By Tim Carman and Emily Heil
Their Horses restaurant in Los Angeles attracts A-list celebrities and the kind of press that generates wait lists larger than some small towns.
But in their personal interactions, both inside restaurants and out, chefs and co-owners Elizabeth Johnson and Will Aghajanian have apparently created far more volatile scenes as a couple, ones filled with allegations of abuse, threats of suicide, visits to prostitutes and claims of killing multiple cats, according to court documents.
The couple, amid a divorce, have traded allegations in court filings in Los Angeles County Superior Court since last fall, but reports started to spill out onto social media this week. The Los Angeles Times published what appears to be the first story about the allegations on Tuesday.
In her petition for a domestic violence restraining order, which was approved, Johnson painted a grim picture of her husband and business partner.
In her filings, she alleged that she has been ‘’unable to go anywhere without his permission.’’ She says she discovered that Aghajanian had visited prostitutes. She alleged he caused her physical and emotional harm.
Johnson, 32, also claimed Aghajanian, 31, had abused and/or killed up to 14 animals, according to court documents. The couple had three dogs - Pancho, Javi and Spud - when Johnson requested a restraining order on November 1.
‘’In the past, Will and I have had cats that mysteriously ended up dying, including one in 2017 who I took to a shelter when she became seriously wounded overnight - the shelter told me she had been seriously abused, but Will denied it was him. I believed him,’’ Johnson wrote in her filing.
Johnson alleged that last year, after the couple was given another kitten, Aghajanian ‘’started calling him 'Coyote Bait'/ said 'we were going to feed him to the coyotes,'’’ according to court papers.
‘’One day I was in the shower when I heard a very loud yelp and came out to find the kitten with huge lacerations and an abscess on its head,’’ Johnson noted in the court filing.
‘’Will claimed the dog attacked him, and I believed Will, but Will forbade me from taking him to the vet. I was suspicious, so I asked Will to stay away from him.
“But, several days later, I caught Will violently shaking the cat late at (sic) night, and he died the next day. Will put the dead cat in the trash and insisted on keeping the corpse in the house.’’
‘’I was the victim of psychological and mental abuse, so I believed Will when he denied killing these animals - he would insist I was crazy for questioning him and tell me to keep quiet. I now realise Will was torturing and killing these animals,’’ Johnson wrote in the court filings.
Aghajanian was not available for comment, but his attorney said Johnson's allegations are false.
Elyse Margolin said her client is an animal lover, not an abuser. Margolin said Johnson's allegations are part of an attempt to take over Horses, a high-profile destination on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, as well as the couple's forthcoming New York restaurant, Froggy's, in the West Village.
The Los Angeles Times reported that plans for Froggy's are on pause during the divorce proceedings.
In his own request for a restraining order, Aghajanian painted a far different picture of his relationship with Johnson.
He claimed he was the victim of Johnson's long-time physical and mental abuse, accusing his wife of repeatedly kicking, hitting and shoving him and, on two occasions, burning his arms with hot kitchen utensils.
He alleged that she threatened to kill him and threatened to kill herself as a means of controlling him.
His filing included declarations from his mother as well as a friend and co-worker who claimed to witness Johnson hitting him.
Aghajanian denied Johnson's allegations of animal abuse and alleged she was the one who threatened and mistreated their pets.
‘’She falsely accuses me of things she has done or that she has threatened to do to me or my pets,’’ he wrote in court filings.
He alleged that she brought a kitten into their home, where there were three dogs who did not get along with cats, ‘’resulting in many squabbles between the pets, including bloody physical injuries.’’
The incident in which Johnson accused Aghajanian of shaking a cat is inaccurate, he claimed.
In his version, she found the kitten lifeless in the middle of the night and woke him. ‘’I then took the kitten from her and gently shook it to see if it were still alive,’’ he wrote. ‘’I did not do this out of anger or hate, as Liz portrays.’’
He shared with the court text messages in which Johnson said she would kill Pancho, their dog. In one, she said Aghajanian will be eating ‘’Pancho oil pills.’’ In several messages, she claimed to have killed the animal.
Aghajanian said Johnson was using the restraining order and allegations to turn their restaurant partners and staff, as well as his friends, against him.
Johnson alleged that his wife, after filing for the restraining order, called the restaurant's staff for a meeting in which she called him a ‘’sex addict’’ and an ‘’animal abuser.’’
He also accused Johnson of hacking into his email accounts and iCloud account, as well as the email accounts of various unnamed business partners, to seek damaging information.
He said he waited to respond to her initial allegations because he was hoping to reconcile but claims that he never heard back from her.
He subsequently filed for divorce in January and then made his own request for a restraining order, which the court denied.
Margolin, his attorney, did not know why it was denied, and court records are not clear on that.
He also denied her allegations that he controlled her, saying she was the one who managed their financial assets and most of the ‘’operational areas of our daily marriage and business.’’
Neither Johnson nor her attorney responded to attempts to reach them.
In a statement on Instagram, the Horses team wrote, ‘’Will Aghajanian has been on a leave of absence from Horses as of November 2022, and since then, he has not been involved in the day-to-day operations of the restaurant.
“Under the guidance of Chef Liz, our incredible front and back of house teams are working to continuously make Horses what she had always intended it to be - a place of joy and celebration." The statement concluded by saying Horses would have no further comment.
Johnson and Aghajanian met more than a decade ago while they were staging at Noma, chef René Redzepi's celebrated New Nordic restaurant that will close next year.
According to a declaration from Amanda Weathersby, Aghajanian's mother, the couple was married over the phone in 2021 while they were living with Aghajanian's parents. The couple bought a house in Los Angeles last year.
Horses opened in September 2021, with a kitchen staffed not by a single chef but by four of them, not including one devoted to pastry. It was an immediate hit with diners and critics.
The Los Angeles Times wrote, ‘’Immediately it feels very much of Los Angeles while also asserting its own creativity; that's a combination when pulled off successfully, this city values.’’
The New York Times noted that the difficulty of securing a reservation ‘’can make Horses feel faraway and inaccessible, which is a shame because once you do get in and sit down, ideally in front of the roast chicken, it can be pure deliciousness and warmth.’’
The restaurant even seemed to survive a controversy last year when Eater reported that Ken Friedman, the disgraced proprietor behind the Spotted Pig and other once-fashionable restaurants in New York, had helped Horses secure its initial lease.
His assistance came the same year Friedman agreed to a settlement with 11 former employees who accused him of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation. There was some dispute between Friedman and Horses' owners and investors over whether he was a silent partner, sharing in the profits from the LA restaurant.
This is not the first time controversy has enveloped Johnson and Aghajanian.
In 2020, the couple was suddenly ousted from the Catbird Seat, an acclaimed restaurant in Nashville, not long after Aghajanian and Johnson were named semifinalists in the Rising Star Chef of the Year category for the James Beard Awards.