Walk up to this garden store and smell the … burgers?
The sizzling aroma of food on the grill greets you in the parking lot at Molbak’s Garden and Home in Woodinville. The scent of spring flowers seduces your senses as soon as you step inside.
Floral and food.
It doesn’t get much better than that. You’ll also find art, clothing, furniture and seminars inside this garden store extraordinaire that has an expansive selection of plants and plant things for gardeners (like my husband, Max) and a bunch of cool things for nongardeners (like me).
Max usually goes alone to garden centers for his fix, unless it’s Molbak’s. Then I’m all in.
For some reason, we’d never dined there before. It was time.
The Garden Cafe is truly a garden cafe. It is nestled amid thick greenery.
Walk down the lane to place your order at the counter with a chalkboard menu; the food is brought to your table.
The line moves fast. The staff is good at what they do.
“Is there anything that isn’t wonderful?” the woman ahead of me said to her friend.
It all looked good: Burgers. Soup. Salad. Hummus. Pizza with toppings such as goat cheese, grilled salmon, artichoke and feta.
Seating is available outside, where there’s a grill and wood-fired pizza oven.
Inside, the filtering of light through the vaulted glass ceiling adds ambience to the tropical setting. You forget you’re in a garden store. Foliage blocks the view of the outdoor living furnishings across the aisle, not that it wouldn’t be scenic. The entire store is eye candy.
In the cafe, trees, leafy plants and water elements surround the patio tables. “Lunch in the jungle,” is how an online reviewer put it. The open atmosphere offers a lively hum of chatter without clamor. It’s family friendly for youngster and oldsters, with plenty of room for wheeled devices. I counted three strollers at one table. For picky eaters of all ages, the menu includes PB&J sandwiches.
Max chose a lunch combo with a chicken sandwich ($10.95) and Asian salad ($2.50). Other sandwich choices included salmon, veggie and prawn.
A prawn sandwich? It was tempting.
Instead, I ordered vegetable quiche with a cup of tomato basil soup ($9.95).
The food was delivered on colorful plates that add to the beauty.
The Asian salad was a steep mound of greens coated in a tasty dressing and topped with thinly sliced grilled chicken.
“The salad was outrageously good,” Max said.
The sandwich bread was thick yet soft, graced with tender chicken, tomatoes, onions and “Chef’s special aioli.”
Special is right. The fare is by chef Russell Lowell, who also owns Russell’s Restaurant in Woodinville. The garden is by Seattle horticulturist Richard Hartlage, who had his hand in the landscape design at Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle and other gardens nationwide.
The cafe is not an afterthought. It’s a destination in itself.
The quiche was creamy and the ingredients fresh and flavorful.
The tomato soup was thick and rich with pretty designs on top. A cup was not enough. Go for the bowl.
After the meal, I started to clear up the dishes when a worker suddenly appeared and said, “Here, let me take that for you.”
It’s like having lunch on the patio of your dreams.
I was tempted to walk across the aisle and curl up in the big hammock on display.
Andrea Brown at 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @reporterbrown.
Molbak’s The Garden Cafe
13625 NE 175th St.; Woodinville; 425-483-5000; www.molbaks.com.
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Grill hours, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
(Store hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.)
Vegetarian: many options.
Alcohol: beer and wine.
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