Google Maps
In the spring of 2020, with dining rooms dark across the city, one of the Upper West Side’s best known restaurants sat down with its landlord and tore up the rent formula, according to a lawsuit filed this week. The new arrangement tied its rent to the restaurant’s sales with a $10,000 monthly floor, the complaint says.
Advertisement
Six years later, the deal that came out of that spring is the reason a judge has been asked to put the restaurant on the street.The landlord of 423 Amsterdam Avenue, at West 80th Street, sued Sarabeth’s on Monday afternoon, asking a judge to eject the restaurant from the ground floor and basement it has occupied since 1998. The complaint was filed with the New York County Clerk on July 27.
The plaintiff is 423 Amco, which the filing describes as a New York general partnership that owns the building. The defendant is BSWR, Inc., identified in the complaint as the corporation operating the Amsterdam Avenue location under the Sarabeth’s name. No other Sarabeth’s location is named in the case. The landlord is represented by Rosenberg & Estis, P.C., with attorney Norman Flitt signing the filing. Crain’s New York Business first reported that the restaurant was facing eviction.
ALSO READ: UWS Condo Board Suing to Force Out Resident Who Allegedly Threatened to Kill Two People
Here is where the 2020 deal comes in. Under a lease modification signed on May 10 of that year, according to the lawsuit, Sarabeth’s agreed to pay whichever was greater: $10,000 a month, or eight percent of its monthly sales. The complaint says the restaurant also owed an additional one percent of sales until an earlier rent abatement was paid back, plus a share of real estate tax increases. The whole structure only works if one thing happens every month, and the landlord alleges that one thing stopped happening.
Advertisement
The lease requires the restaurant to report its gross sales to the landlord within thirty days of the end of each month, according to the lawsuit. The landlord alleges Sarabeth’s has not been doing that, and claims the failure left it unable to calculate what it is actually owed or to exercise a contractual right to audit the books once a year. In other words, the landlord’s position as laid out in the complaint is not simply that the rent is late. It is that the landlord cannot determine what the rent is.The complaint puts the arrears at $43,432.16, broken out as $7,810.72 for May 2026 and $17,810.72 each for June and July. The May figure listed in the filing sits exactly $10,000 below the two that follow it, which the lawsuit gives as the amount of the monthly base rent.
The landlord says it served a five business day notice of default on June 11, giving Sarabeth’s until June 22 to hand over twelve months of sales figures and bring the account current. When that date passed, the complaint says, the landlord served a three day notice of cancellation on July 1 and declared the lease terminated as of July 13. The restaurant has stayed open and stayed in the space since then, which is what the filing characterizes as a holdover.
What the landlord is asking for goes well beyond back rent. Per the complaint, it wants a judgment of ejectment under Article 6 of the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law, an order directing the sheriff to remove the tenant, use and occupancy of no less than $17,810.72 for every month Sarabeth’s remains, an injunction compelling the restaurant to turn over its sales numbers for as long as it stays, damages running through February 28, 2030, which the filing gives as the stated expiration date of the lease, and attorneys’ fees the landlord estimates at no less than $50,000.
Advertisement
Everything above comes from the landlord’s complaint, which tells one side of the story. None of the allegations have been tested in court. Sarabeth’s has not yet filed an answer and has not had the chance to contest any of it. We reached out to the restaurant for comment and will provide updates if we hear back.You can view the full lawsuit here.
Have a news tip? Send it to us here!
