They’re the force behind Robin’s and Novo. How SLO County duo took on culinary scene
Imagine working side-by-side for decades with your spouse in a high-stress job you both adore — then continuing to work together successfully after your divorce.
In one of San Luis Obispo County’s most successful culinary partnerships, Robin and Shanny Covey have made those situations work well for the nearly past half century.
They’re the backbone and genius of such award-winning dining houses as Robin’s in Cambria — which celebrates its 40th anniversary this month — plus Novo Restaurant & Lounge and Luna Red Restaurant & Bar in San Luis Obispo.
Their classy, destination restaurants have provided generations of San Luis Obispo County residents and visitors from all over California and beyond with locally sourced, internationally based dining and lifelong memories.
Some of the Covey’s longtime fans now are bringing their grandchildren into those restaurants to dine, share the experience and make new memories.
There’s also generational carryover in the Covey family enterprise.
The couples’ sons Jai, 47, and Roberto, 46, work for the company, having been brought up in the industry. Granddaughter Jasmine started working at Robin’s last summer, Shanny Covey said.
The Coveys’ story is laced with serendipity, especially when landlords sought them out at just the right times.
They came from the Central Valley and Singapore
The couple provided details on their culinary history during interviews with The Tribune, starting in December, and during a San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce interview podcast.
Robin Covey was born in Hanford in 1956, and he worked on farms as his family moved around in the Central Valley.
“From a very young age, I dreamed of opening a restaurant,” he said. Even then he said he “loved to cook,” especially with a like-minded older sister.
The family visited Cambria whenever they could. To realize his mother’s dream of living by the ocean, they eventually moved there when Robin Covey was 15.
“I got jobs at the Cavalier Motel, working nights as a maintenance worker and during the day as a busboy across the street at the Jolly Rogue Restaurant,” he said.
Halfway around the world, Shanny Mok was raised in Singapore, but almost on a whim, the 17-year-old moved to the United States in 1972 to attend Louisiana State University with a friend.
Her first job?
“At Burger King in Baton Rouge,” she said with a laugh. She also worked at the university’s dairy department.
In her junior year, a cross-country trip she took with older sister Joyce Mok set the stage for Shanny’s future.
Shanny Covey fell in love with California, she said. In 1977, she moved to the Central Coast to finish her food science degree at Cal Poly.
Meanwhile, another LSU student was working at a Cambria restaurant, she said. His roommate was Robin Covey.
“We were just friends for two or three years,” Robin Covey said. Sometimes, they worked at the same place.
They married in 1978, and soon thereafter, the couple began the culinary journey that would become their legacy.
The foundation was passion for health food and quality ingredients
Their restaurant future began small at the Honeysuckle, a tiny health food store on Cambria’s Main Street.
“We won over the hearts of the people that owned the Honeysuckle,” he said of Jim and Diane Small. “We used to shop at the Honeysuckle every day as customers, so we were well known.”
“They sold it to us for a down payment, and they carried the rest in loan payments,” the still-astonished Robin Covey said.
In December 1979, the Coveys took over the shop, renaming it Robin’s Nest. It was where the Indigo Moon Restaurant and garden are now.
It was hard work for the 22-year-old couple with a young son.
Various still-devoted customers who went to Covey-owned businesses back then say they can remember going into Robin’s Nest and seeing toddler Jai Covey taking shampoo bottles off the shelves and lining them up to use as his “choo choo train.”
Robin’s Garden Cafe was the next step
But there were other family desires in play beyond vitamins and organic veggies.
“We had all this food, and it made sense to make something with it,” Robin Covey said. “I wanted to cook more than sell, and there’s no profit in bread and milk.”
The Coveys expanded the health food store into Robin’s Garden Cafe out back.
He was the chef, and she managed the front of the house and management, an arrangement that followed them into their next two restaurant ventures.
Entrees on a 10-item menu from the Garden Cafe era ranged from a bean burrito with guacamole and sour cream for $2.50 to the pricier North Indian chicken on brown rice for $3.95.
“Most popular were the avo cheese and curried chicken sandwiches and Robin’s soups,” Shanny Covey recalled of their locally sourced, internationally based fare.
Robin’s on Bridge was next
Opportunity knocked again five years later — a trend that would continue throughout the Coveys’ careers.
Gerry and Marty Main asked Coveys if they’d relocate to the historic former Thorndyke House on Cambria’s Bridge Street.
“We used to go to Robin’s Nest a lot. We loved their food,” Marty Main said.
What’s more, “our kids were in school together,” Main said, so making the offer was a slam dunk.
“Nobody went up Bridge Street in those days,” Main said. “Then Robin’s moved in, and they turned it around. Soon, everybody was going up there. What drew people up Bridge was a combination of Robin Covey’s fabulous food” and the warmly welcoming atmosphere.
The most popular items on that menu, according to Shanny Covey, were some that have evolved into Covey classics, like the Thai green chicken and Roghan Josh curries and the chow (a noodle dish that’s her go-to fave made with rice noodles, since she’s gluten intolerant).
The all-time hit, however, was and is Robin Covey’s salmon bisque, a lushly flavorful soup that’s been lauded in national food magazines.
Some customers will drive for miles out of their way to get the bisque, even planning their vacations around it. Smart diners add an order of thick, hot wedges of cracked-wheat sourdough bread that’s baked with garlic butter and Parmesan on top.
Next up? It was Robin’s on Burton Drive
Five years later, the Coveys got their next “opportunity knock.”
Del Clegg, co-owner of Cookie Crock Market, convinced the Coveys to move to Cambria’s bustling shopping mecca along downtown’s Burton Drive.
Clegg’s thick-walled, historic adobe structure had been remodeled 16 years before into the Grey Fox restaurant.
The Coveys’ decision was all about “location, location, location,” Robin Covey said.
A year later, the Coveys opened Robin’s there on March 5, 1985.
It was a packed-house hit from day one.
They added wines and things like burgers and some desserts that had to be made with sugar and regular flour.
“It was like selling my soul a little,” Robin Covey joked about the menu additions, but their customers loved them.
Larger than their previous restaurant, Robin’s indoor dining room — with its fireside tables and cozy window alcove table — still only seats 24.
An attached porch, with its mosaic-topped tables and vine-covered roof, provides greenhouse-like space for 36 more diners.
As the restaurant’s reputation and business grew, even that wasn’t enough seating.
So, the Coveys created a large outdoor dining area in the restaurant’s lushly landscaped garden, then covered half of it to shield customers from the town’s moderate but changeable climate of sun, fog, wind and rain — sometimes, all in the same day. It’s often the site for special occasions.
At home in 1989, the Coveys adopted 10-year-old Roberto from Brazil.
In 2000, the Coveys bought the Burton Drive building, but divorced amicably that same year. Robin Covey then moved to San Luis Obispo.
They were determined to keep their business and family relationships friendly and flourishing together.
“We’re the perfect business partners and best friends,” Shanny Covey said of then and now.
In the ensuing quarter century, that partnership created an empire and a growing family.
The next Covey success was Novo
In January 2003, Robin Covey opened Novo Restaurant & Lounge at 726 Higuera St. in the remodeled, former Cigar Factory building adjacent to San Luis Creek.
It was once again a case of opportunity finding a Covey.
“I had been approached by the landlord (Rob Rossi) to rent his space,” Robin Covey said.
Like Robin’s in Cambria, Novo was an instant hit, with an Asian, Mediterranean, Latin and American flair and such now-staple favorites as fresh spring rolls and duck breast with Panang curry.
They also took some trademark faves from Robin’s, like chicken sate, chow, Thai green curry and, of course, the salmon bisque.
Again, the location was a key to success.
Then the Coveys opened Luna Red Restaurant & Bar in 2010, first near the Fremont Theater, eventually moving it to a historic, Mission-style building beside the Mission, having again been approached by a landlord who wanted to rent to them.
“It wasn’t a slam dunk,” Shanny Covey said. “It was a struggle at first, and might not have made it, but we had the backing of Novo and Robin’s, so we could wait it out.”
In the years since, Luna Red’s Latin-based menu took some turns, but the restaurant is now refocusing on its genesis.
It’s “making a bold move back to where our story truly began, Spain and Latin America,” the restaurant announced said in a May newsletter. “We’re honoring the diverse regions that have always shaped our identity, from small plates and craft tacos to soulful stews and seared meats.”
One constant in all three restaurants is each one has an outrageously beautiful, notable patio.
“We didn’t plan it that way,” Shanny Covey said, but because the outdoor areas have become such a hit, they’re glad to have them.
The garden areas at Robin’s are one of her pet projects.
The Coveys’ journey did hit some hitches along the way
No, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the culinary team.
They had to close Novo in 2009 because the city was requiring safety retrofitting of any non-reinforced masonry building. It took nine months to complete the process on the old brick building.
In between, Novo moved temporarily, supplanting the now-closed Chow Novo at 1009 Monterey St.
Then in 2017, the Coveys launched Mint+Craft Café and Mercantile on Monterey Street and Café Fiero on Fiero Lane.
There were problems in both spots.
At Mint+Craft, the issues were parking and the difficulty of melding retail shopping with the restaurant, Shanny Covey said.
“And smaller businesses have a hard time in SLO,” Robin Covey said.
It also was too hard to staff and run Café Fiero on the other side of town, he said.
“We didn’t need that headache,” he said.
But they were able to make the Fiero location work another way, turning the cafe into a bakery/commissary and additional long-term storage for Robin’s, Novo and Luna Red.
Blue Mango management caps the Covey empire
Eventually, even super busy, successfully capable people realize they are overwhelmed.
The Coveys hit that wall in 2016.
She promptly launched Blue Mango Restaurant Management Services, handing off various administrative tasks, including “support and oversight to the locations … accounting, human resources, marketing, operations and facilities.”
The Coveys’ current staff at the three restaurants and commissary totals more than 320 employees, so the six Blue Mango staffers have their hands full, especially Operations Director Samantha Welch.
“Managing soooo many employees is my least favorite thing to do, along with keeping up with government rules and regulations,” a grateful Shanny Covey said by email.
On the flip side, “coaching teens at their first job, especially if they are eager to learn,” is especially satisfying, she said.
How do the divorcees make it work these days?
She owns and is the general manager of Robin’s.
In turn, Robin Covey owns Novo.
The divorced couple jointly own Luna Red and Blue Mango.
He has stepped back from the stove and management as well, the couple said.
Even so, Robin Covey said he is “involved seven days a week in the SLO restaurants and the bakery operation.”
“I’m much less chef these days, (after) pretty much being at Novo the past 20 years,” he said, “I’m more the owner/facilitator now. I have a chef at Luna Red and another at Novo. I do tastings, but they pretty much do the menus and everything else.”
“He remains the visionary of the SLO locations, oversees the facilities and is involved with menu changes and ambiance,” Shanny Covey said. “I’m the boots on the ground.”
And their sons? Both are working at Robin’s now, having put in their time individually at the other restaurants.
“It’s nice to have them there here with me,” Shanny Covey said. “Jai is one of the floor managers and excels in hospitality, loving to serve people well. Roberto is learning the ropes of the kitchen” and is currently a junior sous chef.
Meanwhile, she’s married to contractor Christopher Baschab, and Robin’s significant other is retired nurse David Amarino.
“We complement each other,” Shanny Covey said of her ex. “Our goal is to always do things better today than we did yesterday.”
It’s vital to “have consistency in food, service and ambiance,” he said. And “you have to be open when you’re supposed to be open.”
Shanny Covey added the importance of remembering “it’s not how much you bring in, it’s how much you get to keep.”
She said she and Robin Covey dream of eventually passing their empire on, perhaps to their sons in five years or so.
“We hope they’ll want to rise up to take over,” she said.
But if not, maybe key employees or a like-minded buyer would want to continue the restaurants’ emphasis on quality, hospitality, community service and using as many fresh, local, seasonal ingredients as possible.
After 40 years at Robin’s and 25 at Novo, “what keeps us going is that we are continually blessed to be blessing others with what we do,” Shanny Covey said.
This story was originally published May 11, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
