisco Superior Court. The estate, controlled by Chiarello’s widow, Eileen Gordon, claims that following Chiarello’s death, investors sought to take over his Yountville restaurant Bottega using illicit methods including signature forgery, perjury and document tampering. The investors named in the filing include Rich Frank, a former Disney executive and founder of Napa Valley’s well-known Frank Family Vineyards.
This week’s filing brings to light new allegations that the investors withheld key evidence from the arbitrator who allowed them to buy Bottega. It comes in addition to a civil lawsuit that the estate filed against investors earlier this year, which remains in early stages in Napa County Superior Court…