As Blue Plate restaurant’s friendly staff welcomed a string of curious midmorning customers last Friday — the final day of the new Petaluma diner’s “soft opening” run-up to Saturday’s official grand opening — the moment signified more than just a new beginning for the familiar old building at the north end of town that for years was an International House of Pancakes.
Floor Manager Laura Trombley serves customers at Petaluma’s new Blue Plate restaurant — which had its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 22 — is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (David Templeton / Petaluma Argus-Courier)
It also marked a new start for Louis and Emily Hoang, longtime California restaurateurs who have designed Blue Plate to emphasize all the things they love most about the dining and hospitality business.
“This is our first restaurant in Petaluma,” said Emily Hoang, cordially presenting a shiny new Blue Plate menu. “Blue Plate is really the next chapter for us, a chance to create the best version of the kind of restaurant we’ve grown to love.”
The Hoangs have been in the business since 2011, when they opened their first sandwich shop in San Francisco. Other food service businesses followed, including as far south as Santa Nella.
“Over the years, we gained experience operating several different restaurant concepts around the Bay Area,” Hoang said, “including franchises like Chinese Gourmet Express and Subway, as well as some independent fusion concepts.”
Changing directions
By 2018, the couple had sold most of their restaurants, and gone on to pursue different individual career paths.
Petaluma’s new Blue Plate restaurant — which had its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 22 — is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (David Templeton / Petaluma Argus-Courier)
“It wasn’t until after the pandemic that we found ourselves really missing the restaurant business,” Emily Hoang said. “We missed the entrepreneurship, the excitement of building something, and being able to create a place that people could enjoy. That eventually led us to start looking for opportunities to get back into the industry.”
The type of cuisine the Hoangs are most passionate about is classic American comfort food. After years of taking over existing restaurants, they were eager to create something new, and decided to focus on what they loved. When the couple learned that the old IHOP was available in Petaluma, they immediately saw the potential of bringing their own brand of comfort food to the spot.
“Breakfast is a big part of our menu and really part of our DNA,” said Hoang. “This building was already a breakfast restaurant that a lot of people in the area knew. People had been coming to this location for pancakes for more than 25 years. As we started doing more research and spending more time in the area, we really came to like Petaluma and the community here, so we decided to sign the lease and start this venture.”
Petaluma’s new Blue Plate restaurant — which had its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 22 — is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (David Templeton / Petaluma Argus-Courier)
Asked to name a few menu highlights, Hoang said that their Belgian waffles, pancakes, skillets and Benedicts are something they’re especially proud of, and that the menu offers plenty of different toppings and ways to customize them.
“Even the simpler things get a lot of attention,” she said. “Our biscuits and Swedish crepes are made from scratch in-house. Our cinnamon roll French toast actually starts with dough rather than something that just comes out of a package. For us, it’s really about variety, customization and consistency.”
‘It’s very Petaluma’
After being closed for over a year and a half, the building they’ve now occupied needed quite a bit of attention, the Hoangs discovered.
“IHOP took all the kitchen equipment when they left, so everything is new in there now,” said Emily. Noting that the placement of the booths and tables is much the same as it was before, she added, “It looks a little like it did, but we repainted everything, replaced the dividers between the booths, replaced all of the ceiling panels, put in a new HVAC system, and brought a lot of things up to code, inside and out.”
On the day before opening, a few decorative touches still awaited installation.
“We still have to hang a few pieces of art,” she said.
Petaluma’s new Blue Plate restaurant — which had its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 22 — is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (David Templeton / Petaluma Argus-Courier)
One notable artistic addition is a large wall mural featuring crisp, stylized drawings of iconic breakfast items — pancakes and waffles, eggs sunny side up, a steaming cup of coffee — and silhouettes of chickens, a bridge crossing a river, and the recognizable downtown clocktower.
“It’s fun,” Hoang said. “It’s very Petaluma.”
With Blue Plate, the Hoangs say they genuinely hope to become part of the community, rather than just adding one more restaurant.
“We want to become a place where families celebrate birthdays, church groups have breakfast or lunch together before or after a service, where veterans meet up for coffee while families gather for breakfast,” she said.
More than anything else, they want Blue Plate to feel comfortable and welcoming. “Just a place where you know you can come in, find something you like, have a good meal, and want to come back. That’s what we want Blue Plate to be. A dependable neighborhood restaurant that people in Petaluma can make part of their everyday lives.”
Blue Plate is located at 5312 Old Redwood Highway N., Petaluma. The restaurant is open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.
Dining and Cooking