We recently spent a week visiting a relative living on Whidbey Island in Washington. While all of our previous trips to Whidbey Island usually included day trips around the island with Uncle and Auntie, this time was a little different as Auntie had a major health scare, then subsequent fall, so she’s currently undergoing physical therapy in a nursing facility. Therefore, Uncle spent most of his time with Auntie, leaving the house before the sun rose until evening when we spent time with him. As we left, we reminded him that along with taking care of Auntie, he also needed to remember to take care of himself. Because my previous columns focused on gifts for friends or loved ones, you also need to gift yourself.
Road (Air) Trip Anyone? From Seattle?
A flight that’s just under two hours north from San Francisco will take you to the Evergreen State, home of Boeing, Amazon, Costco, the Washington Huskies and Whidbey Island. Whidbey Island is just a one hour drive north of SEATAC airport then another 20 minute commute via ferry from Mukilteo to Clinton. It’s a long — about 55 miles — narrow island stretching from the southern ferry landing in Clinton all the way up north to the bridge at Deception Pass that reconnects Whidbey back to mainland Washington. Because most of our recent trips to Washington include a brief layover at SFO, the SFO to SEATAC flight reminded me of taking a staycation from O‘ahu to Moku o Keawe (the Big Island or Hawai‘i island) since the flight time is only about an hour longer. So I thought, all of you Bay Area residents can gift yourself a short trip to Whidbey Island like the way O‘ahu residents fly to the neighbor islands for a brief respite…
Langley
Just a short drive from the Clinton ferry landing lies Langley, which reminds me of Sausalito with ocean views and many small shops and restaurants. The Ott & Hunter Tasting room is right on the waterfront and offers daily wine tasting for $20, except Tuesdays when they’re closed. They waive the tasting fee with the purchase of a bottle. There’s also the Village Wine shop several blocks away that hosts daily wine tastings (closed on Mondays and Tuesdays).
One shop we always visit when visiting Langley is The Star Store, which is part boutique clothing store, part kitchen supply store, part gourmet wine shop and part grocery store, including pre-packed deli foods. The Feltons who own The Star Store also have a two bedroom, two bath apartment available for rentals through Airbnb.
Also above The Star Store is our favorite Langley restaurant, Prima Bistro, which we’ve been visiting since 2010. Serving classic French bistro foods like steak frites, duck confit with lentil du puy (French green lentils), tartare de boeuf (beef tartare) and Croque monsieur (ham and Gruyere cheese sandwich covered in sauce bechamel) and madame (the monsieur topped with a sunny side egg), wines are served by the glass, bottle or pichet (14 oz) when you want more than a glass but a full bottle is too much. They are one of the few restaurants that offer panisses or southern French chickpea fries — crisp and light on the outside and tender within served with a curried mayonnaise.
Another rare menu selection is pan-fried veal sweetbreads served with an apricot thyme gastrique or reduced vinegar sauce to cut through the rich sweetbreads. And during our trip, I sampled the db.l.t or house cured Moulard duck bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and fries with duck fat mayonnaise — the duck fat mayonnaise didn’t have a pronounced duck flavor but gave the mayonnaise a consistency between aioli and whipped butter and just as luscious as both combined! Prima Bistro’s cocktail menu is also very eclectic and credits the team member that created the libation. They also offer a daily “Cocktail for a Cause,” donating $2 from each cocktail sold to a local charity.
We also found a store that sells artisanal craft from sustainable materials purchased directly from the artists who created it at Artisan Crafted Home. They originally started as an online business in 2003 then eventually expanded to a brick-and-mortar in 2015 offering customers a chance to touch and feel what they see online. Ms. S purchased quite a few items that will see their way into friends’ and family’s stockings this Christmas.
Coupeville
Located just South of Penn Cove (where Penn Cove mussels are harvested), Coupeville is almost like the fictional community of Mayberry (anyone remember “The Andy Griffith Show”?), with only about 2,000 residents in the city. You’re just as likely to run into one of the many Columbian black tailed deer lounging on residents’ lawns as you are to see townspeople. For a small town, its wine tasting room, Vail Wine Shop & Tasting Room, features many locally produced wines as well as wines from Oregon.
They also have a one bedroom, one bath vacation rental located above the wine shop, which sits right on the waterfront.
One of our mandatory stops (usually multiple stops) for wine-related provisions is Bayleaf, which just celebrated 25 years in business. They carry a large selection of wines from the Pacific Northwest as well as France and Italy and have a large selection of cheeses, dried pasta and pasta sauces as well as salami, crackers and other wine snacks. They host several large wine tastings throughout the year (we just missed the fall event by two weeks) and hold wine education glasses.
And for a small town, Coupeville has its fair share of restaurants — we normally stop at Toby’s Tavern, a local hangout for townspeople, but I always need my fix of their own microbrew, Toby’s Parrot Red Ale, with a bowl of steamed Penn Cove mussels or fish and chips.
This past trip, we finally tried the Front Street Grill right on the waterfront. With a nice cocktail menu (that also acknowledges the creator), a nice selection of wines by the glass and eight different preparations for the local Penn Cove mussels, including this year’s winner of the Mussel Madness Competition, we actually dined here twice just to sample a cocktail or entrée that also looked good during our initial visit. The highlight, however, was the French fries. Lightly dusted with either cornstarch or rice flour, it gave the fries an extra dimension of crispiness that lasted throughout the whole meal (Ms. S keep reaching across the table for my fries).
And thank goodness that the Little Red Hen bakery reopened in a new location. During our previous trip in 2021, the bakery closed and was replaced by a Mexican restaurant. But they simply reopened several blocks away with classic sweets such as croissants, scones, pies and breads plus a nice selection of large cookies, Kouign Amann, Basque cheesecake and candied bacon. Yes! You can satisfy your sweet tooth AND get your salty, sweet fix with candied bacon!
Another mandatory stop is at Jan McGregor Studios, which has everything Japan from tansu to formal kimono to yukata to jewelry and more. Ms. S always finds several items to gift during the holidays, and I always find something for me (this year it was a driver’s cap made with kimono material). If shipping bulky items to the 50th weren’t such a bear, we’d probably leave Whidbey Island with several tansu in tow…
So this year, along with gifting family and friends during the holidays, also think about gifting yourself. After all, you deserve it!
Ryan Tatsumoto is a graduate of both the University of Hawai‘i and UC San Francisco. He is a recently retired clinical pharmacist and a budding chef/recipe developer/wine taster. He writes from Kane’ohe, HI and can be reached at gochisogourmet@gmail.com. The views expressed in the preceding column are not necessarily those of the Nichi Bei News.
The Gochiso Gourmet is a column on food, wine and healthy eating. Ryan Tatsumoto is a graduate of both the University of Hawai‘i and UC San Francisco. He is a recently retired clinical pharmacist and a budding chef/recipe developer/wine taster. He writes from Kane’ohe, HI and can be reached at gochisogourmet@gmail.com. The views expressed in the preceding column are not necessarily those of the Nichi Bei News.
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