Sparks Steak House at E 46th St., Manhattan. Photo: Rafał Pytel/NYLJ

A former waiter at Manhattan’s famed Sparks Steak House has launched a sexual orientation discrimination and religious discrimination lawsuit against the restaurant, alleging that a sexually harassing former co-worker even threatened to “kill him outside” and that waiters of the Islamic faith were given preferential treatment over him.

The lawsuit, brought by former Sparks waiter Yavor Ivanov, who is gay, also points to the steakhouse’s 2012 settlement in a larger male-on-male harassment case lodged against it by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And his 20-page complaint then claims that Sparks, years later, has not complied with certain binding requirements under the settlement, including reporting all sexual harassment or retaliation claims made by employees to the EEOC, and having a notice publicly posted about the 2012 settlement.

“For too long, [Sparks] … has had issues with how it responds to harassment allegations by Sparks Steakhouse employees,” the complaint states in the first paragraph of its factual recitation.

No counsel for Sparks Steak House could be reached for comment Thursday.

The EEOC also could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit—filed in Manhattan federal court Monday and alleging federal Title VII discrimination claims, as well as state and New York City human rights law claims—outlines what it says was 3 1/2 years of hostile work environment discrimination and other discriminatory acts perpetrated against Ivanov, including him being called a “faggot” and “sweetie” repeatedly, and being asked almost daily by a harassing waiter, “How do you like it?” and “Where do you take it?”

The suit further claims that many of the repeated and ultimately mentally damaging acts against Ivanov came at him from certain employees of the Islamic faith, and that, as part of the mistreatment, a former head server at Sparks made comments about his sexuality in Arabic.

“Mr. Yavor Ivanov is a 33-year-old homosexual male who does not practice Islam,” the 20-page complaint also notes.

Ivanov and his lawyer, Mark Shirian, also bring a retaliation legal claim in the suit, alleging, for instance, that after Ivanov complained about harassment he faced almost daily—and after no corrective action was taken—his supervisors then “overworked [him] by overseating his shifts.”

Ultimately, the complaint claims, Ivanov constructively discharged himself in October 2018, which was about six months after he allegedly was taken by ambulance to a hospital after getting “dizzy from [an] insult and experience[ing] a severe blood pressure uptick that [led] to an anxiety and panic attack as a result of the overall harassment and discrimination he had endured.”

But the sexual orientation and religious discrimination the waiter went through, says his complaint, began almost from the day he started at Sparks—which has been an institution in Manhattan for decades, and where famously in 1985 the reported mob-linked killing of Gambino crime boss Paul Castellano happened outside its doors.

“The acts of discrimination forming the basis of this complaint began in early December 2014, the first month of Mr. Ivanov’s employment and continued throughout June 2018. Mr. Ivanov was the victim of uninitiated, unprovoked, and harassing comments other employees,” the actions states.

Later, the complaint alleges that in 2015 “Sayed, a former head sever, became a Sparks manager and attempted to fire Mr. Ivanov a week after he was hired upon finding out that Mr. Ivanov is gay,” but that Ivanov was then rehired by a Sparks general manager.

In another example of the claimed harassment, the complaint says that “Majid Alami (‘Mr. Alami’), a Moroccan waiter of Islamic faith, bullied Mr. Ivanov for being gay, by calling Mr. Ivanov ‘a fucking faggot’ and threatened that he would ‘kill him outside.’”

The lawsuit claims “while Mr. Ivanov was overworked with many tables, the waiters of Islamic faith took prolonged breaks and the sections assigned to them would be empty.”

“Specifically,” the complaint continues, “the waiters who practice Islam took breaks on Ramadan for an hour each day for a month,” and that “the waiters who were friendly with management would not get seated as much, so the Islamic waiters in essence worked less but still shared the same amount in tips because of a pool system where the waiters would evenly split the tips for each night.”

The lawsuit names as the defendant Michael Cetta Inc. d/b/a Sparks Steak House, and it requests relief that includes compensatory damages, punitive damages and an order that Sparks institute policies to eradicate unlawful practices.

The EEOC’s 2012 settlement with Sparks resolved an action in which the agency charged that restaurant managers sexually harassed 22 male waiters over an almost eight-year period. In addition to agreeing to institute certain actions aimed at eradicating any possible harassment or retaliation, Sparks also agreed to pay $600,000 to settle the charges. Sparks, which was represented by Allan Taffet and Chad Naso of Duval & Stachenfeld in that EEOC matter, denied the allegations that were made and did not admit to wrongdoing or liability.