Babymoon

In January this year, I was seduced by a New York Times Travel section headline: 10 Restaurants Worth a Plane Ride.  With Singapore, Sydney and Uruguay on the list, I was not hopeful that I'd be visiting any of them soon.  But the last one on the list, the Willows Inn on Lummi Island in Washington seemed feasible...

Not a month later, while browsing through the out-of-date selection of magazines as I had a pedicure, I came upon a Sunset magazine article which mentioned Lummi.  And when the restaurant came up again in something else I was reading, I was hooked.  This was where we'd go our our Babymoon.

A babymoon, in case you are not familiar with the term, is an opportunity for expectant parents to take a mini-vacation before the pandemonium of child-rearing begins. Eric was up for the vacation, but was deeply dubious about flying 700 miles to the rainy northwest to a restaurant that we might (or might not) like.

But after persistent lobbying, and the addition of Vancouver to the itinerary, the trip was booked, and last week, we headed out, on an unusually rainy weekend for California in June to see what all the fuss was about.

From the get-go, the gods smiled on us.  We touched down to a Seattle basking in sunshine (and we know that's not normal from the thrilled car rental attendant who gushed "isn't this weather great") as we left the parking lot after knocking off $170 of unnecessary charges that Thrifty had tacked on to our rock-bottom Priceline rental.  When we drove up to the line for the once an hour car ferry to Lummi, we waited only 10 minutes before being loaded on for the 6 minute trip to the island.  And then we checked into our room for the night, which had a spectacular view of the Sound, with waves lapping gently on to the beach - Hollywood style - immediately beneath our wide open windows.

It didn't hurt that our neighbors for the evening, three ladies who had escaped their daily lives for a taste of luxury, included a food writer for Seattle magazine, who promptly gave us additional foodie recommendations for the next leg of our stay in Vancouver.

But the real treat was the restaurant experience itself.  Perhaps because I had checked the "anniversary" button when I made my online reservation (babymoon, oddly, wasn't an option), Eric and I were the first to be ushered into the restaurant, and we were seated in the prime window with a perfect view of the about-to-set sun. 

We knew that for our $85 per head, we would enjoy 5 courses of dinner.  But before we even started on those, we were treated to a series of amuse bouches - six in all - which bested anything for creativity and innovation that I have ever eaten, anywhere, in my life.

[Spoiler alert! Do not read this section if you are going to go to the Willows Inn!] 

A chef (who we later realized was the rising star Blaine Wetzel himself) arrived with a small wooden box, and let us know that it contained smoked salmon.  We smiled politely and ignored him, as we were still figuring out drinks and the view.  Then we opened it, and  - ta da - it contained smoked salmon that was still smoking on tiny embers of cedar and other aromatic woods!  O.K, so I can just see the expressions on the faces of some of my foodie friends - that's not that impressive, right?  But follow it up with a basket of leaves and "dirt" (not real dirt, roasted barley that looked like the earth hadn't been shaken off the locally foraged herbs and leaves), or the brown butter toast with edible flowers, and the kale with truffles...and you can begin to see how the experience was  both cumulative and genuinely original.  In fact, when we finally got to the first course mentioned on the menu, it would have been an anticlimax (no surprises now) - except that it, too, was delicious.

We sat happily marveling at the privilege of it all, and contemplating our future (more likely to be filled with trips to Applebee's than fancy restaurants) and felt ever so slightly smug to be "in" on a place that has become a destination restaurant despite its somewhat remote location.  So strong is its pull that the Times has anointed it again in today's piece on Seattle - even though it is about 2 hours away.

I could bore you with the walks along the beach, and the bike ride round the island - or the pretty cool meals we enjoyed in Vancouver, but I'm not sure that y'all have the appetite for that.  So I'll conclude with a picture from Lynn Canyon park, about 20 minutes outside of Canada's overpriced western hub.  Most people who travel to Vancouver visit Capilano suspension bridge, which costs an outrageous $35 per person to enjoy.  We skipped that in favor of the free, ignored-by-tourists Lynn Canyon suspension bridge.  This picture is a favorite from the trip, because of the easy analogy with our lives right now.  We're caught up in the waiting - suspended between the end of our free-wheeling, white water rafting, fancy restaurant present, and the unknowable future adventure of parenting.