The Daily Parker

Former Embeya owner Attila Gyulai, accused of embezzling over a million dollars from the restaurant he co-owned with chef Thai Dang his wife Komal Patel, was arrested in Spain yesterday:

Gyulai and his wife, Komal Patel, disappeared in summer 2016 after abruptly shutting the restaurant. They abandoned their Ford Flex SUV in front of their River West home, a detail uncovered in an exhaustive investigation by Crain's. Police ticketed the car two​ weeks later and impounded it in mid-August. By then, bank records later would show, their accounts had been used for a series of payments outside the United States.

Though the West Loop restaurant had won praise for its design and Asian cuisine, Cook County Circuit Court records show the couple took $1.5 million out of the restaurant, which was partly owned by chef Thai Dang. Judges had ordered Gyulai and Patel to pay the money back. Gyulai and Patel were last known to be living in Tulum, Mexico.

Dang, who was left to pay creditors after his partner disappeared, now owns Haisous, a restaurant in Pilsen, with his wife, Danielle. "We never thought this day would come this quick," he said via text upon learning of Gyulai's arrest. "We just knew we had to keep moving on with our lives."

Good. If the accusations prove true, he needs to go to jail.

Today is the last work day of 2017, and also the last day of my team's current sprint. So I'm trying to chase down requirements and draft stories before I lose everyone for the weekend. These articles will just have to wait:

• The New York Times interviewed President Trump; Josh Marshall has some thoughts about it.
• The Times also describes how a small section of the 2nd Avenue Subway is the most expensive mile of subway track on earth.
• Mother Jones has a video tribute to Trump Administration staffers who left their jobs in 2017.
• Joe Scarborough has an op-ed predicting "2018 will be the most consequential political year of our lives."
• Citylab investigates where urban fauna go when their habitat changes.
• The Chicago Tribune summarizes 200 new Illinois laws that take effect Monday, rounds up the biggest brand fails of 2017, and predicts a lot of restaurant closings in 2018 (starting with Glazed and Infused tomorrow).
• Also on Monday, the work of several notable artists including René Magritte passes into the public domain.
• And finally, did you know that PowerPoint is Turing-Complete?

We now return to "working through lunch," starring The Daily Parker...

The owners of one of the West Loop's hippest restaurants fled the country, leaving behind $1.5m in debts and judgments and nearly bankrupting the chef:

One day last summer, sometime after Attila Gyulai and his wife and business partner abruptly shut what was once one of the hottest restaurants in Chicago, they abandoned their Ford Flex SUV in front of their River West home. Police ticketed the car two​ weeks later and impounded it in mid-August. By then, bank records later would show, their accounts had been used for a series of payments outside the United States. The co-owners of Embeya, a progressive Asian restaurant in the West Loop that won national accolades for its inventive cooking and sleek design, have not been seen in Chicago since.

In all, Cook County court documents show, they absconded​ with more than $1.5 million from the restaurant, which was owned in part by their former chef, Thai Dang, and Dang's older brother, Kenny. The couple also racked up personal and business debts to purveyors, banks, suppliers, landlords, attorneys and credit card companies, according to court records, bank statements and interviews with more than a dozen former colleagues, friends, family members and neighbors. They've been ordered by judges to pay the Dang brothers nearly $1.5 million to cover their losses.

Dang, 32, and his wife, Danielle Dang, 36, who are about to open their next restaurant, have tracked Gyulai and Patel's movements through bank records obtained with a subpoena. They say it's clear the two schemed to take money from the business​ far in advance of their departures. "He threw his life away here—burned it with a match, all in the name of money," Thai Dang says. "He went through painstaking efforts and a great extent to hide money and move it out so nobody could find it." Adds Danielle Dang: "What they did to us is unspeakable. It takes so much hate and effort to do something like that to another person."

It was a great restaurant, and I ate there many times. And I hope Gyulai and Patel are apprehended and remanded to Chicago soon.

Too many interesting things to read today. I've got some time between work and Bel Canto to get through them:

• An astronomer thinks he knows the origin of the Wow! signal.
• A Chicagoist writer has crunched the numbers on Restaurant Week.
• Crain's looks at the new Illinois Cloud Tax and its effects on tech startups.
• Krugman shows, one more time, how much better things are now than at the beginning of Obama's presidency.
• Hanselman describes WallabyJS, a new JavaScript test runner.
• Jetbrains has developed a new cross-platform C# IDE.
• Paleontologists have discovered fossils from the K-T extinction event itself.
• Parking causes traffic. Seriously.

I have not read Bel Canto, though I understand it's loosely based on an actual historical event. I also haven't ever heard anything from composer Jimmy López before, since it only permiered last month. Friends who work for the Lyric tell me it's pretty good. I'll find out in a few hours.

First, Pabu Izakaya, early Saturday night (pre-party):

The inscription reads, "One Time, One Place."

Second, yesterday, on approach to Chicago:

That's approximately over Devon Ave., on approach to 27R, as I predicted.