When glam new steakhouse Maple & Ash opens in New York City later this year — or in 2026, it will be one of Manhattan’s highest-profile eatery launches. But there might be more sizzle in a Chicago courtroom than on the 1290 Sixth Avenue grill.

The founders of the Chicago-based luxury steakhouse company allegedly used federal funds meant to pay Windy City employees’ salaries during COVID for personal expenses, including $2 million on a Learjet, according to a bombshell lawsuit.

The founders are accused of “fraudulently” tapping $7.6 million in COVID-era Small Business Paycheck Protection Program funds, according to the civil suit brought by investors in the restaurant group in Chicago’s Cook County Circuit Court. The case does not involve the New York opening.

Investors included Dylan Bates, former CEO of nationwide clinic chain ATI Physical Therapy; venture capital firm Chicago Knight Life; and Christopher Cowan, owner of eatery chain Kanela Breakfast Club.

According to the suit, “the MA restaurants never received a dollar of these funds”  – a claim the founders strenuously deny.

According to the August 2023 amended complaint in the complex case, the alleged misappropriation was part of a wider pattern of questionable financial moves by Maple & Ash co-founders James Lasky and David Pisor. (Both were originally named as defendants, but the claims against Lasky were dismissed by the court, and the claims against Pisor were dropped from the current amended complaint.)

Lasky and Pisor’s business relationship ended in a flurry of lawsuits and countersuits that resulted in their company, which originally owned Maple & Ash — called What If Syndicate–– splitting in two as part of a January 2023 settlement. Lansky now owns Maple Hospitality Group, which is set to open the Manhattan outpost.

According to Eater Chicago, Pisor holds no ownership interests in any of the companies named in the lawsuit.

Although the investor lawsuit refers only to using the COVID relief funds for “private jet expenses,” the Chicago Sun-Times and radio station WBEZ traced the payment for the pricey Learjet in 2021 to “a company whose president is James Lasky.”

The defendants denied the charges in the complaint, which was first filed three years ago but received little media attention outside the Windy City.

As reported in The Post in February, a Maple & Ash real estate unit signed a lease for 12,000 square feet at 1290 Sixth Ave., which is majority-owned by Vornado Realty Trust. The Trump Organization has a 30 percent passive stake that reaps in more than $60 million in annual rent.

Maple & Ash, which opened its Chicago flagship in 2015, was the nation’s fourth-highest-grossing restaurant in 2024 with more than $35 million in revenue.

Investors who helped raise a total of $6 million to open Maple & Ash in Chicago and in Scottsdale, Ariz., also claim the owners’ company wrongfully used profits to fund their other restaurant brands in other cities, according to their amended complaint.

A separate company co-owned by Lasky allegedly retaliated against the investors for filing the suit by dissolving their interests in the Maple & Ash restaurants, according to the amended filing.

Lasky was sanctioned by the judge for failing to comply with court orders to turn over bank records and other information. He was ordered to cover plaintiffs’ $191,000 legal fees resulting from withholding information, court records show.

Each side blamed the other for slowing the progress of the case. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Michael Forde, and Maple & Ash’s general counsel, Douglas Wexler, both said they hoped it would finally go to trial early next year.

Wexler, who is also Lasky’s personal lawyer, denied that his client misappropriated any PPP funds. Wexler also  said, “We  will not settle, we want a trial.”

 The defendants’ trial attorney,  James Stamos, said, “The PPP funds were properly applied for, utilized, and forgiven by the government, and moreover have not been part of the lawsuit since early on.”

Pisor couldn’t be reached. He told WBEZ in August 2023 that he neither signed any documents for the PPP loan nor handled finances for that issue. “The documents speak for themselves,” he said at the time.