Flour Cafe & Pizzeria Opens on Via De La Paz

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Flour Café & Pizzeria—“a community-focused café and pizzeria”—is now open on Via De La Paz, marking an expansion and reinvention of Estate Coffee and its menu.

“The concept is Italian cafe and pizzeria,” owner, operator and longtime Palisadian Robert Flutie shared, adding that he aimed to “preserve and honor the essence and spirit of what people loved about Estate.”

Similar to cafes throughout Europe, Flutie shared, Estate has offered a place for Palisadians to have a cup of coffee, with a pastry or light breakfast. Now, under its new name, Flour will serve coffee, pastries and light breakfast until lunchtime, which is when it will start making pizzas and offering them “by the slice for people who want to have lunch or for kids who come out of school.”

Flour’s menu will also include focaccia sandwiches (with the bread made in-house) and salads. There is also non-perishable goods for sale, including olive oil, aged cheeses and olives.

Estate Coffee—originally created by “serial entrepreneur and real estate powerhouse” Rick Cunningham and “gifted chef and hospitality professional” Jacob Spooner—opened on Via De La Paz in May 2018. Estate Coffee will continue to operate its two additional locations in Santa Monica and San Mateo.

Flutie is originally from the East Coast. He moved to the Palisades in 2003, now residing a block from the Village area, from New York.

“When we moved here, I loved that it felt very much like where I grew up,” Flutie said, “which was that you could go to the Village—back then it was Mort’s Deli, you could sit, you could have pancakes. There’s a lot of things that were really very cozy and quaint about the Palisades that we love.”

Growing up in NY, Flutie said that one of his fondest memories was on Fridays, after leaving school, his mother gave him $5 to grab pizza slices and soda with friends.

Flutie said he noticed that while the Palisades is “great at fostering that community feeling,” he felt it didn’t have a place like he had growing up to “hang out … and spend a couple of dollars to have something really great.”

During COVID, he began to think about opening up a place to offer just that—and also the East Coast-style pizza that he knows and loves. He had been scouting the area for almost two years when he was introduced to Cunningham by two of his kid’s friends.

Flutie pitched his idea for Flour to Cunningham, who “trusted in that concept” and is on board as a partner. Flutie has also brought in “a whole host of people” who are “minor investors” in the location—many of whom are kids he coached at one level or another in the 21 years he has been in the Palisades.

“We didn’t just want to open a place and operate it,” Flutie said, “we wanted this to have connective tissue to the community.”

For now, Flutie said he is solely focused on the Palisades location of Flour, but in the future, he shared plans of opening additional locations. Flutie loves to cook—and pizza is his favorite food.

“I feel like I’m in a place that I probably should have been in the past 30 years,” Flutie shared. “And I’m just having such an amazing time giving people something that they’re loving and it’s something that I love too.”

For more information—including hours and menus—visit flourcafeandpizzeria.com.