Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is countersuing his former business partner for calling him a dictator — firing back in his new claim that the New York-based partner is a freeloading ”fraud.”
Rowan Seibel, who licenses trademarks from the Upper East Side chocolatier Serendipity 3, “has tried to ride Mr. Ramsay’s star, but through his own fraud, misconduct, and derelictions, brought The Fat Cow restaurant crashing down,” Ramsay huffs in his Manhattan countersuit.
The “Hell’s Kitchen” cook joined Seibel in 2012 to open The Fat Cow in Los Angeles, with Seibel “falsely promising” that he would be “an invaluable partner because of his significant restaurant experience,” according to Ramsay’s court papers filed Wednesday.
Instead Seibel “proved egregiously inept in” his management of the burger joint, the suit says.
“As a result, the restaurant had food, service and business operations far below Mr. Ramsay’s exacting standards,” the suit says.
The Grove Drive eatery shuttered earlier this year.
Ramsay accuses Seibel of stealing from the restaurant, underpaying staff and then blaming his famous partner for the mess in a $10.8 million lawsuit, also filed in Manhattan, last April.
In that case, Seibel sniffed that his 50/50 partner “attempted to run the business and make decisions … similar to his television personality on Hells’ Kitchen — as a dictatorship, without proper authority and without consent of his partner.”
The doomed duo also bickered over trademark issues.
Seibel’s attorney did not immediately return a call.