Nicole Rucker Reemerges Along Fairfax With Much More Than Just Pastries

Nicole Rucker sure stays busy. The popular pastry chef has already won prestigious awards for her pies and has made an impact on the Los Angeles coffee scene by wholesaling her stuff to some of the best shops in town, but now she’s closer than ever to actually going out on her own with a new restaurant planned for Fairfax.

Rucker’s new project is to be called Fiona, says LA Magazine, and could debut as soon as September. The project is much more than a simple pie shop, too. Rucker says she’ll be in the kitchen nightly, not only doing breads and pastries but savory-side stuff like soups and beyond. There could potentially be room for occasional pop-ups from other chefs too, like what she’s been spearheading at Cofax on Fairfax over the past couple of years with Kuniko Yagi and others.

Previously, Rucker was keen to put a version of Fiona inside the former Tinga space on La Brea. But some murkiness on the business and real estate side of things blew that deal up, so she’s instead put her efforts into the shuttered Bird N Hand on Fairfax, just above Beverly Boulevard. Longtime partners and all-around Fairfax mainstays James Starr and Jason Bernstein remain involved in this venture, helping to bring Rucker’s vision to life. Jason Herber is on as for the architect the project.

Fiona is hoping for a September launch along Fairfax. Expect daily hours from breakfast through dinner, with beer and wine available as well. As for the name? It’s (adorably) an ode to, of all things, Fiona the hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo, because, well, it’s Rucker’s “big baby.”

Fiona. 339 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles.