Less than six months after a California mortgage banker with a passion for renovating old properties and being an innkeeper took over ownership of the Burton Inn, its restaurant is opening as Lucy’s Table.

Burton Inn owner Deborah Kohler has been working on the inn’s kitchen — that was formerly a commissary — since she bought the building in October, and just recently was able to get it certified as a commercial kitchen. Lucy’s Kitchen is scheduled to open to the public April 13 and will serve “tasty pub food” along with beer and wine, Kohler said, as well as breakfast.

A look at the restaurant’s preliminary menu shows appetizers such as spinach and artichoke dip, salad, potato skins and croquettes. Main dishes consist of a range of burgers, from The Burton “Regular Joe” to veggie and chicken burgers.

Breakfast includes quiches, bread pudding and biscuits and gravy.

“I want to keep the menu simple so we can shine with specials,” Kohler said.

She also talked about the prices and said she was committed to keeping the restaurant affordable. Main dishes such as chicken, fish and chips and steak will cost between $13 and $22, while burgers will run from $9.50 to $11.75.

The kitchen will be under the direction of Michaella Olavarri, a chef who just recently moved to Vashon after a rough run in California — she took over Capitola Coffee Roasters and Patisserie near Monterey Bay, only to not have the lease renewed after the building’s owner died. The story replayed itself when she took over Capitola Book Cafe and then was diagnosed with cancer. When the bookstore went out of business, she bid on the building, but was outbid by a movie theater. Now in her 50s, she said she did not want to start over again, but cooking is her passion and Lucy’s Table has given her an opportunity to be part of it again.

“In a year and a half, I lost two locations and had cancer,” the mother of seven said Monday explaining that four of her children are in Washington and that is what drew her here. “I said I’d take a break and wanted to find out what to do next. At my age, I was trying to start over.”

She became an insurance agent and then reconnected with Michele Simplot Rutschow, an old friend she worked with in California who now is the executive director at Camp Burton.

“She told me camp season wouldn’t be starting until the summer and she had extra space and asked me to stay with her at the camp,” Olavarri said. “I heard about Deborah buying the Burton Inn and had a gut feeling to contact her, first with the idea to just use her kitchen for a pastry delivery service.”

Conversations between Kohler and Olavarri evolved into talks about having Olavarri run the restaurant.

“I said no. I’ve lost everything,” Olavarri said. “We continue talking and (Kohler) said this is yours, I will finance it. I’ll be the financial side, you be operations.”

Olavarri will be joined by island chefs Jenner Noah — who used to own Uptown Takeout before Zamorana’s moved into the building across from the movie theater, and Chris Boscia — a former Spanish teacher at Harbor School and actor.

Olavarri said both men are “amazing.” The three will work together at Lucy’s Table.

With the chefs taken care of, it was time for a name. Kohler said she and Olavarri began brainstorming a name and wanted it to have historical significance, ideally focusing on Quartermaster Harbor’s first inhabitants — the sxwobabc or “Swiftwater People.” Both had heard the story of Lucy Slagham Gerand, a member of the sxwobabc who was born and raised in a longhouse on the harbor in the 1850s. According to the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum, Lucy is remembered vividly by early pioneers because she shared many sxwobabc names for places on Vashon with an anthropologist in 1918. Then, less than a decade later, in a special U.S. Court of Claims hearing regarding treaty violations, she testified about the villages of her childhood with information about traditions from the culture of the sxwobabc people.

“I was fascinated by Lucy because she was here, like right here where this building stands,” Kohler said sitting at one of the tables in the Lucy’s Kitchen dining room. “I wanted to reach back with honor and welcome her.”

The restaurant’s opening represents the culmination of Kohler’s work to restore the inn’s kitchen. She admitted that at first, she started work on the kitchen with no knowledge of what it would become.

“I wanted to lease out the kitchen and have someone else fix it up. I had lovely conversations, but they fell through so I just started on the kitchen not knowing what the heck I was doing,” she said. “The universe sent me talent, not tenants.”

Lucy’s Table inside the Burton Inn will open for dinner from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, April 13. The restaurant will be open Thursday through Monday every week.