When East Side Italian restaurant Tavolino (2315 N. Murray Ave.) reopened in late August after a fire that had shuttered it for three months, few would have predicted it would close again so quickly. But as you may have heard, per a post Monday on the restaurant’s Facebook page, Tavolino is “closed until further notice.”
That is not all. Some Tavolino employees claim they haven’t been paid. Owner Peter Dietrich, reached by phone on Wednesday, talked about both the closure (stopping short of calling it permanent) and the payroll allegations. “In hindsight, I should have waited to reopen. The restaurant was undercapitalized when we reopened,” he says. As for the missing wages, he confirmed: “None of my employees have received their last paycheck.” Two employees who started working after the August reopening haven’t been paid at all, he added.
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In an effort to recoup their losses, Tavolino employees have started a Gofundme.
In it, they allege deep debts: “No hourly pay was paid to all employees, and the servers and bartenders were never given their tip money. All of those credit card tips were supposed to be paid in the form of a check every 2 weeks, that the employees never received. There were new employees that started at the reopen of restaurant (from a fire), that never received a dime. Peter Dietrich knew of his financial obligations and strains and continued to push the boundaries that he knew he was incapable of fulfilling.”
Dietrich and then-partner/chef Derek Nackers (who’d worked at Tenuta’s and the late Mistral) opened Tavolino in 2020, earning accolades – including a spot on Milwaukee Magazine’s 2023 Top 25 Restaurants list.
