This SLO County restaurant is serving up blue-corn waffles again. A new location is next
Cambria restaurant The Hidden Kitchen is back — and so are its popular blue-corn waffles.
The Hidden Kitchen, known for its fresh-baked, organic, gluten-free specialties, has reopened at an open-air site on the back patio at 2164 Center St.
What’s more, business partners Amira Albonni and Amanecer Eizner say they’ll soon open a much larger sister restaurant at 113 North Ocean Ave. in Cayucos, in a space that was occupied for nearly four decades by Skippers Family Restaurant.
The Cayucos location could open by mid-March, the pair said.
According to Albonni, the duo could complete negotiations for a third restaurant in San Luis Obispo by the end of the year.
Albonni said via phone that she and her partner are “so grateful how everything worked out. It’s beyond our wildest dreams.”
The women, who started The Hidden Kitchen by themselves, now have a team of 12 juggling the logistics of managing businesses in two coastal towns 14 miles apart along a busy, two-lane scenic highway.
The restaurant’s core product is its waffles, which use Albonni and Eizner’s special blend of blue-corn masa and gluten-free flours. They’re available in classic, sweet and savory preparations.
In Cambria, a basic waffle served with butter from grass-fed cows and organic maple syrup costs $9. Add eggs and bacon, and the tab rises to $15.
Some devotees even buy a plain waffle for $6 so they can take it home for a future meal.
How The Hidden Kitchen started in Cambria
Albonni and Eizner had roomed together in San Luis Obispo for about nine months. The pair reunited in 2018 after Albonni found available space for a small, quirky café right off busy Burton Drive in downtown Cambria.
By then, Albonni had her own boutique business making and selling ghee, a kind of clarified butter commonly used in Asian cooking. Grateful Ghee’s small-batch products are available online and in various shops on the Central Coast.
Knowing that Eizner had always wanted her own café, Albonni felt the small East Village space would be a good fit for both of them.
On October 2018, The Hidden Kitchen opened in Cambria to rave reviews from those who could actually find the waffle and smoothie bar. It was tucked away the open area behind Robin’s Restaurant and a now-vacant art gallery building.
Circumstances mean Albonni and Eizner have had to close their eatery several times — most recently for about six weeks in December 2019 and January 2020, after their landlords closed the gallery and put the building up for sale.
The Hidden Kitchen was operating on a month-to-month lease, which made it fiscally impractical to put a lot of time, money and effort into improving the location, Albonni said.
So the pair went looking for a new location, found the Skippers site in Cayucos and signed that lease.
After that, Albonni said, the partners learned that some prospective buyers for The Hidden Kitchen’s Cambria location had made their purchase contingent on the restaurant staying on as a tenant.
So the women crossed their fingers and reopened their mini-cafe in mid-January.
“Now, as soon as the building sells, we’ll sign a new lease,” which should be long term, Albonni said, “and then we can revamp the Cambria kitchen, add more counter space and prep space.”
Cayucos restaurant to open in old Skippers location
The Hidden Kitchen’s next chapter involves a North Coast institution.
Albonni said the team recognizes and honors the long bond many area residents had with Skippers in Cayucos.
Until the restaurant closed in April 2019, ranchers would sit out front for hours playing cards, tourists would chow down on burgers in the casual eatery and kids would belly up to the front window to order ice cream.
The 4,383-square-foot building was for sale for $1,575 million in 2018, according to Skippers Facebook page, and that price tag didn’t include the business.
Skippers was there for 39 years. Albonni said, “People loved them, and they had so many memories of the times they spent there.”
“We don’t take that lightly at all,” she said, noting that, for some, the ties were so deep that “someone wanted to buy the Skippers sign from us.”
New menu will feature tacos, beer and wine
Albonni and Eizner said the Cayucos restaurant will feature some new menu items.
There, according to Albonni, they’ll sell their waffles plus several varieties of blue-corn tacos — some served breakfast style, others filled with slow-cooked carnitas, shredded chicken or jackfruit and vegetables. Smoothies will be on the menu in both places.
“We’ll add beer, wine, cider and mimosas in Cayucos,” she said.
The pair would “eventually like to add those to the menu in Cambria,” she added, but only after that spot is renovated.
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
