Some new neighbors are coming to the downtown Astoria Spexarth Building between 11th and 12th streets, including a new restaurant to replace Lindstrom’s Danish Maid Bakery.
Vicki and David McAfee, owners of A Gypsy’s Whimsy Herbal Apothecary, purchased the building from Marie Mitchum, widow of downtown commercial real estate magnate William “Mitch” Mitchum. The building is the third of four built by prominent former Astoria businessman August G. Spexarth, Sr.
The couple is moving Gypsy’s Whimsy across Commercial Street into the former Toni’s Boutique, the middle of the building’s three storefronts. Forsythia, located in the westernmost storefront, is staying. Recent Seattle transplants Heidi and Daniel Dlubac are opening Good to Go, a to-go lunch spot, in the former Lindstrom’s Danish Maid Bakery.
Lindstrom’s, which since 1986 had been owned and operated by the Lindstrom family, closed in September 2015 after John Lindstrom, the sole baker, had his leg amputated following an infection. Lindstrom died in October.
The Dlubacs have been working with co-owner Jan Lindstrom, who’s been moving out and trying to sell the bakery’s equipment.
“It’s going to be a to-go soup, salad, sandwich and pastry shop,” Heidi Dlubac said of the new shop.
The two, hoping to open in May, want to offer a daily selection of soups, sandwiches and salads, along with a small selection of pastries, charcuterie, fruit and other to-go items. The shop will also have a machine turning out cinnamon and powdered miniature donuts.
The couple has been thinking about such a business for the past decade.
“We wanted to do it in a smaller town,” Heidi Dlubac said. “We’d visited here for the 20 years we lived in Seattle, and it just dawned on us it was a perfect place for the shop.”
Heidi Dlubac’s background is in urban planning. Her husband, Daniel, has worked as a chef in restaurants all around Chicago and Seattle.
“I think it’s every chef’s dream to be a chef-owner,” he said. “It’s always been a dream of mine.”
The McAfees started their apothecary more than 15 years ago in what is now Metal Head on Marine Drive.
“When we first came here, people didn’t really know what an herbalist was,” David McAfee said.
But over the years, Vicki McAfee said, she built reputation as a professional herbalist. In 2003, the couple were tipped off about a rare opening on Commercial Street in the apothecary’s current location, from which educational nonprofit Butterflies Forever had moved. Now the two face a short, albeit complicated, move across Commercial Street, hoping to open in mid-April.
“For me, the thing that’s terrifying is moving the hundreds of thousands of pieces,” Vicki McAfee said of the shops wide-ranging collection of herbalist items and gift section in the front of the store.
When the store first opened, Vicki McAfee said, the gifts were put up front to help draw in customers and sustain the business. Now that herbalism has become more established, she said, the herbs will go in front.