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King 5 – Evening Magazine Secret Escape: The Willows inn
We head north to Lummi Island, just west of Bellingham to check out the Willows inn. A renowned location that has been bringing in guests for over a century. Reservations at the Willows fill up quickly for the summer. You can book online at www.willows-inn.com.
read moreBon Appétit – The Best Food Lover’s Hotels in America
When chef Blaine Wetzel returned home to his native Washington three years ago, after a stint at Noma in Copenhagen, he took over the kitchen of this small inn on Lummi Island, just a few hours outside Seattle. There he began crafting intensely local, poetic, and electrifying cuisine from the surrounding forest, sea, and farms. Dinner is a dreamy progression of courses delivered with a few words and sheepish smiles—often by Wetzel himself—starting with “snacks” like puffed fried halibut skins or a sliver of smoked sockeye...
read moreGayot – 2013 Top 40 Restaurants in the U.S.
The visionary food of chef Blaine Wetzel can only be savored on Lummi Island, one of the San Juan Islands near Bellingham between Seattle and Vancouver. An alumnus of Copenhagen’s Noma, Wetzel blends local foraging, farming and fishing with avant-garde artistry to produce dishes like baked sunflower roots on a bed of smoldering moss in a wooden box, or venison tartare with rose petals. A three-hour prix-fixe dinner is comprised of up to twenty tastings, each more luminous than the last. Read more at...
read moreOutside Magazine – Chef Blaine Wetzel’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Locavore
In the winter of 2010, Riley Starks was in trouble. A fisherman and organic farmer, the 59-year-old owned a small inn on Washington State’s Lummi Island, a nine-mile ridge of fir and hemlock rising out of the sea near the Canadian border, with a year-round population of 964 weathered souls. Starks and his wife had bought the eight-room Willows Inn in 2001, and for a while they lived out their fantasy. Starks supplied fish and veggies to the restaurant, while his wife handled the inn and the cooking. But the economic downturn had clobbered...
read moreDuJour – Where the Wild Things Are
A 26-year-old culinary sensation is tantalizing the Pacific Northwest with his succulent foraged fare Behind every great dish is a chattering of stories waiting to be told. Take the ripe blackberries with wild yarrow, carrot flowers, sorrel and chickweed in a puddle of dill oil that are served at the Willows Inn on Washington’s Lummi Island. One tale you might tell could be of its ingredients: how the berries were foraged only a few hours earlier from bushes plump with fruit, the yarrow and chickweed plucked from a field of the farm up the...
read moreLonely Planet – Top 10 US Travel Destinations for 2013
Every year our US-based editors team up with Lonely Planet’s expert authors to compile a list of US destinations that are prime for the next year. Best in Travel 2013 already covered two places we think the world should be looking at – San Francisco and the Gulf Coast – but here we wanted to dig deeper and shine a light on 10 places in the US that travelers should add to their wish lists for the coming year. Our 2013 picks are literally all over the map: once-in-a-lifetime northern lights, new top-tier museums, moose trails,...
read moreAfar – Rene Redzepi’s Picks: Willows Inn, Lummi Island
On a small island called Lummi, between Seattle and Vancouver, Blaine Wetzel is cooking at the Willows Inn. The menu changes daily, and this is definitely one of the most exciting new places to eat in the western U.S. 2579 West Shore Dr., (360) 758-2620. Rene Redzepi chose this as one of his favorite places. This appeared in the October 2012 issue.
read moreThe Wall Street Journal – Foragers for Voyagers
LE BERNARDIN CHEF ERIC RIPERT recently arrived in Bhutan for a two-week-long gig at the Amankora Thimphu hotel. Though he’s been hard at work mastering ema datse, the national dish of chilies and cheese, travelers may find themselves wondering why the guest chef has also been spending so much time outside of the kitchen. For Mr. Ripert, it is not just a cooking trip, but a foraging excursion that will take him traipsing through the Himalayas for wild mushrooms and other indigenous ingredients. The wilderness-to-table movement takes the...
read moreInternational Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association – Chef Blaine Wetzel of the Willows Inn has gone fishing
The kitchen team of six move with coordinated grace. There’s no discernible food preparation activity, except for the oven baking dark round loaves of rustic rye sourdough. Strategically placed in this compact, sleekly modern space in Washington State’s acclaimed Willows Inn, the young chef, Blaine Wetzel, is both creative force and conductor. Ingredients appear and the plating, of what the chef describes as a “symmetry of dishes,” is finalized, then ushered out of the kitchen to diners who have waited up to six months for a...
read moreGourmet – Top Chefs Share Their “Bucket List” Restaurants
In order to create the ultimate “bucket list” of restaurants—the top places to eat before you kick the proverbial bucket (or, to put it more cheerfully, before you retire to your secluded tropical island)—we put the question to the chefs behind restaurants that are already on our must-go lists. Read on for restaurant picks from culinary luminaries including René Redzepi of Copenhagen’s Noma, David Myers of Los Angeles’ Comme Ça and Tokyo’s Sola, Daniel Humm of New York’s Eleven Madison Park and NoMad,...
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