Hobnobbing It on the Hill : Restaurant Couple Have Seen Their Share of Humanity

It’s been 45 years since Midwesterners Harold and Dorothy Hoersch opened a 14-stool lunch counter at 1st Avenue and Juniper Street, aptly named the Juniper Cafe.

Since then, San Diego has grown from a smattering of 200,000 mostly military folk to a booming metropolitan center of more than a million, and the small lunch spot has become what is now known as Hob Nob Hill.

In that time, the restaurant has blossomed into a favorite dining haunt of some of city’s most powerful people, both past and present.

Mixed in among judges, bank presidents, business leaders, attorneys, physicians and politicians are regulars and senior citizens who have eaten at the restaurant since its inception.

Steady Stream of Patrons

Once the door opens at 7 a.m., a steady stream of the city’s most prominent people and just plain diners fill the counter, booths and tables through the day, striking business deals as well as the occasional plea bargain and lawsuit settlement. Others simply chat.

The Hoersches, both of whom work in the restaurant, have thus witnessed the eating habits of generations of San Diegans, some of whom have risen to prominence, others who have fallen from grace.

It was here that the former “Mr. San Diego,” C. Arnholt Smith, the financier who once ruled over a billion-dollar empire, ate his daily breakfast for more than 25 years. Smith tumbled from the top of the banking business after he was convicted of income tax fraud and embezzlement from his now-defunct U. S. National Bank and the companies he owned.

“Smith used to sit right at the counter,” the bespectacled Harold Hoersch said. “All the girls loved him because he knew what he wanted to order and he was always an impeccably perfect gentleman, like the Lord Calvert guy.”

It was also here that convicted swindler J. David (Jerry) Dominelli once dined during lunch breaks from his trial in federal court.

After Hoersch heard about Dominelli’s woes, he was dumbfounded one morning when the embattled financier strolled in with his attorney.

“He reached out and shook my hand, but I still couldn’t believe it when the case first came out,” Hoersch recalled.

But the restaurant has also served Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Mayor Maureen O’Connor, McDonald’s founder and Padre owner Ray Kroc and even Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda. The Dodgers’ skipper still checks in for breakfast and dinner when his club is in town.

“He just likes to eat food,” Hoersch said. “I once saw him eat two servings of smoked pork chops with all the trimmings that I didn’t think he could.”

Defying all conventional restaurant odds by eschewing trends, decor changes and Saturday business hours, the Hoersches follow a simple guiding principle: good fare without flair. It’s worked. The restaurant is the oldest single-owner eatery in San Diego, Hoersch said.

Despite the sporadic upheaval that might occur among its elite clientele, the restaurant remains a mirror of the Midwestern way of life, steeped in traditional values to which the Hoersches adhere.

The restaurant’s decor remains barely unchanged, with its wooden rose-colored chandeliers, its busboys clad in green, high-collared jackets, and a veteran staff of waitresses--some of whom have worked at the restaurant for more than 30 years. More than 200 customers have house tabs they pay at the end of the month, and Hoersch said he has even had to retire some of his help.

The sturdy Hoersch, who turns 71 next week, left dust-ravaged Kansas in the early 1940s when an acre of land could be bought for a dollar if there had been any takers. He figured he could come to San Diego and work for Consolidated Voltee--the aircraft company that later became General Dynamics--during World War II emergency efforts. Dorothy, now 71, followed soon after, and the two were married in Yuma, Ariz., after she was able to get a ride aboard a train full of troops bound for San Diego. The couple, who met in high school, have been married 47 years.

She also worked for Consolidated, but later went to work at the counter of the original lunch stand while her husband toiled over the grill in back. Hoersch quit the aircraft company in 1946 to pursue his dream of expanding the lunch counter--originally a side income project--into a full-blown restaurant.

With $10,000 cash and a $10,000 loan at 6% interest, the Hoersches bought the other end of the building in which the lunch counter began. The 5,000-square-foot building, kitchen equipment and land are now worth an estimated $2.5 million, Hoersch said.

However, given that price tag today, and with the odds that only one in 10 restaurants survives its first three years in business, Hoersch said he probably wouldn’t take the same risk he did more than 40 years ago. He admitted that the thought makes him uncomfortable.

“I don’t like that because it sounds negative, and we’re not negative people,” he said. “But you can’t be an independent businessman and a pessimist . . . it won’t work.”