If you've been to Café Martorano, you know there's no restaurant like it. The white walls, the huge bar in the center, the booming music, the videos of old gangster movies -- nobody does dining like this. Then there's the food: throwbacks to Italian-American classics that make restaurant critics rave and diners wondering if he puts something addictive in the sauce.
So when someone copies the concept, that gets owner Steve Martorano's attention. Last month, Martorano filed this federal lawsuit in Providence, Rhode Island, accusing a restaurant there of unfairly copying Café Martorano's concept.
The lawsuit accuses restaurateur Jerry Longo of robbing Martorano's concept for his
Café Longo restaurant. Longo didn't return a phone call from the Juice, but in this answer to the lawsuit filed September 17, he denied that he stole the concept.
Martorano
says he hadn't considered filing a suit until he read a newspaper story
from Providence that quoted Longo saying that Longo had invented the
concept 30 years ago in Fort Lauderdale.
"I started this music-and-videos concept 30 years ago,"
Martorano said. "Lots of people try to copy it, but when
you say you invented it, that rubs me the wrong way. That's not right."
Martorano said he looked at the menu and saw too
many similarities. His "eggplant stack" is the same dish as Longo's
"eggplant on the hill." His calamari and peppers and his meatball and
salad are too similar to dishes on Longo's menu, Martorano said.
"When you look at his menu and you look at my menu, there are too many things the same," Martorano said.
Martorano
and Longo actually have a long history together. They know each other
from the same South Philadelphia neighborhood where they grew up, and
they've worked together in the past. They worked together during a
party for the cast of The Sopranos at a Connecticut casino years ago,
casting themselves as childhood friends.
But Martorano says it's
a matter of pride. "I can't stop people from putting veal parm on the
menu, but it shouldn't be right for someone to just copy what you're
doing and say it's his."
