The chefs Liz Johnson and Will Aghajanian, partners in business and marriage, have attracted nationwide attention and a celebrity following for their informal, sophisticated cuisine at the Catbird Seat in Nashville, Mimi in New York City and Horses in Los Angeles.
But that notice has spilled over into notoriety this week as sensational and intensely personal allegations lifted from public documents began to make the rounds on the internet. Ms. Johnson has accused Mr. Aghajanian of assaulting her, visiting prostitutes and torturing a number of pet kittens to death. He has accused her of threatening to kill him and deliberately burning him with kitchen implements.
In November, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Ms. Johnson requested and was granted a temporary restraining order against her husband, ordering him to stay 10 feet away from her at work and 100 yards away from her and their three dogs at all other times.
In January, Mr. Aghajanian responded with a similar request as part of a divorce filing, saying that Ms. Johnson had verbally and physically abused him for years, both at home and in their restaurants. In that filing, he stated that the couple no longer lived together and asked for sole custody of the dogs. A judge denied his request for a restraining order “for lack of sufficient showing of good cause.”
In the documents, Ms. Johnson said the staff of the restaurant walked out in November, in protest of her husband’s presence in the kitchen; he said she had incited the walkout as part of a calculated plan to remove him from the business.
Since opening in October 2021, Horses has pulled neck-and-neck with Los Angeles celebrity haunts like the Polo Lounge and Jon & Vinny’s, with its vintage vibe and a cool-kids clientele that has included Will Ferrell, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson. It has appeared on multiple Best New Restaurant lists and received rave reviews; last year, The Times called it “that rare animal in Los Angeles: a hot reservation with serious cooking behind the scenes.” (It later came to light that the disgraced restaurateur Ken Friedman was involved in the restaurant.)
After The Los Angeles Times broke the news of the court dispute on Wednesday, a statement was posted on the restaurant’s Instagram account, stating that Mr. Aghajanian had left the restaurant last November, and that Ms. Johnson was guiding the restaurant “to continuously make Horses what she had always intended it to be — A place of joy and celebration.”
Mr. Aghajanian denied the allegations and in a written statement said, “I have not and have never abused animals, nor my wife.” Ms. Johnson said she stood by her accusations.
The couple met in 2011 as interns at Noma, the influential Copenhagen restaurant that plans to close in 2024. Since 2015, they have led — and suddenly left — several kitchens, including those at Mimi, the Catbird Seat, and Freedman’s, a modern Jewish deli in Los Angeles, where Ms. Johnson was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs in 2018. (The owners of Mimi and the Catbird Seat did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.)
Last fall, Ms. Johnson announced that she would open a new restaurant in Manhattan, in the West Village space that housed Chumley’s, one of the few Prohibition-era speakeasies to survive into the 21st century until it closed in 2020. The future of that project is unclear, but Thomas Carter, who was a consultant on the opening, said Thursday that he was no longer involved. (Mr. Carter faced numerous allegations of abusive workplace behavior in 2018, as a partner in Estela and other Manhattan restaurants with the chef Ignacio Mattos.)
Mr. Friedman did not respond to a request to confirm his involvement in Horses. He co-owned restaurants in New York City and Los Angeles until the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, found that he had sexually harassed 11 employees at the Spotted Pig in Greenwich Village. The restaurant closed in January 2020.
