Run for the Money Ends for Acclaimed Restaurant

As an adventure in haute cuisine, Gustaf Anders has been a smashing success. The pricey La Jolla restaurant was been lionized by food critics from San Diego to New York for its continental fare and elegant surroundings.

As a business proposition, however, the place has taken on aspects of a fallen souffle.

So now, after several years of negotiations, the financial backers have gone quietly and sadly to court to evict restaurant manager Wilhelm Gustaf Magnuson and master chef Ulf Anders Strandberg for failure to pay rent.

Even deep pockets have their limits. And these pockets are two of the deepest in San Diego: newspaper publisher Helen K. Copley and Jack in the Box founder Robert O. Peterson, husband of Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

“Mr. Magnuson and Mr. Strandberg are great artists, and they view the restaurant as a work of art,” said Kendall Squires, attorney for La Jolla Shores Properties Inc., a corporation headed by Peterson.

“The problem,” Squires said, “is that somewhere in the restaurant business there has to be a union of art and business, and that may have eluded them.”

The corporation acts as the general partner for Gustaf Anders Associates, which involves the Peterson and Copley trusts and owns the building and fixtures at 2182 Avenida de la Playa.

In turn, the corporation leases the restaurant premises to Magnuson and Strandberg for $22,000 (which includes liquor license, insurance and loan payments), which has gone unpaid since August.

Squires estimates that Copley and Peterson staked the restaurateurs to $500,000 in start-up costs and incurred several hundred thousand dollars in other obligations since the restaurant relocated from Pacific Beach in 1984.

Ann Buss, attorney for Magnuson and Strandberg, declines to comment. But her clients are known to feel the rent is exorbitant and that they received verbal assurances of lifetime financial support in their effort to bring fine dining to San Diego.

An initial court hearing is set for late next month. Copley and Peterson are said to be unsure what they will do with the property if Magnuson and Strandberg are ousted--although another restaurant venture is unlikely.

How to Back a Winner

Smart horseplayers sometimes hedge their bets. Bankers, too.

Great American First Savings Bank contributed $5,000 to the Yes-on-Proposition H campaign, the City Council-sponsored growth measure. Board Chairman James Schmidt chipped in $500 more.

For balance, Great American Development Co., wholly owned by the bank, contributed $10,000 to the campaign to defeat both Proposition H and Proposition J, the citizen-sponsored growth measure.

Ladies of the Club Upset

Note to Abigail Van Buren: you might want to reconsider any plans to visit Rancho Santa Fe.

The natives are furious at a recent Dear Abby column--distributed to more than 1,200 newspapers in the United States and 40 foreign countries--carrying a letter from a woman alleging to have been ripped off by “the rich ladies” of the Rancho Santa Fe garden club.

The anonymous letter writer (pseudonym: “Good Memory”) said she brought some expensive and beautiful Christmas ornaments to be auctioned off for charity, only to have them filched by garden club members working in the auction.

“Shame on those greedy do-gooders,” Dear Abby wrote.

Paulette Sexton, the club’s rummage chairwoman, says it never happened. First, because the club, which serves as the community’s social hub, does not do auctions or charity events.

“The entire Ranch is thoroughly shocked over this,” Sexton said.