TAMPA — What happened this weekend at SideBerns was juicier than the $36 filet mignon.
Call it dinner theater.
It all started shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday — still prime time at the hip bistro.
Jodi Jacolow, 32, of Tampa, who runs a Tampa Bay concierge service, was in the women's restroom.
So was George Hochschwender, 46, of Lutz, one of her employees.
What they were doing is in dispute.
Hochschwender would later tell Tampa police he was having relationship problems and Jacolow was comforting him.
But Aimeemarie Dias walked in and saw it much differently. Dias, 35, and a Tampa lawyer, later told police it appeared the two were having sex. Hochschwender told authorities absolutely not.
Either way, a fight broke out.
Jacolow and Dias soon were rolling on the floor, punching and pushing each other, according to police.
Hochschwender joined the scrum, police said. Eventually the fight spilled out of the women's room and into a hallway.
By then, the cops had been called.
And before everyone cooled off, police made one arrest.
Who? You haven't met him yet.
Enter Brent Yessin, 45. He, too, is a Tampa lawyer. He was just getting to the restaurant when police were filing out the three fighters.
He knows Jacolow. He announced he was her attorney, police said.
But he's not, and Jacolow told officers that. She just wanted to go home, as did Hochschwender and Dias. All three declined to press charges, and they got to go home.
But Yessin persisted, police said. In the end, it took four officers to arrest him for refusing to leave.
Monday, an unhappy Yessin said he will try to pursue state criminal and federal civil rights charges against the four uniformed officers who confronted him.
"These guys walked in like gestapo," Yessin said.
The three scrappers didn't talk about the incident on Monday.
But SideBerns manager Dean Hurst did. He was there Saturday night. "I think the papers are making more about this than it was," he said from the restaurant Monday evening. "We're trying to keep it under wraps."
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