The once-robust empire that the restaurateur Ken Friedman and the chef April Bloomfield built together is showing signs of breaking apart, five months after Mr. Friedman was accused of sexually harassing employees and retaliating against those who complained.
The two partners are no longer involved in Salvation Taco, the restaurant they opened in 2012 in the Pod 39 hotel in Manhattan, said Richard Born, an owner of the hotel, which has taken over the restaurant.
As lawyers for Mr. Friedman and Ms. Bloomfield near the end of efforts to dissolve the partnership, the fate of two of their six remaining restaurants — the Breslin Bar and Dining Room and the John Dory Oyster Bar, both in the Ace hotel in Manhattan — is particularly uncertain. GFI Hospitality, the management company that retained the group to provide all food service for the hotel, is renegotiating that contract, three people knowledgeable about the matter said. (The company said, through a representative, that “nothing has changed.”)
Other restaurants are shedding talent. One of Ms. Bloomfield’s longest-serving lieutenants, the chef Josh Even, resigned from Tosca Cafe, in San Francisco, last week along with the general manager, Dana Katzakian. The high-profile butchers Erika Nakamura and Jocelyn Guest, who were handpicked by Ms. Bloomfield to run White Gold Butchers, on the Upper West Side, walked away in March.
