The next day, Tedeschi says, one of Brown’s personal assistants, whom the chef identified as Brian Davis, told him, “When you speak to Mr. Brown you don’t look him in the eye.” Stunned, the 55-year-old Tedeschi ignored the man, who was some 30 years his junior. As Brown looked on, smirking, Davis began to yell: “When you speak to Mr. Brown you don’t look him in the eye!” Tedeschi says he nearly quit on the spot. “That’s when I realized I probably wasn’t getting paid,” Tedeschi says. (Davis did not respond to a request for comment.)
Later that afternoon, Brown found a severed salmon head, which Tedeschi was saving to use in a soup, in the freezer. According to Tedeschi, Brown accused the chef of making a mafia-style threat against his life.
Brown subsequently refused to pay the $38,521.20 owed to the chef, according to the civil complaint Tedeschi filed. “I did not want to file a lawsuit,” Tedeschi says. “You’re a chef suing a celebrity—that doesn’t look good on me. Other people are going to doubt me now because of this. I tried every olive branch. I offered to come down and cook for him for free in South Florida after I get paid. Nothing.”
Says James W. Smith III, Tedeschi’s attorney: “You’ll start to see a pattern where Antonio lures people in initially, and at first he appears to be very gregarious and appreciative of whatever service he’s seeking, and then at some point when the bill is due he creates division or confrontation in an effort to avoid having to meet his financial obligation. . . . It’s an unfortunate pattern of entitlement and narcissism.”
