Owner and Customers of Deli Find Its Closure Unappetizing
This isn’t what the Korean native simply known to many as Suzi had in mind for the final stretch of her storied life -- struggling to save Kaplan’s, probably Orange County’s best-known Jewish delicatessen.
The Original Kaplan’s Deli succumbed to financial pressures, closing March 31. The Costa Mesa restaurant was the last of 16 delis founded and sold in the past four decades by Abraham Kaplan, who prided himself on the best Reuben sandwich this side of Los Angeles’ Fairfax district.
Suzi Park Thomson Leggett and her husband, Robert Leggett, a former Democratic congressman from Vallejo, had bought the business in 1995 after he retired, refurbishing the restaurant and planting colorful snapdragons, hibiscus and gardenias out front to remind them of their 1981 wedding in Hawaii.
When her husband died in 1997, Leggett surprised friends by operating the popular Harbor Boulevard deli alone. Few knew that in the 1970s, she worked for House Speaker Carl Albert and was one of Washington’s hottest hostesses.
She later gained a different type of notoriety as a key witness in the 1976 “Koreagate” bribery scandal that embroiled Congress and ended with former Rep. Richard Hanna, an Orange County Democrat, serving a year in federal prison for accepting nearly $250,000 in bribes from a South Korean businessman.
Leggett, 59, said her days of Capitol Hill entertaining and understanding of cuisine came to good use at Kaplan’s, where, she said, she and her husband happily spent their days. After his death and a traditional two-year mourning period, she returned to the restaurant.
“I knew all about Jewish food and entertaining, but I never liked to clean the kitchen, so this was perfect,” she said. “I have 30 employees. It was all our retirement.”
The restaurant’s downfall was triggered by Southern California’s booming real estate market. Leggett said her monthly rent, negotiated in 1995 on a 10-year lease, was set to increase from $14,020 to $20,000. She mistakenly believed she could stay on a month-to-month basis but was told March 30 that she would have to move the following day, she said.
At 5 p.m., she rented a storage garage. Employees scheduled to work the next day instead helped move dishes, appliances, food and office supplies.
“It was just shocking to come in and find out it was our last day,” said assistant manager Bill Simco, an employee for seven years.
“We had people who would come down from all over,” he said, recalling the grandmother from tiny Weed, Calif., 50 miles from the Oregon border, who would drop in for the corned beef.
Loyal customer Toni Delahousaye of Costa Mesa arrived hungry with a friend on a recent afternoon, only to discover the place deserted and the handwritten “Closed -- Lost Lease” sign on the door.
“This is the only place I can come other than Fairfax,” she said. “My friend wanted to taste Jewish food, and I said this is the only place in Orange County where you can get it.”
The deli was such a magnet that customers from other parts of the state would stay next door at the Vagabond Inn, motel general manager Bhupal Barua said. The closure took a bite out of his repeat business, he said.
“They’d come here for years and years because of the deli,” Barua said. “It’s hurting us right now. Our customers tell us they’re very disappointed.”
The attorney for landowner Betty O’Connor chafed at the notion that his 83-year-old client was responsible for snuffing an Orange County institution. The business was struggling financially and was habitually late on rent payments, Noel Torgerson said, forcing O’Connor last year to file a court action against Leggett to get paid.
Leggett agreed in a stipulation to leave last July, but O’Connor gave her several extensions through March, Torgerson said. “My client is Betty Crocker’s sweeter sister,” he said. “She let Suzi stay under the theory that they could find another buyer, and they never did.”
Asked if another tenant was waiting in the wings ready to move in, an assertion of Leggett’s, he said, “I wish. I have no idea what’ll happen to the property.”
She said she recently found a building in Huntington Beach to reestablish the restaurant but needed $840,000 to close the deal.
“The sad thing is, Kaplan’s is an institution,” Leggett said. “I want to open [again], and I want everybody to come back. I’m worried about my employees. Some people worked here for 10 or 15 years.”
The Leggetts’ first brush with scandal came in 1976, when the Department of Justice began investigating Robert Leggett and other members of Congress for suspicion of receiving money from alleged members of the Korean CIA, whom they reportedly met at Korean Embassy dinners hosted by Suzi Park Thomson. She was granted immunity in exchange for testifying.
An investigation by former Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski ended with Hanna’s guilty plea for taking $250,000 from South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, in exchange for helping Park obtain and keep his status as the exclusive agent for the purchase of surplus U.S. rice for South Korea.
Robert Leggett also weathered a more personal scandal. Though he was reelected in 1976 to his eighth two-year term, the Democrat chose to retire in 1978 after the Washington Post reported that he had bought a house for a former congressional secretary with whom he’d fathered two children.
Robert Leggett went on to become a lobbyist for the maritime industry and later an international affairs consultant in Washington, D.C. Suzi Leggett worked as an interpreter and was an associate producer of a weekly program, “Ask Congress,” which aired on PBS. She wrote a 1978 book about her experiences, “Suzi: The Korea Connection.”
The couple moved to Orange County after a friend told them Kaplan’s was for sale.
While trying to reopen the deli at a new location, Leggett also is considering licensing the name and Abraham Kaplan’s signature recipes. She wants to duplicate the personal touches that the couple put into the closed restaurant--the marquee, the brick patio, and especially the tropical plants.
“They won’t even let me take some as a memory,” she said.
