The Willows Inn

Getting to The Willows Inn requires a ferry crossing to Lummi Island, a small landmass in Washington's Salish Sea — and that deliberate remove is the point. The inn built its dining reputation around a tasting-menu format sourced almost entirely from the island and its surrounding waters: fish pulled from local fisheries, foraged greens and berries from the surrounding landscape, oysters from nearby beds. The kitchen's hyperlocal discipline placed it in a category occupied by very few destination restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. The dining program drew sustained critical attention under chef Blaine Wetzel, a Noma alumnus whose work at The Willows earned him recognition from the James Beard Foundation and Food & Wine magazine. Opinionated About Dining ranked it among the top restaurants in North America in 2017, and the property held a four-diamond AAA rating. Tasting-menu pricing tracked the kitchen's ambitions over time, with dinner prices reported at various points between $85 and $285 per person — a range that reflects both the program's evolution and its positioning as a destination meal rather than a casual stop. The physical scale of the inn reinforces the format. Seating is limited, the setting is quiet, and the experience is oriented around arrival rather than throughput: guests were encouraged to take drinks on the deck before moving to the dining room, letting the island's pace set the tempo for the meal ahead. Dishes across reported coverage included smoked king salmon, salmonberries, and oyster preparations — small courses that changed with the season rather than anchoring to a fixed menu. For anyone travelling from Seattle, the logistics of the ferry crossing and the inn's remote position are not incidental; they are the premise on which the entire dining proposition rests.

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