A restaurant that was recently evicted from its space in central Fresno is now being sued for alleged wage theft by the City Attorney’s Office.
A civil complaint filed Aug. 7 in Fresno County Superior Court accuses the Mirchi Massala restaurant, its owners and a manager of labor code violations impacting at least seven workers between December 2024 and March of this year.
Among other violations, they failed to pay the workers all that they were owed, prevented documentation of their work hours and “misappropriated gratuities,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Defendants had actual knowledge that workers were economically vulnerable and less likely to report wage violations or pursue legal action,” the lawsuit alleges.
Mirchi Massala opened in February 2025 at the Ash Tree Square shopping center at First Street and Shaw Avenue. The restaurant, which billed itself a “fine dining Indian food experience” on its Instagram page, closed in recent months and was served with an eviction notice from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.
Ashish Desai, one of the restaurant’s owners, did not return a call Friday requesting comment about the allegations against Mirchi Massala.
City Attorney’s wage theft cases
The suit is at least the fifth wage theft complaint that City Attorney Andrew Janz has filed against local businesses since May 2025. The city had authorized its Wage Protection Program, which receives and investigates workers’ complaints, the year prior after state legislators allowed local prosecutors to sue employers accused of violating California labor law.
Amid pushback from the Fresno Chamber of Commerce, City Councilmember Tyler Maxwell said at the time that the program would not target small local businesses that make honest mistakes. Rather, the city would go after “the Bitwises of the world” and the “Cheesecake Factories of the world.”
Apart from Mirchi Massala, Janz has also sued the operators of a Holiday Inn in northwest Fresno, a shuttered Mexican seafood spot, a shuttered burrito shop and a car wash.
The city attorney in June announced his office is also investigating allegations that wage theft occurred at Horn Barbecue — a restaurant opened in January by a Fresno-raised, Michelin-awarded chef that closed within months.
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz speaks about the recent subpoena of two journalists in an interview Monday, April 14, 2025 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com Wage theft allegations against former Fresno Indian restaurant
Mirchi Massala workers began reporting labor code violations to the city just months after the restaurant opened, according to the lawsuit.
The city’s investigation found the restaurant classified several workers as salaried, exempt employees, the complaint alleges. Workers classified as such are not subject to California’s hourly wage, overtime, break or timekeeping requirements.
That means the Mirchi Massala workers did not clock in and their actual hours worked were never recorded, the suit says. They were not appropriately paid for overtime or assigned breaks during active service hours, the complaint alleges.
But the city contends that the workers actually did not qualify for the salaried, exempt classification under California law because they mainly prepared and cooked food, and were not in management.
The suit also accuses Ashish Desai, the owner who did not return The Bee’s call, of giving one worker a housekeeping job at his own home and also not fully compensating that labor.
Mirchi Massala Indian cuisine located on Shaw Avenue at First Street in Fresno. Bethany Clough bclough@fresnobee.com
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Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert.