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A former funeral parlor is now home to a French Asian fusion restaurant with a coffee program developed in part by celebrity barista Morgan Eckroth.
While the funeral parlor closed in 1971 and the Queen Anne Victorian mansion has housed a slew of restaurants since 1976 (most recently The Palms restaurant), some still believe the Los Gatos property is haunted – something Gardenia owner Carol Wang has seen no indication of.
“Every time when I step in here, I’m so happy,” she said. “I love this place.”
In fact, it was the historic property itself that inspired Wang to open not just a coffee shop, but a restaurant as well. Wang, a mother of two with a passion for coffee, had been searching for the perfect coffee shop location for the past two years, she said.
“With this beautiful Victorian-style historical beauty, no one could resist,” Wang said. “And because this building is huge, I thought…‘I don’t want to waste this beautiful place…I definitely need to start a restaurant.’”
The nine-room Queen Anne Victorian mansion was built in 1891 for Mary Barry Coggeshall and her two children. Barry Coggeshall was born in Valparaiso, Chile, to Irish immigrants in 1840, according to the Los Gatan. When Barry Coggeshall was 9 years old, she and her parents moved to San Francisco for the gold rush but didn’t strike it rich. She married into money in 1871, but the marriage didn’t work out. Instead of a divorce, the couple came to an agreement to live separately and maintain they were each widowed, according to the Los Gatan. Barry Coggeshall moved from San Francisco to the newly incorporated town of Los Gatos, building the home that still stands today.
With no prior experience in the food and beverage industry (she previously worked in the medical field), Wang enlisted David Intonato, who worked as an executive chef in New York, Hawaii, Colorado and Costa Rica, to develop a culinary program.
“Chinese food is so good, and I love Japanese food and all the other Asian food, and I’ve always loved French food as well,” Wang said. “I always think France is such a romantic country, so if we try to get French Asian together, that would be really nice.”
Gardenia currently offers brunch and happy hour menus, with a dinner menu launching Thursday. Find brunch starters like lobster deviled eggs with wasabi flying fish roe or grilled tako (octopus) “escargot” with bone marrow; brunch entrees like pan bagnat (a French sandwich) with togarashi-seared ahi or smoked wagyu brisket French dip; and happy hour offerings like takoyaki (battered balls of grilled octopus) or duck confit spring rolls.
For drinks, Gardenia has an extensive wine cocktail menu (using ingredients like chai, lychee, kumquat, Calpico and matcha) plus mocktails with ingredients like spirulina, rosemary and guava; draft, bottled and nonalcoholic beer; wine by the glass and bottle; and a cafe program featuring espresso beverages, pour-overs and tea.
Wang’s love for coffee began long before she had her first sip.
“Even though I didn’t drink coffee, I loved that aroma and smell when you step into the coffee shop and also the ambiance of the unique coffee shops,” she said. “Most of them just make me feel so relaxing, so comfortable, I would like to stay for hours.”
Then five years ago, her curiosity led her to try coffee for the first time.
“I started with one sip, one cup occasionally, and then eventually got to drink a little bit more often, and then couldn’t stop drinking coffee,” she said.
While in Panama visiting the Lamastus Family Estates, a family-owned coffee producer since 1918 whose coffee Gardenia now uses, Wang found inspiration for the name of her coffee shop and restaurant.
“That was the first time I saw the coffee flower,” she said.
Small and white and similar in appearance to the gardenia flower, she decided to name her business Gardenia. The coffee shop and restaurant has two gardenia topiaries by the stairs.
To help develop the coffee program, Wang enlisted World Barista Championship second-place winner and U.S. Barista champion Morgan Eckroth and U.S. Brewers Cup champion Weihong Zhang as consultants.
“There is a lot of intentionality in showcasing a wide range of coffee flavor in both the pourover menu and on espresso, along with several seasonal signature drinks,” Eckroth wrote in an email.
With millions of followers on social media, Eckroth is known for making recipe videos of intricate coffee drinks and clips of her in a coffee shop setting playing the role of a benevolent barista and a regular customer. She recently began taking on independent consulting and training projects, and Gardenia is one of the first cafes she’s worked with and the only one so far in the Bay Area, she said. Based out of Portland, Oregon, Eckroth said she’ll be traveling to Los Gatos “several more times in the upcoming year” and will likely host a meet-and-greet at Gardenia in the future.
“The goal is to continue building community through excellent coffee,” Eckroth wrote in an email. “Gardenia is located in such a historic location that already acts as a community hub and their coffee program reflects that.”
Wang, who’s lived in the Bay Area for the last 30 years, hopes to make Gardenia a community spot.
“We cannot live without community,” she said. “This coffee house and restaurant, it’s part of the community, it’s part of (the) city of Los Gatos. So we’re here not to compete with other people: We just want to be part of it and to get community together and also to bring more people to town.”
Gardenia, 115 N Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos; 669-294-4498, Instagram: @gardenialosgatos. Coffee service daily 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Brunch is offered Tuesday to Friday 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and weekends from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Happy hour is Tuesday to Friday 3:30-5 p.m. Dinner is Thursday to Sunday 5-9 p.m.
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