This Is How Much Geoffrey Zakarian Is Really Worth

Geoffrey Zakarian is not an unfamiliar face for those who frequently watch Food Network. The celebrity chef has appeared on Iron Chef America, The Kitchen, Chopped, and The Next Iron Chef. He also hosts Food Talk, a radio show by Sirius XM that features a lot of his Food Network friends, as noted on his website. However, as prominent as Zakarian is in the food world, he's not as rich as some of his colleagues, despite also owning several restaurants, consulting at several additional restaurants, and authoring four cookbooks. Celebrity Net Worth estimates that the 61-year-old's net worth is $6 million.

However, it's worth wondering — could Zakarian be worth a lot more if he'd managed to avoid the various legal troubles that have followed him around for the last decade? Bankruptcy and lawsuits have plagued Zakarian's financial state. Some of his most recent legal worries hit just a few years ago, when Zakarian became entangled in a scuffle with the Trump family.

Going back a little over a decade, Geoffrey Zakarian was sued for $1 million in damages and $250,000 in penalties, according to a New York Times article, when staff members at a closed restaurant accused him of withholding overtime pay, falsifying payment-related documents, and unfairly charging staff members for meals. Zakarian's response? He filed for bankruptcy, which stalled the lawsuit. He claimed the court fees were crippling him financially, and, in 2011, he settled with the claimants for $200,000 — not a bad deal if you're Zakarian.

But that was not Zakarian's only issue of the decade. In 2015, the Trump Organization decided to sue Zakarian for $10 million and then $14 million (via The Washington Post). Why? Because Zakarian reportedly retracted his former commitment to open a restaurant within Washington, D.C.'s Trump International Hotel, citing then-President Donald Trump's remarks on Mexican immigration, New York Magazine's Grub Street reported. Zakarian's colleague and fellow Food Network star José Andrés experienced a similar dispute with the Trump brothers before settling in 2017. 

As for Zakarian, he countersued the Trump siblings before both sides finally reached an agreement, according to Grub Street. However, details of the agreement were not revealed to the public, so there's no saying for sure how the drama impacted Zakarian's finances.