Ex-Warlord Chef Trevor Fleming Accused of Assault

Julia Suhr thought she’d landed a dream job.

As one of the first hostesses at Warlord, the walk-in-only Avondale restaurant at 3198 N. Milwaukee Ave. that became one of Chicago’s most talked-about dining destinations after opening in 2023, she managed lines of diners who sometimes waited four hours on the sidewalk for a table. She got press coverage. The place had genuine buzz.

Then, in May 2024, chef Trevor Fleming sexually assaulted her, she said.

Suhr is now speaking publicly about what she says happened, calling it exactly what it was. “It was assault,” she told reporters. Her account adds another voice to a growing pile of allegations against Fleming, the star chef whose fall from one of Chicago’s hottest restaurant kitchens has been swift and damaging.

Eight former Warlord employees and four of Fleming’s ex-partners have described a pattern of misconduct that extended well beyond Suhr’s account. Fleming, they said, pursued sexual relationships with multiple female employees who reported to him, mistreated staff, and shared explicit photos of women without their consent. According to former employees, this behavior was widely known at the restaurant, including by co-owners Emily Kraszyk and John Lupton.

Fleming has denied abusing former romantic partners or Warlord workers. Through his attorney, Robert Rascia, he denied Suhr’s specific allegations.

The legal trouble became public in January when Fleming was charged with sharing an explicit image of a woman without her consent. A felony charge. Other women told reporters that Fleming shared nude photos of additional romantic partners without permission. Not an isolated incident, they said.

Kraszyk and Lupton moved quickly once the charge became public. They publicly broke with Fleming and, in February, filed a lawsuit against him seeking to remove him from the business. The lawsuit states the co-owners “refuse to be associated with an individual who allegedly preys on women, terrorizes employees and has brought shame and destruction upon the business they worked so hard to build.”

Fleming has since been removed from Warlord’s day-to-day operations. He has said he plans to open a new restaurant elsewhere.

The two remaining owners didn’t directly answer questions about Suhr’s allegations when contacted, instead sending a statement they’ve shared before. “Trevor broke our trust,” Kraszyk and Lupton said, acknowledging their attempts to address problems at the restaurant fell short. They added: “The actions of Trevor and allegations against him do not represent the values of John, Emily or the restaurant and our staff. Our main concern now is the safety and wellbeing of our staff.”

That statement, measured and carefully worded. Suhr’s words were not.

She worked at Warlord for a little over a year. She said her reason for speaking out now is simple: she doesn’t want other women to end up in the same situation, whether as employees or as someone romantically involved with Fleming. “It was always kind of my intention [to speak up] and not let it happen to anybody else,” she said last month.

On March 14, protesters gathered outside the Milwaukee Avenue location to demonstrate against the restaurant and the conditions former employees described. The neighborhood has watched a place it once celebrated turn into something much harder to look at.

Sexual harassment and workplace abuse in the restaurant industry has drawn national scrutiny for years, with advocates pointing to power imbalances between chefs and front-of-house staff as a persistent structural problem. Chicago is no exception. The Illinois Human Rights Act prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace and covers employees across industries, including hospitality.

Reporting from Block Club Chicago first brought Suhr’s account and the broader pattern of allegations to light, including the detailed accounts from former employees and Fleming’s ex-partners.

Suhr’s story lands at a complicated moment for Warlord. The restaurant built its identity around exclusivity and a certain mystique, a no-reservations policy that created lines stretching down Milwaukee on weekend nights. That mystique now sits alongside something uglier. The same walls that generated glowing food coverage are now tied to a felony charge, a civil lawsuit between co-owners, and multiple women describing years of abuse.

What happens to the restaurant itself is unclear. What Suhr wants, at least, is direct: she wants women to know who they might be dealing with before they walk into a job or a relationship with Fleming.

So she said it out loud. Assault. Her word. Her call.