Lummi Island restaurant named one of 10 in world to watch

Published 3:08 pm Tuesday, January 11, 2011

New York Times food writer Gisela Williams has listed the Willows Inn on Lummi Island as one of 10 restaurants in the world to check out in 2011.

That’s because of the restaurant’s hotshot new chef: Blaine Wetzel, 24, who previously worked at a Copenhagen restaurant ranked as the best in the world in 2010 by S. Pellegrino.

The Willows Inn restaurant is scheduled to reopen in February. “Expect a menu with an obsessive focus on local ingredients,” Williams writes. “Since he was hired, Mr. Wetzel has been working with a farmer and an urchin diver who work solely for him.”

Lummi Island is west of Bellingham, via a Whatcom County ferry.