Often they'll find these wild plants in their backyards, literally. The restaurant staff all live on the nine-square-mile island, 20 miles south of the Canadian border in Washington state. Wetzel's home is located near the beach, where on days off, he'll bike to the water to gather sea beans and seaweed for dinner service.
Within the restaurant industry, ingredients traditionally pass through multiple sets of hands — the farmer, the food distributor, the deliveryman — before reaching the cooks. Then the "Eat Local" movement sprang up, and chefs began working directly with farmers.
What the 25-year-old Wetzel has cultivated on Lummi Island removes all intermediaries: They grow, forage, cook and serve everything. The only thing they buy commercially is oil and salt. What's notable is Wetzel's pedigree: The Olympia, Wash., native spent several years cooking at Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant voted best restaurant in the world two years running by Restaurant magazine (full disclosure: I'm a voting member of the World's 50 Best Restaurants Academy). Wetzel's cooking has attracted so much buzz that the New York Times name-checked the restaurant twice in the last year.
The Willows Inn (it's both a restaurant and a bed-and-breakfast) formed its philosophy out of necessity: Lummi Island, population 816, is reachable only by ferry after a two-hour drive from Seattle. The car ferry holds 20 or so vehicles and costs $7 round trip, and to ship produce from the mainland every day would be cost prohibitive. Plus, no delivery trucks would venture on the island for just one business. So the Willows Inn staffers grow what they need on their farm, located a mile up the hill from the inn. One-half mile south is the pasture where their 120 lambs graze. The restaurant could theoretically sustain itself even if Lummi Island broke off into the Strait of Georgia.
Until that happens, I'm sitting on the hotel's deck patio facing the sunset, metallic waters before me, cloud-crowned islands in the distance, the smell of cedar and pine wafting, and I'm thinking: How did I get into this Pacific Northwest tourism brochure? Then, to amplify the caricature, a bald eagle swoops by.
It's the same view from my dining room seat, where dinner begins at 7 p.m. sharp for everyone. The restaurant caps it at 30 guests each night, which means Wetzel and team have room to flex their creative muscles.
Wetzel's interpretation of creativity might be the opposite of what you'd expect — spare, subtle touches, a preference to undersalt, with ingredients you've never tasted or heard, colors you never thought possible on a plate.
It's visually arresting theater: a cedar container, modeled after Native American bentwood boxes, arrives with contents unknown, until the lid is removed and alderwood smoke escapes. Inside is one perfect bite of house-smoked sockeye salmon, caught by reef net boats that fish exclusively for the restaurant. A raw razor clam dish is unexpectedly, remarkably creamy, paired with grated horseradish ice and potatoes colored an impossible blue. And a pickled oyster ingeniously topped with sorrel is nature's mignonette, adding citric and herbaceous notes.
By the time the "Peter Rabbit" course arrives — a twig basket of pea shoots and raw turnips with an edible "dirt" of hazelnut and malt — the realization comes that this dinner could only exist here and now. In the finest restaurants in the world — Per Se, Alinea, The French Laundry — there's nothing New York, Chicago or Bay Area about those places. The Willows Inn has what the French call terroir: It is symbiotically connected with Lummi Island. Nowhere else could this food exist, in no other time can this menu take place.
It is challenging food, to be sure, but it is the restaurant equivalent of television's "The Wire." The gratifications are not always instant, but come the next day, week, month. There is little in the way of truffles, creams or heavy seasoning. Like wine that decants, Wetzel's cooking improves with time, when the floral aromas outside your room trigger memories of the wild cherry blossom ice cream and lemon verbena granita, adorned with velvety edible quince blossoms, wood violets and wild rose petals.
In my mind, some weeks later, those colors have only grown more vivid, the flavors more intense. That is a feat few restaurants can accomplish.
If you go
Lummi Island is located two hours north of Seattle and accessible only by a six-minute car ferry ride. It operates daily out of Bellingham. The set menu is $105 (wine pairing is extra). The inn, which dates back to 1912, has 15 rooms, with nightly rates ranging from $125 to $625 for the beach house. Breakfast (cooked by Wetzel's team) is included.
The Willows Inn
2579 West Shore Drive
Lummi Island, Wash.; 360-758-2620
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