EVERETT — Exactly 11 months ago, I drove more than 3,000 miles from Delaware to a port city just north of Seattle, excited to relaunch the Food & Drink section of the local paper. It had snowed when I arrived in Everett on New Year’s Day, and as I looked outside at the freshly fallen snow on my last week at The Daily Herald, getting ready to leave once again — this time back East — I felt a sense of déjà vu. This full circle moment is bittersweet. So very bittersweet.
In my short time here, I brought life back to this section of The Daily Herald, turning it into a vibrant showcase of Snohomish County’s diverse food and drink scene. Birria tacos, French pastries, Filipino soups and sweets, funky and delicious Lao dishes. As part of my To Your Table series, I hung out with a fishing crew as they offloaded 47,000 pounds of halibut and black cod. Months later, I drove to an Edmonds bakery at 3 a.m. to watch an amazing team turn locally grown and milled flour into artisan sourdough bread. I connected with readers over good food, as well as the hardworking people who feed their communities everyday.
It has been an honor to write about Washington’s incredible food systems and Snohomish County’s delectable small businesses. I could not have done my job without the countless farmers and growers, chefs and bakers, bartenders, fishermen, farmers market organizers, food truck owners, readers, my colleagues and many, many more wonderful people in this community who welcomed me with open arms and let me share a piece of their world with our readers.
Speaking of my dear readers: I am so grateful to all of you for trusting an East Coast journalist to represent the best of Snohomish County’s food scene. Thank you to everyone who reached out to say hello, who invited me into their homes or out to dinner, who told me they loved one of my stories. You made me feel at home, truly. I am incredibly grateful for my time here, and I’m still finding endlessly exciting places to write about. I’ll be honest: it feels strange to leave The Herald when I’m only just getting started. A lot of thought (and many, many tears) went into this decision. But in the end, for many reasons, I knew this was the best choice for me. I will be starting an exciting opportunity at a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit later this month.
I intended to grow Food & Drink as a well-oiled machine that can be passed on to the next writer. I firmly believe as long as there is good food in Snohomish County, and an endless bounty of creative, driven people who want to share their food with the world, this little corner of The Herald will continue to thrive.
As our paper searches for the next Food & Drink writer, please support my fellow newsroom colleagues here: We have many talented reporters, photographers, editors, page designers and web producers who all care deeply about this community and work hard every day to keep local journalism alive. Please subscribe, make a donation, and keep on reading.
You’ll see my byline pop up one or two more times here. For now, I urge you to stop somewhere new on your way home from work, share a beer with a stranger, try a cuisine you hadn’t before, drive out to Gold Bar and let the folks at Espresso Chalet make a Bigfoot believer out of you, enjoy a bowl of pho by yourself, grease up your fingers over good tacos and Korean fried chicken.
And please, go somewhere you haven’t read about — there are plenty of gems I didn’t get to. Good food and good people are out there. You just have to find them.
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