Paul Dobson

PAUL DOBSON WASN’T AFRAID to tread where few would dare. Most wouldn’t go head-to-horns with an angry bull. But that’s what “Pablo” did for two decades as a bullfighter. In another act of daring, he was also one of the first to throw his hat into the ring of the downtown restaurant scene, opening power-lunch hot spot Dobson’s Restaurant & Bar in 1984.

“It was a real challenge opening a restaurant downtown when there were none,” says the 62-year-old Dobson. “But I really saw a need; businessmen had nowhere to go for lunch.” Specifically, he wanted to create a cosmopolitan, “San Francisco–style” neighborhood lunch eatery that catered to downtown’s politicos, attorneys and stockbrokers. A sophisticated menu (even The New York Times can’t stop talking about the mussel bisque), an original English mahogany bar and the intimate dining room are Dobson’s signature features. The proprietor’s constant presence is another.

“I’m at the door every day,” says Paul, who just signed a 10-year lease on the restaurant’s building, which was built in 1913. “I feel lucky to have such a great clientele. There are attorneys who have been coming here for lunch for 20 years; now their kids are attorneys and eat here. It’s been fun to watch the generations come through —we’re that much of an institution.”

Paul “fell in love” with San Diego at 15, after his parents moved the family from Los Angeles. Initially, the restaurant business was merely a means to put himself through San Diego State University. He worked his way up from busboy to lead bartender at the Hilton on Mission Bay before moving to La Jolla, where he landed a bartending—then general manager—gig at the Bratskellar restaurant “back in the hippie days.”

Any vacation time was spent in Spain, indulging his passion for bullfighting. “The adrenaline, the whole pageant is beautiful,” Dobson says. The Spanish culture inspired his first venture into the restaurant business, Restaurante Espana. Though business was good, he sold it after deciding to move to Spain. “I came back a year later with my tail between my legs—I had run out of money,” he recalls.

But the fascination with bullfighting endured. “I got to fight alongside the best fighters in Mexico,” says Dobson, who still makes routine trips to Tijuana to watch the fights. His matador career also helped lay the groundwork for his restaurant’s popularity. Among his most loyal clientele over the years: the Mexican community.

The downtown San Diego restaurant scene has proliferated since Dobson’s opened, but the proprietor isn’t worried. “I have a lot of competition now from big restaurant corporations, but they have their niche and I have mine,” he says. After all, he’s fought more formidable opponents.

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