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When Tuan Le, the Republican candidate in the Sept. 2 House District 40 Special Election, departed Brevard County, he left behind more than a failed French restaurant chain. His business ventures had collected a string of eviction notices and tax liens.
Two of his three Le Crave Cafe locations received eviction notices for unpaid rent, with one accruing $56,073.60 in missed payments in 2022, according to one lawsuit. The chain’s Titusville and Rockledge locations accumulated delinquent taxes that together totaled nearly $25,000, along with a range of food service violations issued by the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
Now living in Apopka, Le, 45, is running on a pro-business platform that prioritizes tax discounts for small businesses. He told VoxPopuli in a phone interview that he doesn’t “have anything to hide,” and that the hardship of starting and maintaining a restaurant business is “one of the reason[s] why I run for politics.”
“ If you don't own a restaurant, you don't know how to survive,” said Le, who still owns the Korean hot pot restaurant KravePot in Rockledge “I learn[ed] how I'm going to fix our community, what I have to do to help small businesses, what I have to do to help the people who work in the restaurant industry. And that is [the] experience we need for people who run for office.”
Le, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Florida District 10 in 2022 and 2024, owns the engineering firm LeNgineer; the research development company Lennovation. He recently launched LeNgineer Construction and Development and Quantum Automation and Controls. There’s also Venus Nail Spa, with salons in Titusville and Melbourne.
Le was a NASA aerospace engineer. But in a separate interview in July, he told VoxPopuli that he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He started an engineering firm, invested in real estate and launched his French restaurant chain Le Crave.
In 2017, he opened one restaurant at the Waterford Lakes Town Center in East Orlando and another in Rockledge at the corner of Suntree Boulevard and Third Street in Brevard County. His Titusville restaurant, also in Brevard County, opened at the Titus Landing shopping center a year later.
However, in 2018, the landlord, Waterford Lakes Town Center, filed a complaint against Le Crave, Le and his now ex-wife, Chung Nguyen, to evict the restaurant over $8,471.23 in unpaid rent and for not following design codes, according to court documents. The Waterford location closed in 2019, and the court later dismissed the case.
In 2022, Le’s Titusville restaurant was sued by its landlord, Titusville Harrison One, after Le failed to respond to a notice demanding that he pay $56,073.60 in unpaid rent or surrender the property. The company ultimately sued Le in Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit Court, which ordered Le to pay the landlord $62,259.69.
In a phone interview on Aug. 21, Le said that he and Titusville Harrison One disagreed over restaurant signage in 2019. The landlord removed the signage that he “paid thousands of dollars for,” said Le. He said he stopped making full rental payments because of the dispute. But in July 2020, he paid $4,000 toward his $6,000 outstanding balance.
The Covid-19 pandemic created a challenging economic climate, and Le said his rents became unaffordable. At the time, Le said many restaurant owners in the Titus Landing shopping center tried to renegotiate their rent as business plummeted for sit-down restaurants. Le said he requested that his rent be cut in half, but the landlord refused. Le said other businesses closed while still owing “six, seven months of money” and “just [walked] away” without getting sued for back pay. He speculated that he may have been a “target” of racism.
“If you know about Titusville… If the white people do anything, nobody talk[s] about it,” he said. “I'm an Asian guy… So, I'm a target for them. I'm straight to the point. It's very, very racist.”
Le said after receiving the judgment, he persuaded the landlord to “drop everything” by asking why other businesses hadn’t been sued for unpaid rent. Brevard County records only show that the suit was satisfied.
VoxPopuli made several attempts to contact Titusville Harrison One via email and phone calls to verify Le’s explanation, but the company did not respond.
After Le’s Titusville location closed, the Florida Department of Revenue in May 2023 filed a lien against Le Crave of Titusville to collect $13,151.45 in delinquent sales and use taxes. That same year, the department filed a lien against Le Crave of Rockledge before the restaurant closed. As of May 2024, Le still owes $11,055.79, in sales and use taxes.
Le and his ex-wife also own two Titusville shopping centers — one at 5155 S. Washington Ave. and another at 3310 S. Hopkins Ave., which have utility service liens for unpaid utility bills for $1,500 and $950, respectively. The Washington Avenue property also has a lien against it for nearly $5,000 in delinquent sales and use taxes.
In addition, the Washington Avenue property has liens for several code violations, such as failing to repair drain pipes and roof damage, storing leftover materials outside and neglecting weed overgrowth, according to special magistrate documents. Since May 20, 2024, the city of Titusville has fined Le $250 per day for each violation. There’s no record that the violations or fines have been satisfied. To date the accumulated fines amount to $465,000.
Le confirmed to VoxPopuli that he has not yet addressed the violations, but plans to use his new construction company, once it’s operational, to do so.
Le testified at a May 13, 2024, special magistrate hearing for the Titusville code violations that he was “having [a] hard time financially” and noted the “impact of Covid” on his businesses, according to city documents. The city of Titusville countered that Le purchased the property in 2021, so the pandemic could not explain the violations.
He claimed that he bought the Washington Avenue place damaged with plans to fix it up, but he “[ran] into problem with people who doesn't [sic] like Asians” again.
”Any property that I buy and when they know I'm about to build, they will drive a code enforcement in front of the property and wait,” he said.
Le claimed the tax liens were not his fault, and the violations occurred when his ex-wife was helping to operate the business. He said she was responsible for “all the tax, payroll and stuff like that.” He added that he didn’t keep track of the financial aspects of the business “ because I believe that things will be taken care [of].”
Meanwhile, Le said he has retained a lawyer to help negotiate a settlement with the Florida IRS for those liens. He said he plans to fix the property code violations before paying off his utility service liens.
While filing for bankruptcy would have been an “easy fix” to satisfy his outstanding liens, he said that he’s “working with the IRS right now” because “if I break something, I fix [it]- that's who I am.”
Le’s 2024 financial disclosure form puts his net worth at $4 million.
The Titusville and Rockledge Le Crave locations had a slew of food-service violations while they were open.
VoxPopuli reviewed Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspection reports of the Titusville and Rockledge restaurants from 2022 and 2023, respectively. Reports showed the restaurants were cooking food below the required temperature; foods were not properly marked with the date after they were opened to ensure they were used within the appropriate timeframe; food debris accumulated on kitchen walls and floors; and a “mold-like substance” had formed on the wooden crepe batter spreader.
An employee told Talk of Titusville that at one point, Le had taken blueberries out of the trash and told the cooks to use them in the fruit crepes “where customers wouldn’t see.”
The department also documented similar sanitation violations at KravePot.
In addition, neither restaurant had a certified food manager on duty. At the Titusville location, employees who had been working for more than two months had no certification showing they had been trained, according to an inspection report. Both the Titusville and Rockledge locations were also operating with expired food-service licenses issued by the Division of Hotels and Restaurants during the last year they were open. No inspection reports exist for Le Crave in Waterford Lakes Town Center.
“Sanitation wasn’t great,” a former employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation from Le, told VoxPopuli. “I used to have pics[ sic] of how it was left overnight for me to come in and find it.”
While he said he doesn’t recall specific sanitation violations, Le said the restaurants were sometimes short on cleaning supplies, “especially in ‘21 and ‘22” [referring to 2021 and 2022] because of pandemic-related supply shortages.
While Le said his managers ran the restaurants and that he relied on them to do “everything” for him while he focused on his other businesses, he also said he didn’t always “have enough time to train” new managers before putting them to work. That often led to conflict.
The former employee told VoxPopuli via Facebook Messenger that Le and his ex-wife used profanity to berate employees for things that happened during a shift and forced the managers to fire people who did “nothing wrong.” One worker, for instance, was fired for “drizzling a crepe the wrong way.”
Le maintained that he treated his employees “so nice.” He said he gave some employees “money to help them” when they were dealing with financial hardship. When asked why his employees would say they were mistreated, he blamed it on jealousy and drama in the restaurant.
VoxPopuli asked Le why he launched multiple businesses at once when he didn’t seem to have the time to nurture and grow the companies he’d already started.
“I love to be busy for my work,” he replied. “I love a challenge and I want to see where is my limit.
“ If you own so many business[es], like construction, engineering firm, real estate and so I mean, in restaurants, how can you be at a restaurant?” Le continued. “I'm so all over the place.”
