Group buys iconic Longboat restaurant

SARASOTA — Longboat Key lost an iconic restaurant on Saturday night.

Longtime resident and former Colony Beach & Tennis Resort executive chef Tommy Klauber prepared and served his last dinners as owner 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, June 28 after operating it since September 1997, according to the Longboat Observer, sister paper of the Business Observer.

The buyer: Tampa-based Columbia Restaurant Group. The selling price was not disclosed.

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

Gonzmart declines to share specific details of his plans for the location, but he says it will not be a Columbia, Cha Cha Coconuts, Goody Goody or Ulele, four of the group's restaurant brands.

The sale marks the end of the Klauber family's nearly 50 years of owning and operating restaurants on Longboat Key. “For me, it's sentimental,” Klauber says. “I met my wife on Longboat Key. My kids were born on Longboat Key.”

The closing of Pattigeorge's ends its four decades of operations on Longboat. The founding owners were also a couple, Patti and George Neofotis.