Naked Taco owner and chef accused of wielding baseball bat during road rage incident
Chef Ralph Pagano, who once appeared on “Hell’s Kitchen” and is the owner of the Naked Taco restaurants in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, was booked into jail Monday, accused of wielding a baseball bat during a road rage incident in March.
Pagano, 55, faces one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, and he was released after posting bail, Palm Beach County jail records say. The case was filed in the court system and his warrant was signed late last month, court records show.
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detectives went to Pagano’s home in Boca Raton Monday morning and arrested him there on the outstanding warrant, according to Teri Barbera, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office. Boca Raton Police investigated the case.
According to the affidavit, Pagano was leaving his Boca Raton neighborhood on March 3 and pulled out in the 6500 block of Jog Road in front of another driver. The man Pagano cut in front of honked and slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting Pagano’s Tesla.
Pagano rolled his window down and yelled at the man, the affidavit said. The other driver, who is not identified in the report, made a gesture with his middle finger at Pagano and took a photo of him. He thought the argument was over and looked away, the affidavit said.
The Tesla driver then allegedly came up to the man’s car and put a baseball bat through the open front-passenger window into the car, the affidavit said, while shouting, “I’ll kill you!”
The man’s 10-year-old daughter was sitting in the passenger seat. The driver thought Pagano intended to hit him but couldn’t reach.
“The baseball bat came within inches of (victim 1’s) head and, while doing so, hit (victim 2) on top of her head,” the affidavit said.
Pagano drove off, and fire rescue assessed the girl. She was not injured. A witness who watched the argument told Boca Raton Police that he saw the Tesla driver approach the other driver with the bat and “fully believed that the Tesla driver was actually attempting to hurt (victim 1) and did not believe this was a mere threat,” the affidavit said.
Officers found Pagano was the registered owner of the Tesla, and the victim picked a photo of Pagano out of a lineup a few days after the incident, the affidavit said. Detectives went to Pagano’s home in the Boca Raton neighborhood in mid-April, and he said it was him in the photo the other driver took.
Pagano said he was in a verbal argument with the driver but that it did not get physical and denied the allegation that he wielded the bat, the affidavit said.
Pagano did not immediately return a voicemail Wednesday afternoon asking if his attorney can comment on his behalf. He was ordered not to contact the victim or to have any weapons, court records show.
Pagano owns the Naked Taco restaurants in Boca Raton, Coconut Creek, Miami and Miami Beach, with another location in Palm Beach County coming soon, according to the restaurant’s website.
He has been a TV personality since his appearance in the first season of Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” where he won runner-up. He appeared in an episode of “Iron Chef,” competing against Bobby Flay and hosted the TV cooking shows “Pressure Cook” and “All Mixed Up.”
While in Bimini in June 2017 on a trip to train staff at a location he was preparing to open at a resort, Pagano suffered second- and third-degree burns to 40% of his body when a gas line exploded in the restaurant’s kitchen.
Information from the South Florida Sun Sentinel archives was used in this report.
