Is Morton Playing His Trumps Card?

You’ve never eaten lunch in this town at Morton’s. But that may change and with a drastic relocation of the power tables.

Morton’s, the “place-to-be-seen-on-Monday-nights” does not serve lunch. But according to sources, the lease on the restaurant is about to expire and Peter Morton is negotiating to move his power palace across the street to the former Trumps.

Why move?

“The city would never allow Morton’s to open at lunchtime because the restaurant didn’t have contiguous parking,” says one source. “There’s parking at Trumps, so he could serve lunch.”

Neither Peter Morton nor Trumps’ landlord, the Arlen Andelson Company, would return calls.

CHAMELEON CAFE: When Orange County’s busiest restaurateur, David Wilhelm, first announced the opening of a restaurant in the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, he said it would be called Indigo. But when it opens tomorrow, the restaurant will have changed color and turned into Cafe Topaz.

“We discovered that Indigo is the name of another restaurant,” Wilhelm says in a press release, “and we wanted to establish our own identity.”

Karen Salk, owner of the 4-year-old Indigo in Los Angeles, tells a slightly different story. “We have a trademark on the name,” she says, “and my attorney contacted David Wilhelm. Wilhelm has so many restaurants, it’s not like he isn’t up on these things.”

Indeed. When Wilhelm opened his Zuni Grill in 1991, the owner of San Francisco’s venerable Zuni Cafe, Judy Rodgers, says she called Wilhelm and asked him not to use her restaurant’s name. Wilhelm, she says, refused. “It doesn’t do any good to enrich lawyers . . .,” says Rodgers with resignation. “Colossal sums of money can be spent by both parties.”

DINNER AT LATE: “I went from outrage to insanity to whatever,” says Detours co-publisher Luis Barajas. He was given just 24-hours to notify 500 guests that the magazine’s first-anniversary party had been canceled. Last-minute inspections at Cafe Morpheus, the former Asylum restaurant, made the party impossible.

Barajas, who says his magazine is like Interview “but hotter,” suggested moving the party to a private home in Beverly Hills where Cafe Morpheus could provide the hors d’oeuvres. “I’ll just put out a little detour sign to where the party is,” he suggested.

But Cafe Morpheus begged Barajas to postpone the party for two more weeks. (“Believe me,” says operations manager Gardiner Gilless, “it came as a bigger shock to me when the fire marshall and building inspector said we couldn’t open. We thought we’d already passed.”) Barajas agreed, and sent out new invitations with the new date. The day before the second party he got a second call. The party, Cafe Morpheus said, would not happen. They still hadn’t passed their final inspection.

Buzz magazine found itself in a similar position: Its second-anniversary bash was also canceled at the last minute. “We will have another anniversary party at another anniversary,” says president Eden Collinsworth, “but it definitely won’t be there.”

Meanwhile Detours still has party plans. “He (Morpheus owner John Thomas) already has a lot of my money,” says Barajas, “but we did most of it in advertising trade. It’s not like I could tell everyone that’s seen their ads not to look at them again.”

“It’s going to be a cool party,” says Barajas. “We are happening . . . at least we hope we are happening.”

HOT CHOCOLATE: John Sedlar, chef-owner of the highly acclaimed Bikini restaurant in Santa Monica, confesses he is a chocoholic. So he has decided to start his own chocolate company. “It’s going to be America’s most premium chocolate,” says Sedlar, the father of nouvelle Southwestern cuisine, “and it will be launched next year.” Sedlar’s Pueblo chocolates will be in the shape of arrowheads, chiles and corn cobs.