Cafe Lalo Battles UWS Landlord Over Thousands In Unpaid Rent: Lawsuits

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Cafe Lalo, the Upper West Side eatery made famous by its appearance in a Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan rom-com, is being taken to court by its landlord over unpaid rent and sewer problems, court records show.

Cafe Lalo — a West 83rd Street eatery that makes a cameo in Nora Ephron's "You've Got Mail" — slapped back on July 20 with a lawsuit of its own, contending that the cafe owners did not have to pay rent as long as it remained shut.

The owners' attorney declined to comment and the landlord's attorneys did not respond to Patch's request for more information.

The landlord, 480 Amsterdam Avenue LLC, first filed a lawsuit in May, arguing Cafe Lalo owners owed thousands of dollars in back rent and about $11,000 for water damage, court records show.

The annual rent is $6,000 a month or $72,000 a year, according to Cafe Lalo.

Cafe Lalo responded months later with its own suit, arguing that they didn't owe the landlords a dime until the restaurant reopened and that the water damage was the landlord's problem.

The cafe is the subject of mystery among West Side locals, who wonder why the restaurant never reopened after the pandemic.

According to the West Side Rag, a sign appeared on Cafe Lalo's door in December 2020 that said the eatery was "closed for renovation."

The lawsuit from Cafe Lalo claims that the rent payments do not have to start being paid until it reopens.

In terms of the water damage, Cafe Lalo's legal team says that water got into the building between March 30, 2021, and April 30, 2021.

The eatery demanded that the landlord pay for the damage, but the company refused to do so, according to Cafe Lalo's lawsuit.

This is not the first time Cafe Lalo has appeared in court records, as it was hit with a $26 million lawsuit in 2014 that alleged the owner wasn't paying fair wages and its manager was harassing female waiters.

Cafe Lalo has sat on the corner of West 83rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue since 1988 and, in 2021, its owners signed a lease that extends until 2040, according to the lawsuit from Cafe Lalo.

Owners raised another concern in their lawsuit over renovations they requested in May 2022 to which the landlord never responded, according to the lawsuit.

This contentious battle is not the first to play out in Cafe Lalo, although admittedly the first one was fictional.

In "You Got Mail," Hanks, who plays the owner of a chain bookstore conglomerate, trades jabs with Ryan, the owner of a small local bookstore, at one of Cafe Lalo's tiny tables.

"I think you'd discover a lot of things if you really knew me," Hanks tells Ryan.

Ryan replies, "If I really knew you I know what I would find; instead of a brain a cash register and instead of a heart, a bottom line."