Restaurant from Wooden City, Bluebeard vets will bring pastries, house breads to Tacoma

Two couples, Jeffery and Maggie Hellis with Will Eder and Jenah Garrett, have joined forces to open Three Hearts, a forthcoming daytime-only restaurant at 1116 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood.

Three Hearts is not a bakery per se, but since its inaugural post in early March, its Instagram page has been awash in cookies, croissants, swirled babka and sourdough boules.

Other teasers have included cruffins (the “weird lovechild” of the laminated pastry icon and the easygoing muffin, believed to have originated in Melbourne), coconut cake layered with passionfruit curd, brioche buns and petite tarts. A Dutch baby with ham, pea shoots and pecorino offered a savory example of some substantial items that will be on the menu when the café opens this fall.

Breakfast-centric dishes will entail the likes of huevos rancheros, egg sandwiches and a tofu scramble, the latter inspired by Hellis’s affection for Seattle’s late Green Cat Cafe, where he worked as a teenager. His cooking career also carried him to Monsoon, a pioneering Vietnamese restaurant , and beloved Capital Hill mainstay, Volunteer Park Cafe .

“People just loved being there,” recalled Hellis. “That is the kind of restaurant that I want.”

On the lunchier side, there are salads and an array of sandwiches, from a salmon burger to blackened chicken.

“We want people to pop in for coffee and a pastry, but also we want people to bring their kids in and stay a while,” said Hellis, who moved to Tacoma with his family several years ago. He recently left his head chef position at Wooden City, his professional home for most of its seven-year history in downtown Tacoma.

It was at that bustling Pacific Avenue restaurant that he met Eder, a server, bartender, occasional morning prep cook and at-home sourdough bread baker with extensive coffee experience.

Locally, Eder managed Bluebeard Coffee on Sixth Avenue. The Tacoma roaster will be featured in drip, espresso drinks and a flash-chilled iced coffee, with bags of a custom Three Hearts blend also available for retail sale.

In his hometown Chicago, he honed the craft over several years — “the most formative in my coffee career,” he said — at Dark Matter Coffee, a prominent roaster where he managed the barista training program as the brand expanded to several locations.

LUNCH & BRUNCH

As parents to young kids, the two Tacoma families got to talking. They envisioned a breakfast and lunch restaurant with homemade baked goods, coffee and cocktails. Limited loaves will be available only for retail sale to start, with the long-term goal of incorporating house breads into restaurant dishes as well.

They landed on the former home of Zodiac Supper Club, which closed last year as owners Dana and Dave Verellen focused on The Pine Cone Cafe and Dusty’s Hideaway .

The Hilltop space is centrally located with incoming density from new apartment buildings. It’s also quite breezy, with high ceilings and exposed brick walls. They kept the bar and took advantage of Zodiac’s signature feature: a grill near the front door where customers seasoned and sizzled their own steaks. The hood-vent infrastructure already in place, Three Hearts converted this area into a fully equipped open kitchen. It’s the first thing you’ll see.

While the bar will, naturally, be 21-and-up, the rest of the dining room is very much intended to be family-friendly. They added banquette seating along the opposite wall, now anchored by a bright-orange octopus with three little hearts hidden in the tentacles, and wood tables by Splinter and Slag, a Seattle-based metal and wood shop.

Maggie Hellis, a plant breeder and terrarium creator, has brought in touches of greenery, both in traditional planters and a very cool terrarium behind the bar.

In the kitchen, Jeffery Hellis will be joined by Jordan Mason, formerly of Wooden City Tavern in Green Lake.

On a recent Friday, the pastry case was filled with various goodies, including sweet (raspberry and pear) and savory (bacon, egg and cheese) stuffed brioche, a sausage roll with a flaky seed-studded exterior, espresso-banana muffins, gluten-free lemon pound cake, pain de mie, chocolate chip cookies and a vegan pissaladière.

Service will start at the counter, where you can order a whole meal to enjoy on site or simply grab a coffee and treat to go.

THREE HEARTS

▪ 1116 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, instagram.com/threeheartstacoma

▪ Anticipated Hours : Monday-Friday 6 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 7 a.m.-5 p.m.

▪ Details : daytime cafe serving breakfast and lunch, house baked goods, coffee and cocktails; target opening later this fall