Noted Chefs to Load Up Pallets and Leave Town

If you never dined at the acclaimed Gustaf Anders in La Jolla, you may want to make a reservation rather quickly.

Restaurant manager Wilhelm Gustaf Magnuson says the restaurant will close Dec. 11, and he and chef Ulf Anders Strandberg are leaving to take jobs at a new restaurant opening in a Costa Mesa shopping center.

Magnuson and Strandberg have been locked in litigation with their financial backers, newspaper publisher Helen K. Copley and Jack in the Box founder Robert O. Peterson, husband of Mayor Maureen O’Connor. Copley and Peterson, through a corporation, own the building and fixtures at 2182 Avenida de la Playa and haven’t received any rent since August.

“I’m very disappointed that, after seven years, we have to leave San Diego,” Magnuson said. “The rent just proved too much for us. We tried to bring fine dining, but we couldn’t make enough money to satisfy our backers.”

Despite rave reviews, Magnuson said the restaurant could not pay its $22,000-a-month rent, which he calls an excessive 13% of gross receipts.

Attorneys for Copley and Peterson tell a different story, of generous financial support that approached $1 million, and of two restaurateurs who knew little about running a business and seemed uninterested in learning as long as they had wealthy patrons. An eviction hearing was set for Dec. 12.

“It’s all very sad,” Magnuson said. “I wish we could throw a big party for everybody who came to the restaurant over the years, but obviously that won’t be possible.”

Lesson Here Somewhere

The official minutes of the San Diego school board tell us the board has:

” . . . adopted a plan to implement a common core curriculum for all students which recognizes that all our students need to develop strong academic skills which include both subject matter knowledge and abilities related to self-esteem, understanding, language usage, calculation and reasoning, scientific theory and practice, parenting, personal and cultural interaction, and awareness of health-related, social, economic and legal consequences of personal actions and a host of related issues.”

And you thought schools were supposed to teach reading, writing and arithmetic.

Heavy Into Drugs

Just how much drug traffic goes on in San Diego County? Consider:

- Before Police Capt. Nancy Goodrich took over as commander of the Central Division, she wanted to take a tour of the neighborhood. So she arrived one recent sunny afternoon at Memorial Park and Recreation Center in Logan Heights.

The first thing she saw was a slow-moving drug deal in progress on the play area. None of the participants made any effort to hide.

When it was over, a 24-year-old woman was arrested for possession of PCP, her second such arrest. The seller escaped.

“I knew we had drug dealing out there, but I didn’t know it was that bold,” Goodrich said.

- The 20,000 pounds of speed produced locally last year is enough to keep every man, woman and child in the county continuously stoned for six months, says Ron D’Ulisse, an agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration here.

That’s based on a rough calculation of a 5-milligram dose producing a buzz lasting four to six hours.

City Hall’s Secrets

While the San Diego City Council was discussing possible construction of a new City Hall, Councilman Ed Struiksma decided to pin down City Manager John Lockwood on the veracity of two rumors about the current hall, built in 1964.

First, is it true that it has only four elevators because the city ran out of money to build two more? Yep, said Lockwood.

And is it true that the reason it doesn’t have any windows on the east and west sides is that the city manager (the late Thomas W. Fletcher) didn’t want to referee fights between council members and bureaucrats over who gets corner offices with fancy views?

Right again.

“Best decision he ever made,” Lockwood said.