UPDATE: Columbia Restaurant Group to buy Pattigeorge's

Longboat Key lost two more icons Saturday night. Longtime Longboat Key resident and former Colony Beach & Tennis Resort executive chef Tommy Klauber prepared and served his last dinners as owner chef of PG’s restaurant, the Bayfront restaurant also known as Pattigeorge’s.

Klauber and his wife, Jaymie, are expected to close on the sale of the restaurant Tuesday after operating it since September 1997.

The buyer: Tampa-based Columbia Restaurant Group.

“For me, it’s sentimental,” Klauber said Saturday afternoon. “I met my wife on Longboat Key, my kids were born on Longboat Key.”

In addition, Klauber spent much of his youth on Longboat Key, growing up at the now-closed Colony Beach and Tennis Resort, where he began his life-long career in the restaurant and hospitality business. At one point, Klauber served as executive chef and food and beverage director of the Colony.

After studying in Paris at La Varenne’s Ecole De Cuisine, Klauber worked in restaurants in Paris, Florence, Italy, and Amsterdam. In the early 1990s, he was chef and manager of the Dr. Murray “Murf” Klauber-owned Gieussepi Wong Restaurant in Aspen. That’s where the younger Klauber perfected his fusion of American, Italian, Asian and Caribbean cuisine — all represented on the PG’s menu from its start.

Dr. Klauber purchased Pattigeorge’s from its founders, Patti and George Neofotis, in 1997, and Tommy became its chef manager. In 2002, Tommy Klauber became a 50% partner with his father. 

From the start in 1997 until 2007, the younger Klauber and his wife lived in the apartment above PG’s. Fixtures on the front patio of the restaurant were Walter, their yellow Labrador, and their cat, Bobby Sue, which greeted customers nightly.

Klauber said Bobby Sue camped on the front patio until the last guests had left the restaurant before it retired to the upstairs apartment.

In 2007, Tommy and Jaymie Klauber moved out of the Pattigeorge’s apartment and the on-site daily management of the restaurant to tend to their new and second restaurant, Lakewood Ranch-based Polo Grill, which they still own and operate.

On Saturday night, Pattigeorge’s tables and bar seats were packed with regular patrons. Waiters and longtime hostess Sandy Wooten scurried among the diners, urging them to place their orders because the remaining food selections were going fast. Klauber walked through the dining room with a smile, but said, “Inside I’m crying.”

Klauber said he and his wife decided to sell after the restaurant’s ownership became enmeshed with his father’s legal entanglements with Colony. Once that was resolved, Klauber said, he and Jaymie took on new partners. But when the group evaluated the condition of the restaurant’s structure and what it would take to renovate, they decided to sell.

“Selling was the last best option,” Klauber said. He said he is proud that the buyer will be the Columbia Restaurant Group.

The sale will mark the end of the Klauber family’s nearly 50 years of owning and operating restaurants on Longboat Key.

When word circulated that Pattigeorge’s was for sale, Richard Gonzmart, president of the Columbia Restaurant Group, told the Longboat Observer, he was reminded of advice from his father, Cesar: “Never turn down the opportunity to build on the water in Sarasota.”

Gonzmart declined to disclose details of his company’s plans for Pattigeorge’s; they are still in the early stages, he said. But Gonzmart said it will not be a Columbia, the family’s historic restaurant, one of which has operated on St. Armands Circle since 1958. Nor will it be a Cha Cha Coconuts, the Gonzmart family’s other Sarasota restaurant, next to the Columbia; nor its two other Tampa restaurant brands, Goody Goody and Ulele.

Gonzmart hinted the site would have a historic connection. “I believe in resurrecting history, that is important to me,” he said, recalling his memories of visiting the old Buccaneer Inn on Longboat Key.

The closing of Pattigeorge’s marked the end of four decades of it operations on Longboat Key. The founding owners also were a couple, Patti and George Neofotis — thus the name Pattigeorge’s.

Under their stewardship, Pattigeorge’s Italian-American cuisine attracted a popular following on Longboat Key and beyond, growing into one of Longboat Key’s many restaurant institutions.

“I remember when George came into the restaurant after we bought it,” Klauber said. “He got all mushy. Now I understand.”