Nosh Pit

Cormac Mahoney, Blaine Wetzel Among Food and Wine’s Best New Chefs

The mag recognizes the Madison Park Conservatory and Willows Inn chefs in its top 10.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Apr 03, 2012 at 03:35PM 0 Comments

Blaine Wetzel: Food and Wine winner.

Hats off to Cormac Mahoney of Madison Park Conservatory and Blaine Wetzel of The Willows Inn on Lummi Island. The two were included on Food and Wine’s annual Best New Chefs survey, the glossy announced this afternoon.

Mahoney and Wetzel join esteemed an corps of cooks, including locally Jason Stratton (Spinasse, Artusi),
Jason Wilson (Crush), Mark Fuller (Ma’Ono, known at the time as Spring Hill), and Maria Hines (Tilth, Golden Beetle). Last year Jason Franey of Canlis was awarded the honor.

Check out the rest of the 2012 winners on the Food and Wine website, and look for the issue on newsstands in July.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Awards and Accolades, Blaine Wetzel, Willows Inn, Cormac Mahoney, Madison Park Conservatory

Wall Street Journal says Willows Inn “On the Brink” of Becoming Next Big Restaurant

The Lummi Island up-and-comer gets points for daily foraging and ducks fed to the chef’s specifications.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Oct 06, 2011 at 09:39AM 0 Comments

Chef Blaine Wetzel

Photo by Jim Henkins via Willows Inn

Did everybody see this? On October 1, Wall Street Journal writer Katy McLaughlin wrote an article called “What’s the Next Big Restaurant?”

In it, she made predictions about which eateries were poised to follow in the footsteps of El Bulli, Noma, and Alinea to become the most celebrated restaurants in the world.

Among her picks: Lummi Island’s Willows Inn. McLaughlin describes how wunderkind chef Blaine Wetzel (who came to Lummi by way of Copenhagen resto Noma, named the best restaurant in the world by S. Pelligrino) obliges his five chefs to “spend roughly an hour daily foraging for wildflowers, berries, early spring shoots, grasses and ferns.” She says ducks on the restaurant’s farm are “fed to Mr. Wetzel’s specifications, slaughtered at eight weeks and dry-aged in the barn.” (Side note: Why has someone not made a Zoolander-type movie about farm-to-table trends in haute cuisine?)

And yet, reservations are not impossible to come by. “For now, that it.” Wetzel told McLaughlin that a weeknight seating is usually attainable if booked two months in advance.

Read the full article.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Celebrity Chefs, Chefs, Blaine Wetzel, Willows Inn