LANSING — A relationship gone sour is threatening to steal the dream of a Lansing restaurateur.

Linh Lee, the owner of Capital City BBQ in Lansing, said business has plummeted since her former boyfriend hijacked the phone number customers use for take-out and catering.

Capital City BBQ is a Vietnamese and BBQ joint that was featured in 2017 on Guy Fieri’s TV show, “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."

The tiny restaurant opened in 2015 inside Lee’s cellphone store at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Saginaw Street. Lee closed the cell phone store last year and expanded the seating space for the restaurant.

A call to Capital City BBQ’s longtime phone number leads to a recording claiming the restaurant is closed until spring.

“Happy Holidays from Capital City BBQ. Due to the holidays we will be taking an extended leave until March 1st. We look forward to your business and seeing you after March 1st. Have a happy holiday. Thank you.”

It’s a lie.

Lee said the deception is the revenge of her former boyfriend, Regan Louchart, a Troy-based builder. They were together for nine years.

Louchart didn't return multiple calls seeking comment.

Kitchen is open

Despite the inaccurate recording, Lee and her staff of four are busy serving pulled pork and smoked chicken dinners alongside banh mi, spring rolls and pho.

“I am not closing. I am moving forward. I keep going,” Lee said.

She said, in the four days after her restaurant’s phone number was transported to one controlled by Louchart on Dec. 18, business dropped to $2,800, less than half of her usual sales.

She got a new phone number just before Christmas, (517) 721-1500, but the old number with the business-closed message is still on multiple websites and on signs hanging on the building.

When Guy Fieri showed up to eat a brisket bahn mi sandwich in 2017, it was a happier time for Lee and Louchart.

The two were filmed working side-by-side and called themselves co-owners and chefs. He worked the barbecue side and she did the Vietnamese food. They were also identified as co-owners in a 2015 Lansing State Journal story.

But Lee, 48, said that’s in dispute, as she was the one supplying the capital to build the restaurant.

She grew up in Vietnam, the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and a U.S. soldier. She was raised by her grandmother who taught her to cook. It’s been her lifelong dream to have a restaurant.

Lee said she hired Louchart to renovate the cellphone store after a 2011 fire. She said she paid him $67,000 to build a restaurant on one side.

When he claimed co-ownership, she said, “I told him I would give him 50 percent, if he could show the money he invested just like I did."

She said Louchart put phones and other vital services under his construction business so he has the passwords.

Smoker taken

The bitter breakup happened in July. Lee said it’s turned her life upside down. She’s had to fight to get back a business bank account he emptied and she was forced to move from the house they shared.

Ruining the business is the best way to hurt Lee, family members said.

“He’s trying to take that from her because he knows that’s her dream,” said Jordan Cleveland, a former staffer at the restaurant and Lee’s son-in-law.

The latest round of revenge started when Lee said Louchart took a pricey smoker from behind the restaurant after midnight, just before Thanksgiving.

She said she called the police, but Louchart produced a receipt for the smoker. She argues that the $13,677 smoker is the property of the business, not Louchart's.

Instead, she bought a much smaller smoker and stayed up all night smoking a half-dozen turkeys, two at a time, to meet her Thanksgiving catering orders.

That’s been her modus operandi. Whatever obstacle is placed in front of her, she finds a way around it.

“You take away the phone number, I’m going to get a new number. You steal my company’s smoker, I will buy a new one,” she said. “Whatever I have to do, I will do. I’m not giving up.”

She has hired an attorney to seek legal redress. That's exactly where a business dispute belongs — in a court where a judge can weigh the evidence, not settled with dirty tricks.

To reach Capital City BBQ, call 517-721-1500 or 517- 721-1504. Text your orders to 517-919-0101.

Related:

Food show host Guy Fieri rolls out of town after filming in Lansing

Capital City BBQ opened June 1

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com.Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.