The owner of one of Utah's most revered French fine dining restaurants has taken over the space that long housed Primavera Ristorante on San Diego's Coronado Island.
In May 2020, Primavera Ristorante shuttered in Coronado after three decades in business. The building has since been scooped by Kevin Gates, who has been operating Utah's iconic La Caille French restaurant since he purchased the property out of bankruptcy for $10 million in 2010. Gates, a Salt Lake City native who lives in Las Vegas and has interests in a hotel in Hawaii, is the president and CEO of iFreedom Direct, which specializes in home loans for veterans.
La Caille is an upscale French restaurant founded in 1975 on a 20-acrea estate in Little Cottonwood Canyon on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, UT. Over its four decades tenure, the restaurant has won numerous awards and developed a reputation as the height of fine dining in Utah. The original founders of the restaurant went through a tumultuous legal dispute in the mid-2000s followed by a well-publicized bankruptcy. On Christmas Day 2010, La Caille co-founder Steven Runolfson and his wife Lisa, who previously lived on the La Caille property, were found dead at a Utah hotel from gunshot wounds, an incident which was concluded to be the result of a murder-suicide pact. It is believed that they were emotionally devastated from the loss of La Caille and the subsequent legal fiasco.
Kevin Gates has purchased the 3,283 square-foot, bi-level building that previously housed Primavera at 932 Orange Avenue in downtown Coronado, and it is believed he will open a new, French restaurant in the space. Expect an elevated dining experience with a seasonal menu featuring local produce and high-end meats and seafood. We reached out to Gates for comment several times but did not receive a response by the time of publishing.
