21. CORTON
New York, NY
22. SUSHI TARO
Washington, DC
23. ELEMENTS
Princeton, NJ
24. COI
San Francisco, CA
25. WILLOWS INN, THE
Lummi Island, WA
26. PETER LUGER
Brooklyn, NY
27. BOULEY
New York, NY
28. KOMI
Washington, DC
29. MARINUS
Carmel Valley, CA
30. SCHWA
Chicago, IL
25

Photo Courtesy of: Handsome Eats

Willows Inn, The
Lummi Island, WA

2579 WEST SHORE DRIVE
360-758-2620
WWW.WILLOWS-INN.COM

Blaine Wetzel, a native of Olympia, Washington, has come a long way. After spending a year and a half in the Noma kitchen, he decided it was time to go back home to Washington and open a restaurant of his own. He checked out a bunch of locations and decided that an inn on a small island off the coast of Bellingham was the ideal spot. Not content with having his own kitchen, he identified a fertile plot of land on the island where he planted a garden to supply the restaurant with produce. Two years later we are seeing reviews like these: “brilliant restaurant, producing the type of magic that can be created only when a well-trained, creative chef finds the perfect spot from which to source the freshest and finest of ingredients”; “several of the vegetable dishes will stay with me forever”; and “his hot-smoked, Lummi Island reef net caught salmon might be the best thing I ate in 2012.”