Is it my imagination, or am I getting wind of a new exec kitchen hire at Salish Lodge about once a month?

First Roy Breiman…then Justin Sledge…then Brad Komen…and now Tyler Hefford-Anderson. This critic sincerely hope this one takes, because this is one restaurant worth revitalizing.

Seattle longtimers remember the Salish when it was Snoqualmie Falls Lodge, with its gi-normous country breakfasts and schtick of pouring honey on the housemade biscuits from a perilous height.

The joint got bought, renamed, refashioned as a spa-resort, featured along with the very dead Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, bought again. But throughout it occupied that one-in-a-million cliffside perch next to the thundering Snoqualmie Falls, as quintessentially Northwest a location as exists in the world.

Alas, since those early glory days the fussy, overpriced fare has never approached the location as a draw. Recent years have at least recast the focus from Euro-pretentious to Northwest-focused—even, under Native American Chef de Cuisine Jack Strong, indigenously inspired—but the place needs a shot in the arm.

Now it has one in the form of Hefford-Anderson, a young chef I will always prize as the guy who brought us the first terrific iteration of Opal on Queen Anne. After he left the place declined, then closed.

An avid gardener and family man, Hefford-Anderson logged almost the whole decade before Opal as a chef at the exclusive Rainier Club—rigorous training pleasing the pickiest palates in Seattle.

Here’s hoping he can bring life back into the kitchen at the Salish.