Q13 Fox – Witness ‘chefs in the wild’ at award winning inn on Lummi Island
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...
A Thousand Truths In The Kitchen – Salty Magazine
OAD – Top 100+ North American Restaurants 2019
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...
Los Angeles Times – Eaten Path: Geoduck skewers and smoked cod doughnuts at the Willows Inn on Lummi Island in Washington
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...
SeattleMet – Willows Inn: The One That Started It All
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...
Seattle Refined – Inside The Willows Inn, One of the Best Restaurants in America
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...
Seattle Magazine – Everything You Need to Know Before Going to Willows Inn
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....
OAD – Top 100+ North American Restaurants 2018
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...
Loganita Farm – Farming for a Feast
Fathom – Where the Continental United States Ends, a Sublime Dining Experience Begins
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...
James Beard Foundation – The 2018 James Beard Award Semifinalists
This morning the James Beard Foundation released the list of chefs and other food and drink pros in contention for the most prestigious culinary award in all the land. And apparently Seattle is a hotbed of young talent; we fielded three semifinalists in the Rising...
Eater – America’s 38 Essential Restaurants
What are the restaurants that altogether define dining in America? For nearly four years, I’ve been chasing this consuming riddle around the country as Eater's national critic. There will never be an immutable answer, and that’s what makes eating across the nation so...
Gayot – Top 40 Restaurants in the U.S. 2016
Chef Blaine Wetzel, previously at Copenhagen's Noma, brings Scandinavian elegance and refined, precise technique to a remote outpost on Lummi Island, located two hours north of Seattle. His vision of "food telling a story of the land" breaks new ground in celebratory...
Forbes – How Travel Fuels This Noma Alum’s Award-Winning Restaurant
Blaine Wetzel had worked in food since he was 14, but had a culinary awakening when he moved to Europe at 22. He learned about new ingredients. He adopted new cooking techniques. And he got a job at Noma, the foraging-focused Danish restaurant that would go on to be...
Chicago Tribune – Back to nature: Washington’s Lummi Island and its world-renowned restaurant
If summer in the city is sounding a little too hot and hectic, we have the remedy you're after: A quiet, close-to-nature break on a little island just beyond where Washington state stops and the mighty Pacific begins. We've seen our gloating friends' Instagram shots...
Inlander – Washington’s Finest
If you drive two hours north of Seattle and hop onto a ferry, you'll arrive at Lummi Island, home of the Willows Inn. While the guest rooms are cozy, most people are there for the food. In 2011, the New York Times named this restaurant one of 10 worth an entire plane...
OAD – Top 100+ U.S. Restaurants 2017
Rank Name Chef Cuisine Location 1 The Willows Inn Blaine Wetzel Progressive American Lummi Island, WA 2 Saison Joshua Skenes Progressive American San Francisco, CA 3 Blue Hill at Stone Barns Dan Barber Progressive American Pocantico Hills, NY 4 Alinea Grant Achatz...
Seattle Times – The Willows Inn scores the No. 1 spot on a national best-restaurants list
The Willows Inn on lovely Lummi Island — a couple hours’ drive and a very short, very picturesque ferry ride north of Seattle — was named one of Eater’s Best Restaurants in America in December. And chef Blaine Wetzel won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Northwest...