Teaneck NJ ‘Chopped’ chef charged in Bergen County

Shalom Yehudiel, the former Teaneck chef made famous by appearing on “Chopped,” has been charged again with sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, authorities said Tuesday.

The original charges against Yehudiel were dismissed without prejudice over the summer after a judge ruled that the FBI had violated his rights by not turning over a disputed video.

Yehudiel, who now lives in Florida, was charged on Aug. 31 with first- and second-degree sexual assault and third-degree endangering the welfare of a child. He surrendered to Paramus police on Monday and was being held in the Bergen County Jail pending his first court appearance.

“Mr. Yehudiel beat these wrongful charges once and will do it again,” his attorneys, Lee Vartan and Zach Intrater, said in a statement. “The state has just recycled the same flawed indictment with the same factual and legal holes. This case, like the first, will be dismissed.”

The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office initially filed charges in 2021 after the FBI contacted the prosecutor’s Special Victims Unit about allegations of sexual crimes involving a child younger than 16 in Teaneck on more than one occasion.

Vartan and Intrater argued that prosecutors omitted exculpatory information during the grand jury hearing. In the motion, Vartan said the timeline of the sexual assault, which allegedly occurred in November 2021, was not possible and that a potential eyewitness who disputed the allegations was never interviewed.

Before Bergen’s charges, the FBI investigated the claims and gained access to surveillance video. Two clips from the video were provided to the defense and the Prosecutor’s Office by the FBI, but the federal authorities had access to the full video, which covered the alleged victim’s employment at Yehudiel’s Teaneck restaurant Humble Toast.

Both the prosecution and the defense were unable to access the encrypted video. When Yehudiel was released from monitoring after the dismissal of the first set of charges, he was arrested the next day at John F. Kennedy International Airport, trying to fly to Bangkok on a one-way ticket.

He was attacked by another inmate in the Rikers Island jail, suffering an arm injury.

Yehudiel is facing similar charges in Union County as well, stemming from accusations of sexual assault from another woman, Elisheva Akselrod, who says Yehudiel sexually assaulted her at their synagogue when she was a teenager.

The Bergen County prosecutor declined to press charges in Akselrod’s case, and she sued Yehudiel. The Union County prosecutor is handling the criminal case after the Attorney General’s Office transferred it for independent review. Akselrod’s lawsuit was dropped after the criminal charges were filed in Union County.

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