A mounting family feud threatens to tear apart a beloved eatery that’s been a staple of the Harlem food scene since 1896.

Rao’s, a family-style Italian restaurant on 114th Street, is in the midst of a legal battle over shareholder stock rights in the company’s line of specialty food products, which includes the pasta sauces and olive oils sold at the restaurant’s offshoot Battery Park shop.

The tension stems from two familial relatives of the original Rao’s founders, the Pellegrinos and the Stracis, both of whom have an equal stake in the company’s overall shares.

Frank Pellegrino, Sr., filed a lawsuit earlier this month alleging that co-owner Ron Straci and his wife, Sharon, ran the specialty foods business without consultation or communication with any of the other shareholders and used it as a “personal fiefdom.”

Straci called the charges “cruel and full of untrue allegations,” noting that he and his wife fronted a $250,000 loan for expenses when no one else would, and that the company has grown exponentially under their leadership.

However, the lawsuit aims to edge the Stracis out of the company, period.

“The Majority Shareholders have stated that they will block all such sales and investment proposals and refuse to consider them, at least until they have pushed the Stracis out,” read one section.

Without a resolution, the entire company may collapse altogether, leaving local pasta-lovers in a serious bind. Rao’s has been called the toughest restaurant in the country to get a reservation; perhaps it has something to do with all of that olive oil, which research now suggests could help prevent age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in adults 65 and older.

Even those who can manage to get a table at Rao’s have noticed a dark cloud gathering over the atmosphere.

“Frankie usually sits in the first chair by the bar, and Ron stands on the far wall, but now, when one shows up, the other leaves,” said an anonymous regular.

“I hope it will work out,” Straci told the New York Post. “We try to keep ourselves above the fray and not let it affect people who work for us.”