One of life’s little luxuries, following a good meal, is doing one of two things: stretching out or taking a stroll. Or both if you’re up for it.
Camano Island Inn’s Waterfront Bistro allows for those options. Eight rooms with private baths, some with spas or outdoor hot tubs, indulge the stretch-out fans. A driftwood-strewn beach on Camano Island’s western shore below the inn should do the trick for walkers.
The meals at the Waterfront Bistro should satisfy both.
Chef Greg McCammond has run the kitchen since August, following a career that has included in the past decade restaurants in the Stanwood and Camano area, the Northern Lights Casino, Microsoft’s Redmond campus and the Warm Beach Senior Community. That experience has provided him a familiarity with local growers and producers.
“We need to support our local community,” McCammond said.
Offering casual to elegant waterfront dining with a focus on local foods makes for a nice marriage, he said.
McCammond is trained in the classical French style, which he fuses with Northwest ingredients and a culinary nod to the Inn’s East Indian owners.
On a recent late-autumn visit we were seated in the Bistro’s cozy parlor near the gas fireplace and before what would have been a nice view of Saratoga Passage, if it weren’t for this time of year’s tendency toward darkness before 5 p.m. A deck just off the parlor will be inviting for diners once the sun starts working longer hours.
My wife and I started with a glass of wine for each and an appetizer: butternut squash ravioli ($8) with a garlic-studded alfredo sauce and garnished with an upright sprig of thyme.
McCammond said the dish previously was served deep-fried with a brown butter sauce, but he didn’t like how the deep frying dried out the ravioli. Having tasted the raviolis’ moist and bright-flavored squash with the garlicky sauce, I can’t argue.
Also on the appetizer menu are prawn-stuffed avocado ($13), crab au gratin ($13), escargot baked in herbed garlic butter ($9) and savory rice and lentil pancakes ($8), rolled around vegetable masala and served with a coconut and mint chutney.
For an entree, my wife chose prawns ($25), cooked with garlic and finished with a white wine and cream sauce. Again a sprig of thyme had been raised above the prawns, rice and squash. Dishes with few ingredients require freshness, particularly with seafood, so McCammond’s local connections paid off on the prawns.
I chose osso bucco ($28), braised veal shank in a red wine and tomato broth, and a lemony rice pilaf. The veal meat needed only gentle persuasion with a fork to fall from the shank bone. The meat itself satisfied my taste for umami, that savory fifth flavor beyond sweet, bitter, sour and salty. My only complaint this night was that the sauce, while delicious, was saltier than I like. But that’s more a matter of personal taste.
McCammond said he enjoys the alchemy involved in cooking that produces different flavors, depending on the combinations of foods. Toward that, he offers “umami” wine tasting dinners, where wines are specifically matched not only to dishes but to particular ingredients.
The Waterfront Bistro’s wine list is focused, as the ingredients are, on the Northwest, chiefly from Washington and Oregon. Beer also is available.
Among other entrees are rack of lamb ($33), vegetable biryani ($23), Indian butter chicken ($26), Alaskan halibut ($28), grilled wild-caught king salmon ($31) and a selection of steaks from $28 to $36. McCammond said he’s also happy to quiz guests on what they’re hungry for and prepare something on the fly.
Lunch features a Camano seafood Louie salad, topped with crab and shrimp ($13), a blackened salmon gorgonzola salad ($14), a chicken pecan quesadilla ($11) and a selection of sandwiches and burgers from $10 to $13, including a crab Caesar melt and a Monte Cristo sandwich.
Breakfast at the Waterfront Bistro, from $8 to $14, includes a continental buffet of baked goods, fresh fruit, yogurt, juices and coffee or tea. But the Bistro also serves classics such as eggs, hash browns, bacon or sausage; pancakes; french toast; eggs Benedict and a New York strip loin steak with eggs, hash browns and toast.
Desserts are made in-house and include a Bailey’s cheesecake ($7), tiramisu ($8), black rice pudding simmered in coconut milk ($7), and mango panna cotta ($7). The panna cotta was an excellent finish to our meal, very frothy, light and bright.
Actually, the finish to our meal was the second option: a brief stroll along the inn’s grounds looking out onto the dark waters of Saratoga Passage across to Whidbey Island.
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