NJ restaurant manager begged worker to have threesome with wife, lawsuit says

PRINCETON — A woman hired to work as a hostess at a popular restaurant says the manager pressured her for sex and tried to get her to have a threesome with him and his wife.

According to the lawsuit filed August in U.S. District Court of New Jersey, Christina Polston says she began her first day at Mistral in February 2016 with assistant manager Gary Barella complimenting her eyes. She says from there, her conversations with Barella — who was named in the lawsuit along with general manager Fia Berisha and executive chef Scott Anderson — got more personal and inappropriate.

Polston's lawsuit says Barella would talk about his penis size, ask her about having sex with women, and tried to get her to "sneak around and have sex with him" because, he said, "sneaking around would be so hot."

She said after several weeks of the same conversations, she began to feel uncomfortable, telling Barella she thought she had told him too much about her personal life.

The lawsuit also claims that Barella showed Polston pictures of his wife on his cell phone in "various states of undress," including some of her naked. Her lawsuit says he pressured her to have a threesome with him and his wife. Polston said she continued to tell him that she was not interested in a relationship with either of them.

On one night, Polston claims that Barella asked to "show her something" in an empty dining room on an upstairs floor of the restaurant. When they got upstairs, she claimed he begged her to "PLEASE, have sex."

"Gary, I am not having sex with you, psycho!" she claims she told him.

Polston's lawsuit says the restaurant's security footage corroborated her side of the story, but one of the managers questioned whether Polston was being honest about her relationship with Barella and reprimanded her for drinking after her shift was over.

Polston said she was afraid to lose her job if she talked about feeling uncomfortable and being in a hostile work environment.

During a meeting with the restaurant management, Anderson acknowledged that she "should not have to know how to react to this situation," because she should "never have been subjected to this type of harassment in the first place," the lawsuit says.

Polston's lawsuit says that she felt "extremely humiliated, degraded, victimized, embarrassed and emotionally distressed by Barella's behavior."

The lawsuit does not say whether she remains employed at the restaurant.

A person who answered the phone at the restaurant on Tuesday said that Barella no longer worked there. He could not be reached for comment.

The defendants are represented by attorneys at the firm Margolis Edeslstein, who did not return a request for comment.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount for damages including back pay.

Polston is represented by Caroline H. Miller of Derek Smith Law Group of Philadelphia.

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Contact reporter Adam Hochron at 609-359-5326 or Adam.Hochron@townsquaremedia.com