The love story started in the summer of 2018, with a chance encounter at a pintxos bar. Blaine Wetzel had just landed in Bilbao, Spain, after a long series of flights from his home on remote Lummi Island, Washington, a two-hour drive and 10-minute ferry ride north of...

The Willows Inn.  Internationally renowned as the epitome of Pacific Northwest cuisine, the restaurant at this Lummi Island inn is a bucket-list destination for anyone who calls themselves a food lover. Helmed by James Beard Award–winning chef Blaine Wetzel, the...

“By mid-December, the pumpkin pile will be depleted. When the pumpkins are gone, it’s time to close our doors for the winter season.” So said Reid Johnson, manager of The Willows Inn on Lummi Island. The pumpkin pile, bright orange like a warm fire, sits beneath a...

Just off the coast between Vancouver and Seattle, tiny Lummi Island is home to a totally unique dining destination called The Willows Inn. Blaine Wetzel spent formative years under René Redzepi at Copenhagen's Noma before taking over this 100-year-old inn at the...

Seattle has long been Washington State’s mainstage for the culinary scene. But a little college town called Bellingham, just a half-hour south of the border with Canada, looks to give the big city a run for its lunch money. With a thriving microbrewery scene, a...

Lummi Island is a perfect getaway for families looking to unplug and enjoy time in nature. This easy day trip from Bellingham is just 25 minutes to the Lummi Island ferry terminal at Gooseberry Point. From there, the ride across the channel aboard the Whatcom Chief...

No longer is award-winning food resigned to "perk" status during a hotel stay. Properties around the world are making their food programs an integral part of the experience, where culinarily curious travelers can indulge in the art of cooking, farming, and eating like...

LUMMI ISLAND, Wash. -- While Lummi Island is only an 8-minute ferry ride from the shores of Bellingham, it feels like a world away. Escape to The Willows Inn lodge for a 20-course dinner, or enjoy a weekend getaway in one of the several on-site suites. The...

1 The Willows Inn Blaine Wetzel Progressive American Lummi Island, Washington 2 Single Thread Farm Kyle Connaughton Progressive - Japanese Healdsburg, California 3 Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare César Ramirez Japanese - French Manhattan, New York 4 Saison Laurent Gras...

Unless you live on Lummi Island, a small island among the San Juans between Seattle and the Canadian border, a meal at the Willows Inn is as much a pilgrimage as it is just a dinner. The tasting menu restaurant is nestled among a tangle of wooden cabins where you can...

Every intrepid chef who strikes out to Washington’s distant pockets and expresses those immediate surroundings in the form of ambitious food furthers a movement that began with a Craigslist ad. Or, more specifically, with a 24-year-old kid from Olympia on a plane back...

It juts out of the Salish Sea. Craggy, wild, untamed. Lummi Island is accessible only by ferry, a ferry the size of a tugboat. The year-round population on the island is less than 900. There aren't any stoplights. What you will find is a post office, a grocery store...

If you follow the local food scene even remotely, you’ve likely heard about—or, if you’re lucky, experienced—the Willows Inn on Lummi Island. It’s a bed and breakfast of sorts: quaint rooms, each one different, spread out over a picturesque plot of this tiny island....

1 The Willows Inn Blaine Wetzel Progressive Lummi Island, Washington 2 SingleThread Farm Kyle Connaughton Progressive Healdsburg, California 3 Saison Joshua Skenes Progressive San Francisco, California 4 Alinea (meals after May, 2016 reopening) Grant Achatz...

LUMMI ISLAND, Washington — I'm standing on Gooseberry Point looking out at Lummi Island's strange terrain. The southern half of the nearly ten-square-mile island is ominously mountainous; the northern half is flat and mostly forest, broken up by vast stretches of open...