Chicago restaurant owners are mobilizing to block City Hall from creating an “unlevel playing field” for their brick-and-mortar businesses — by legalizing mobile food trucks with cooking on the premises.

Five months after Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) championed the idea, restaurant owners are trying to bury it.

“We spent almost $9 million on two restaurants. It’s unfair to people who invested so much to allow someone who has a minimal investment in a truck . . . to pull up 200 feet from our door,” said Glenn Keefer, managing partner of Keefer’s Restaurant.

“They can barely get enough people out to inspect brick-and-mortar places. I don’t understand how they’ll be able to supervise and enforce sanitation on these trucks and where they trade.”

Dan Rosenthal, owner of Trattoria No. 10 and Sopraffina Marketcaffe Restaurants, argued that Waguespack’s ordinance creates an “unlevel playing field” for brick-and-mortar restaurants.

“The reason I’ve located where I have is there’s a very dense population close to my locations. Why should somebody be allowed to take advantage of that for less than one-tenth of the expense?” he said.

“Every dollar I lose in sales to a food truck down the street costs me 50-cents in profit. It doesn’t take a lot of decline in sales for restaurants to go out of business, particularly in this economy.”

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