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Leona's and its sister restaurant Hop Haus is not going away anytime soon, but three former employees might. Deborah Mort and her sons, Louis Mort and Christopher Morris, are being sued by majority owner Leon Toia for allegedly bilking the company of $1.3 million.
The alleged theft, which Toia claims in the suit happened between December 2002 and March of this year, includes the brothers stole cash from Leona's; Deborah Mort took checkbooks from Toia's home and car. Toia claims the money was used to pay off credit card debts and pay a mortgage on an apartment building the Morts owned in the city. Toia is looking for three times the amount allegedly stolen from him through the RICO Act.
Bad news, indeed. However, it begs the question: how many checkbooks does one have to lose before the streetwise radar kicks in and you start asking questions? This theft went on for over five years.
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I wish Hop Haus would go away. That place has the worst service anywhere. The beer selection is fantastic, but you can't get anyone to serve it to you. Even when the place is empty.
Are these alleged thieves listed in the menu in those lameass cartoon profiles of loyal employees?
chicago j: i don't know, but i'm gonna go home and find out!
I wonder if these nefarious activities have anything to do with the tremendous downward spiral of the quality of service and food at Leona's. My wife and I occasionally go to the one on Elston if we don't want to cook because it is close by. But, never again. The service is unbelievably slow and just plain bad. The quality of the food has gone south in a big way, too. The whole attitude of the entire restaurant was "I don't care any more." An awful experience.
When I first moved here, we ordered from Leona's on a semi-regular basis. And I am not exaggerating when I say that EVERY single time the order was delivered there was something major missing.
Usually it was someone's dinner entree. I would call, of course, and they would apologize and say that they would send someone out with the missing entree within the hour. So, whoever had the missing dinner had to either wait til it got here, or we would wait for the hour (and it always took the whole hour) til they arrived and we could all eat together.
If it was just a missing salad or dessert, that's more of a pain because you paid for this but you don't want to make someone come all the way back out for just a piece of tiramisu or a small salad. They would say "Let us know next time you order and we'll give it to you with no charge." Well, that never worked really because by the time you ordered again, you would usually forget, or just not want to bring it up.
So, after getting sick of this I quit ordering from Leona's...I would say it's been around 5 years since I placed my last order.
We did go to the actual restaurant once and ate in and the service was TERRIBLE!!! The place was not even crowded.
Honestly...why do people keep patronizing places like this? I can't be the only one around here who consistently gets bad service from this place.
I also agree with Nicholas about the quality of the food. I mean...at first, it was just 'acceptable'. When you're tired and it's the end of the day and you don't feel like cooking, (and they actually have real vegetables on the menu) it's better than McDonald's. But I'm sticking with my boycott of Leona's.
Lot of words for a stupid restaurant complaint, but I'm glad I could finally get my beef concerning Leona's out. :)
Deborah Mort is listed online at leonas.com under 'about us.' She is described as a "mature beauty" who is to thank for the vegetarian menu.
A total load of BS!!
My friend constantly had problems of delivery people upping the tip from credit card purchases. She only uses cash if ordering now. What crap.
Leona's has been dead to me since they discontinued their deep dish. Art of Pizza all the way now.
I had stayed away from these guys for sometime now (sausage pellets on pizza?!??, but came back to try their entrees. OK, I came back because they were still open and it was late. I have to say we were very happy with it, fantastic lasagna, salads, tiramisu, and meatball. The server was patient as hell with some of our antics and a good sport.
However, this was the one in Lakeview, I live near the one on Elston where we had sausage pellets originally.