Linnaea’s Cafe has been beloved SLO spot for more than 40 years. How it started
Take a decades-old, funky-casual coffee shop filled with conversations. Add new owners who are a local musician and event producer and a Michelin-Guide-recognized pastry chef with different menu ideas. Then toss in a carrot cake that’s been the stuff of legends there for four decades.
You’d have today’s Linnaea’s Cafe at 1110 Garden St., of course.
During its 41 years in downtown, the compact eatery of about 1,500 square feet, including its peaceful garden patio, has inspired many memorable conversations and performances, according to enthusiasts, along with providing convivial meals, avant-garde art and music.
Community sparkplug Linnaea Phillips opened her laid-back coffeehouse in 1984 before the Starbucks craze swept the nation.
Now that there are coffee sellers on every block, what continues to make Linnaea’s Cafe so unique and beloved?
There are probably many things, but most of all, through several ownership changes, it’s been the lasting essence of its founder, Phillips herself.
Rusty and Alex Quirk have owned Linnaea’s Cafe for “two years and one month,” he told The Tribune on March 21.
And they’re determined to continue fostering the same kind of welcoming, conversational atmosphere that the founder created, while the couple gradually and gently upgrade the building and its equipment and add new things to the menu.
“We want the spirit and feeling of Linnaea’s to live on,” Rusty Quirk said. “It looks the same as it did 30 years ago — and 10 years ago.”
She added: “A man came recently and said, ‘I met my wife here back in the ‘80s. It looks the same.’ That’s what we want.”
What makes the celebrated SLO cafe stand out now?
A fan of the place and the concept for decades, the Quirks bought Linnaea’s from Kim and Eric Boege about a month after it went on the market in late 2022.
The Quirks met while both were bussing tables at what was then Foremost Wine Company in the Creamery, predecessor to today’s Mistura.
He was raised in Los Osos, graduated from Morro Bay High School in 2010 and promptly focused on his career as a touring musician.
She is a South Carolina native who came to San Luis Obispo in 2011, graduated from Cal Poly and became a pastry chef who trained in New York and Denver. Rusty Quirk eventually led the bread program at Hotel San Luis Obispo and created the pastry programs for Companion Hospitality in Los Alamos and Los Olivos.
At that time, Linnaea’s “was where people spent their lives outside of work and home, with art and music,” she said.
“It’s always been an alternative coffee shop … a really beautiful place for a lot of creative people,” Alex Quirk said. “The industry has moved into a new wave of coffee, getting as many people in and out the door as quickly as possible. It’s so fast paced.”
That was absolutely not what the Quirks wanted. They wanted Linnaea’s.
“(It’s) not a grab-and-go, not a corporate chain,” he said, “It’s a casual hangout spot, a community-oriented place.”
Sure, they’ve made some changes.
They’ve expanded the cafe’s breakfast menu a bit with more to come, offered some breakfast items all day and reinstituted select lunch and dinner items that range from vegan and gluten-free chili to pesto pasta salad.
There are now 20 or more pastries in the display case daily, including that carrot cake and the equally beloved Linnaea’s coffeecake.
Rusty Quirk’s long-fermented sourdough bread is a big hit, either as breakfast toast or by itself with butter or dipping oil. It’s also available by the loaf, and the chef hopes start serving sandwiches on it soon.
They use coffee from Morii Coffee in Harmony and the Coastal Coffee Collective in Ventura. Their matcha program is a success, she said.
They also have frequent jazz nights, poetry nights and occasional other special events, such as a heavy metal performance on March 20.
“It was great,” Alex Quirk said while chuckling. “People head-banging in the dining room.”
With all that, it’s still Linnaea’s, according to those who’ve known and loved it for decades.
The histories of Linnaea’s Café and its founder are linked
Founder Phillips was born in Tacoma, and became a teen librarian there because she “was so enthusiastic about things nobody else was interested in,” the 91-year-old told The Tribune in a March interview.
After spending two years in Europe, where she immersed herself in art culture, Phillips worked a quarter century as a Cuesta College librarian, starting in 1979.
She also became well known for her batik-dyed clothing.
Then when times got tough, funding dried up, there were no library jobs available and she lacked a teaching credential.
So, she spent two years driving a city parks trash truck.
Throughout her life, Phillips had encouraged public chats about anything and everything, no matter what stage of life she was in.
If there was a lively conversation happening, she was usually in the middle of it — and probably initiated it.
“I think she’s got some magic in her,” Guy Rathbun said in a 2000 Tribune profile of Phillips. He worked with Phillips on her KCBX public-interview show, “Central Coast Forum.”
“I guess you’d call her a visionary,” Rathbun said of the 1988 Cuesta College Woman of the Year.
Public discourse was also Phillips’ focus when she hosted concerts in her rented Broad Street home and launched her afternoon “community conversations in the plaza.” That was, of course, Mission Plaza.
“It was a wonderful, crazy idea that worked really well,” Phillips recalled. “These were people who had never spoken before to an audience, sharing about their lives, ranging from who they were, to where they got their groceries and how they grew tomatoes.”
Dave Garth, former longtime president and CEO of the SLO Chamber of Commerce, said he and Phillips “talked about how the Plaza could become a focal point and inspire people to hold their events there.”
“The concerts helped create the character for Mission Plaza to be a real civic center instead of just a slab of concrete,” he said.
“She made the plaza into the gathering place it is today,” area historian Dan Kreiger said of the woman who for about a decade became Mission Plaza’s coordinator for the city.
“All kinds of people brought in bag lunches. It was the nicest way to learn about the history of the town in a comfortable place,” his wife, Liz Kreiger, said.
The Kreigers knew Phillips long before Linnaea’s Cafe opened. He was even her campaign manager for her run for a city council seat.
The 1978 attempt was as offbeat as the candidate.
“She wasn’t interested in the political and other polarizing issues of the city,” Dan Kreiger said. “She wanted to foster public discussions.”
The unsuccessful political campaign “gave Linnaea a focus on what she needed and wanted to do,” he said, which was create ‘community conversations in the plaza’ in a more permanent, business setting.”
Phillips did just that, at Linnaea’s Café.
She based it on the residents’ continuing need for a place to relax, sip coffee and share conversation, laughter and more.
“It’ll be an event place,” Phillips told The Telegram-Tribune for a pre-opening story on May 5, 1984.
Noted SLO graphic designer Pierre Rademaker was an early supporter of Linnaea’s concept.
“I thought the idea had merit and encouraged her to make a go of it,” he told The Tribune. “I was so pleased when it became so successful. I still enjoy the back patio for a quiet meeting.”
Cafe went from flowers to wigs to coffee shop, but it wasn’t easy
For all that to happen, Phillips had to get and convert a rather ramshackle wig shop to match her vision of an eclectic coffeehouse and gathering place.
The first thought she had when she went into the rundown shop was typically Linnaea.
“This is doable,” she recalled. “Here was a building I could get.”
She told The Tribune in 2000 that her son “discovered the place when he was walking down the alley. It was just a big dirt yard.”
She saw it had enough room to display art and the dedicated performance space she wanted for fledgling artists and musicians, many of whom were new to going public with their talents.
It wasn’t easy, or inexpensive. Phillips had to strip down and redo the entire interior of the shop, which, pre-wigs, had been Wilson’s Flower Shop from the 1930s.
The building’s new owner also had to find and train baristas, get the cafe stocked and ready to go and eventually add her dreamed-of patio garden with the pool.
How did she do it all? Her simple answer was “people.”
Her cadre of supportive enthusiasts helped her, donating funds, even bringing engraved bricks to help fill the patio. They then filled the cafe regularly as loyal customers.
In the beginning, food service at Linnaea’s Cafe was catered by Gourmet Touch, she said in 1984. Her carrot cake and other specialties came later, as did the reputation that continues today.
“Linnaea created a space for discussions, music and art, some of it rather offbeat or even controversial. There were art exhibits no one else would have dared to do … feminist, controversial kinds of art,” Liz Kreiger said. “And her carrot cake and rice pudding were to die for.”
She added: “Linnaea’s was and is a safe, welcoming place for everybody from goth teenagers and city leaders to business people, young parents with their kids … everybody.”
4 decades later, some who helped make Linnaea’s a success are still regulars
SLO Citizen of the Year Sandy Sigurdson and husband Steve McGrath were among those who’ve been part of the place for decades.
Their daughter Maggie McGrath, now 38, remembers being “a goth teen, sitting on the sidewalk, drinking hot chocolate.”
She spoke of being a 14-year-old who defended the sidewalk sitting practice at a City Council meeting when the agency was considering an ordinance that would forbid it.
“I told them how it would impact people, especially young people,” she said. “If the ordinance had passed, doing that would have been civil disobedience.”
“Now I take my grandkids there,” Steve McGrath said, “sitting there, drinking hot chocolate, preferably by the fish pond.”
“It’s been a place that encouraged people to talk, and do other things with their lives,” Phillips said of her tiny cafe. “To be a part of something, to share their lives. It was comfortable, a sharing kind of atmosphere.”
These days, nonagenarian Phillips keeps busy with the SLO Village group and lots of reading. Her favorite is still Carl Sandburg’s poetry book, “Rootabaga Stories,” she said, which was an 11th birthday gift.
What’s next at downtown SLO cafe?
The cafe is licensed for wine and beer, mostly for special events, Rusty Quirk said.
That could lead to adding things like dessert wines, especially at special events or with evening charcuterie offerings, Alex Quirk said, adding that “Linnaea likes dessert wines, and always wanted to do that here.”
Then with a glance at his wife, he added, “Rusty likes them, too.”
Space is at a premium at Linnaea’s, so the Quirks’ commercial kitchen is offsite.
They’d like to find someplace closer for it, and maybe open “a different retail location, with a different name,” Rusty Quirk said. “We want to book more events here, expand more into the evening.”
They’re also still dealing with the essentials: “replacing the carpet, fun things like that,” Alex Quirk said with a grin.
For more information
The cafe at 1110 Garden St. is open seven days a week. It is open from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends.
For details about Linnaea’s, call the information-only line, email the Quirks or go to the website and Instagram.
There’s also a Facebook page, but it needs updating, Rusty Quirk said.
This story was originally published April 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
