Court filing: Former owner of Butera's restaurant sues new operator over payments

The former owner of Butera’s, an Italian restaurant with three Long Island locations, is suing the new owner, alleging he stopped monthly payments in February on the nearly $2 million purchase, a new lawsuit shows.

The suit was filed Aug. 7 in State Supreme Court in Nassau County by Martin Butera, who, along with other members of his family, had owned the traditional family-run Italian restaurant chain since 1991.

Butera's Restaurant of Woodbury Inc., Butera's Restaurant of Sayville LLC and Butera's Forno Inc. are also listed as plaintiffs in the suit against Old Fields Greenlawn 2 Inc. and its owner, Michael Daubney.

The filing, seeking an immediate ruling, asks the court to enforce the terms of three secured promissory notes — essentially a written promise by a borrower to repay a lender — to collect a combined $1.64 million, which attorneys for Butera's contend represents the balance of the 2025 sale plus interest and fees, records show.

The lawsuit argues the sale of the restaurants to Old Fields was "not a routine corporate transaction" but a "culmination" of a lifetime of hard work.

"For over 30 years, the Buteras — children of immigrants who came of age working at their father’s pizzeria — had labored, night and day, to build their business," the suit states. "Now, with the sale of the Butera’s Restaurants to Old Fields, they looked forward to a well-deserved retirement. All of these expectations have, sadly, been dashed. The Buteras now confront a borrower who, having acquired valuable assets, refuses to pay for those assets without explanation, leaving the family in the lurch."

Daubney, who lives in Irvine, California, and also owns Old Fields, a steakhouse in Greenlawn, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The court file does not indicate if Daubney has an attorney in the case.

The promissory notes were issued in connection with Old Fields’ purchase of the three Butera’s restaurants for a combined purchase price of $1,943,249, court records indicate.

Old Fields made five monthly installment payments of $28,333 between October 2025 and February 2026, but the payments ceased without notice afterward, the lawsuit states.

"Butera's has been a fixture of the local restaurant community for decades, and this action is not one it takes lightly," said Alexander Sakin, Butera’s Manhattan-based attorney. "It reflects a business decision to protect the company's contractual rights and financial interests after efforts to resolve the matter informally did not succeed."

Newsday searched available public records and saw no signs of financial distress.

Old Fields’ obligations, the suit states, were personally guaranteed by Daubney, the sole shareholder of the Greenlawn restaurant.

As part of the sale, Daubney acquired all of the restaurant's assets, including leases, recipes, equipment and intellectual property, for the three Butera’s restaurants located in Woodbury, Sayville and Bay Shore, the latter of which opened in 2020. Butera's in Smithtown closed in 2019.

Butera's is arguably most known for its chicken meatballs, a signature item which are sold at more than 250 supermarkets in the tristate area, Newsday previously reported.

"It goes back about 25 years," Martin Butera told Newsday in 2020, explaining how the recipe for chicken meatballs came about. "Our original menu was very chicken-oriented, so there was a lot of byproduct produced, and chicken breast does not make a good chicken stock. It gets very chalky."

The sale to Old Fields did not include the rights to the chicken meatballs line sold in stores, Sakin said.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.