Chow-Man Mao?

Free association — “Manhattan restauranteur” = “total dick”:

Renowned Manhattan restaurateur Michael Chow skims from waiters’ tips to pay managers at his Chinese eateries, demands “cult-like attention” from employees, and once forced a server to lie on the floor for a half-hour for arriving late to a staff meeting, a $5 million lawsuit charges.

“Michael Chow utilized degradation as a management technique,” says the suit filed in Manhattan federal court yesterday by three former Mr. Chow staffers against Chow and his business entities.

Chow, 67, operates Mr. Chow on the Upper East Side and Mr. Chow Tribeca, as well as other eponymous and pricey restaurants in Beverly Hills and Miami that are popular with the jet set.

. . .

At the center of the suit are claims that Chow’s Manhattan restaurants for years have broken the law by dipping into waiters’ tips to pay other staff not legally entitled to that money, such as managers and hostesses.

Managers also allegedly dock staffers’ tips for infractions that include “not listening attentively to Michael Chow’s instruction” and “speaking out of turn.”

Such practices are “symptomatic of a bigger picture” at upscale Manhattan eateries, said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Louis Pechman, who has similar suits pending against Sparks and Old Homestead steak houses.

The suit claims that Chow would “tap or lightly slap” waiters’ heads if he wanted their attention, and “demanded cult-like attention when he spoke.”

The suit says Chow made a “whipping boy” out of veteran waiter Costin Dumitrescu.

On May 18, 2006, the suit claims, as Dumitrescu was running late to a staff meeting, Chow allegedly told 30 or so staffers “he was going to make an example out of Dumitrescu.”

When Dumitrescu showed up and apologized for being late, Chow “ordered Dumitrescu to lie on the wooden floor in the middle of the staff meeting.”

For the next half-hour, “Michael Chow paced around” near Dumitrescu and periodically “walked up to Dumitrescu as he lay on the floor and pretended to kick Dumitrescu,” the suit claims.