Janie Oliver recently purchased Town Baker Cafe and renamed it The Sunflower. All of the employees remained on staff and Oliver is adding to the menu and expanding the lunch hour.

I interviewed Oliver on her birthday at the restaurant.

One of the menu additions is the vegan baking treats of local Callie Squires of Pickle and Pie, who the Town Crier interviewed a few months back. Oliver will also be adding small pasta dishes, gluten-free options and soups to the menu. Everything is made-to-order. A newly added grab-and-go section is popular.

Oliver’s mindset is if a customer asks what they have on the menu, her reply is, “We can pretty much make anything, so what do you want?”

I went there for a late lunch with my two daughters a couple of weeks ago. They had a turkey sandwich with lettuce on toasted bread and I had the caprese sandwich. Both were delicious. We ended the meal with chocolate chip cookies. I ended up having to stop by at a later date to take another round of photos because the first round were taken on a cloudy day. We bought some chocolate brownies and they were a hit with my girls and myself.

The outside dining area is getting a makeover. She added picnic tables and more chairs. In addition to revamping the landscaping, adding fresh paint and an expansion of storage — because there really isn’t any — is in the works.

Oliver has sunflowers delivered every week on Thursdays to place in a vase on each table. Local artists are bringing in their work to showcase on the walls of the restaurant.

Oliver is not new to cooking or running a culinary business. Originally from Canada, she had a restaurant just north of Toronto before deciding to relocate to Los Angeles in 1991. She has worked in television and film in post-production for 37 years but she started in radio in Toronto. She published a cookbook “The Sunflower Diaries: Recipes from Thursday Night Cooking Class” in 2018 (available on Amazon) and had a catering business in LA.

She found Idyllwild by accident in the early 2000s on a detour back to LA from Anza-Borrego. She loved the town and decided to write her cookbook here. She came up on the weekends for six straight months to write it. Oliver published the cookbook two months before her mother passed away.

Oliver started looking for a cabin up here in 2016 and recently settled into the very first cabin she saw.

The Sunflower is located at 54385 N. Circle Dr. and is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Monday.