Owners of French restaurant La Mercerie, Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, have been accused of racism in a class action lawsuit filed by several former employees. The restaurant is tucked in a home goods showroom, Roman & Williams, and originally opened in 2017.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on December 3, comes on the heels of the restaurant’s breakup with former managing partner Stephen Starr of Starr Restaurants, which ran the place as its managing partner until November 2025, when it changed management companies to Restaurant Associates, the group behind dining in Lincoln Center and Condé Nast. (Restaurant Associates is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit). The lawsuit comes ahead of the restaurant’s plans to open two restaurants inside Sotheby’s headquarters in the Breuer building on the Upper East Side: the fine-dining French restaurant Marcel and the French bakery La Mercerie Patisserie.
Plaintiffs Sezgin Mehmed, who is Turkish, and Latinx employees Gabriel Pucha and Keyra Arias, were servers who say they were laid off in November 2025, when the restaurant changed management companies from Starr to Restaurant Associates. At the time of this transition, employees were told they would be fired from Starr but would be rehired as a matter of course by Restaurant Associates, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint alleges, however, that these purported layoffs were actually a ruse to “clean house of minority employees” by Roman & Williams’ owners Standefer and Alesch. The plaintiffs allege that “[o]f the roughly 20 servers employed before the transition, most were invited back to work under Restaurant Associates, Standefer, and Alesch. But almost all minority servers – including the three Plaintiffs – were excluded from rehire. Plaintiff Arias was told she did not fit the restaurant’s ‘vision’.”
The former La Mercerie servers claim that this pattern of racism was nothing new, alleging the restaurant and its owners, Standefer and Alesch,“have shown blatant racist behavior for years,” especially when it comes to staffing decisions. They further alleged that the owners “more than once told a former manager that there were too many Puerto Ricans here,” referring to the few Latinx employees that were hired over time at La Mercerie.
In a statement, Roman & Williams dismissed the claim as factually erroneous. “The individuals who filed this complaint were employed by Starr Restaurants, not Roman and Williams. The complaint categorically misstates the facts. Roman and Williams, Robin Standefer, and Steven Alesch deny the allegations and remain firmly opposed to bias of any kind.”
Maimon Kirschenbaum, lawyer for plaintiffs, said, “All of the employees were rehired by Restaurant Associates after the transition away from Starr, other than my clients, who were not called back” because of what she says are “Robin’s racist predilections.” They used the change of management to try to cover up bad behavior. “Of approximately 20 servers employed before the transition, six non-white employees were not rehired.
While Starr is not a defendant in this lawsuit, he has had his own legal troubles. The National Labor Relations Board is pursuing charges against Starr and his company, STARR Restaurants, over union-busting allegations at his Washington D.C., steakhouse, St. Anselm. Filed on Nov. 20, the charges are the latest development in a nearly yearlong standoff between Starr Restaurants and Unite Here Local 25, a D.C. union that represents more than 7,500 hospitality workers. Starr declined to comment.
Dining and Cooking