An Austin-born bakery is slated to move into the former home of Twin Sisters Bakery & Café, an iconic eatery that sat nestled into San Antonio’s Sunset Ridge shopping center for over four decades until its June 2023 closure.
So, who will the new tenant be? Swedish Hill bakery, an all-day café concept that debuted in Austin in 2019. According to the San Antonio Business Journal, the roughly 3,000-square-foot space at 6322 N. New Braunfels Ave. will get a major makeover before Swedish Hill moves in, giving the bakery-café a fresh start in its new Alamo City home.
For San Antonians unfamiliar with the Austin bakery, Swedish Hill has a pretty extensive pastry résumé. Its cases are filled with bagels, croissants, kouign-amann, cookies and tarts, while the café menu includes salads, sandwiches, rotisserie chicken and deli-style sides. Its chicken tortilla soup is also a holdover from the business’s earlier days, and has become one of the eatery’s signature offerings.
There’s some history behind the name, too. The bakery traces its roots back to 1975, when Patricia Bauer-Slate and Tom Neuhaus opened the concept as “Sweetish Hill” in a charming East Austin Victorian home.
MML Hospitality — an entrepreneurial supergroup that includes the proprietor of The Newstand and The Dispatch — took over the business in 2018, re-launching it as Swedish Hill the following year.
After Twin Sisters closed, the new bakery will bring another place to the neighborhood for breakfast, lunch, coffee and baked goods.
Swedish Hill has five locations in Austin and one in Aspen, Colorado. Its Alamo Heights outpost will add another Austin-born café to a San Antonio dining scene that has seen more coffee shops, bakeries and all-day cafés open in recent years.