A popular Upper West Side café featured in the 1998 hit film “You’ve Got Mail” has become a “personal dating service” for its manager, who rearranges waitresses’ schedules to get them alone and make lewd advances while in a drunken stupor, a new lawsuit charges.
Café Lalo was featured in the 1998 hit film “You’ve Got Mail,” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.Film still/Warner Bros.Thirteen former female servers filed a $26 million lawsuit in Manhattan federal court Friday against Café Lalo accusing owner Haim Lalo of not paying them fair wages and manager Daniel Reyes of creating a hostile work environment.
The suit alleges Reyes “treats the restaurant as his own personal dating service and a place where he could indulge in his unwholesome desires.”
It also claims Reyes regularly cursed the women out after they routinely rejected his advances — and even threatened one of them with a knife.
Most of the women only began employment at the restaurant — featured in the hit film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan – in the past year. They are seeking $2 million each in compensatory and punitive damages.
Carolyn Richmond, a lawyer for Café Lalo, said there is “no merit” to the allegations.
Messages left for Reyes were not returned.
