Recognition & Press

See a complete list of reviews, or read the summaries below.

A Chef Creates Culinary Alchemy in His Exotic Garden

Molly O‘Neill The New York Times

Jerry Traunfeld learned to cook in the 70‘s, when the superego of science had eclipsed art in the American kitchen. Back then, recipes were king, with their exact measurements holding cruel reign over the cooking instinct and tyrannizing culinary experimentation. “My mother kept all her powders and flakes in jars that were alphabetically arranged,” the 40-year-old winner of this year's James Beard Award for best chef in the Northwest recalls disdainfully, “and taught me to use them with the precision of a chemist — as if precision equals alchemy.” READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

A Cook's Eden

Ted Katauskas Food & Wine  

At the Herbfarm restaurant in Washington State, two innovators have transformed over 600 edible plants into a brilliant herb cuisine. These eight recipes show how it's done.

The-co-owner and mastermind behind The Herbfarm Restaurant, the most elusive reservation in the Pacific Northwest, knew enough to alert the telephone company before he began taking calls in April for his first seating in more than two years. Once, when he announced a call for reservations, more than a 100,000 Hebfarm devotees jammed North Seattle's lines in a matter of minutes, overloading circuits and triggering the telecommunications brownout. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

A Place to Root for: The Herbfarm

Hsiao-Ching Chou Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Since The Herbfarm burned to the ground in Fall City four years ago, Jerry Traunfeld has been waiting for the day he could hang his apron in a kitchen to call home again. For the past two years, The Herbfarm has opeated out of Hedges Cellars winery in Issaquah. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

A Weekend in Woodinville

Karl Samson Sunset Magazine  

Dinners at the Herbfarm are a celebration of Northwest bounty, with regional wines for accompaniement and fresh herbs flavoring unusual dishes such as nettle soup, salmon with wild ginger sauce, risotto with fiddleheads and morels, and Douglas fir sorbet (which is made with a syrup flavored by fir needles). Call it performance art for the palate.
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Best Meals Testify to an Odd Year

Jerry Shriver USA Today

Heading my top 5 list is a feast I consumed over four hours on a perfect May evening at this highly regarded country inn outside Seattle.

For 16 years, chef Jerry Traunfeld and owners Carrie Van Dyke and Ron Zimmerman have presented nine-course dinners based entirely upon pristine ingredients from the Northwest, including the wines. They supplement the dinners with mid-meal lectures, but the mini-theatrics only enhance the sparkling cuisine. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Eat, Drink and Get Back to Those Roots

Jerry Shriver USA Today

As the prime season for just-picked produce peaks, restaurants built around the fresh-from-the-farm concept naturally take center stage.

But few places with the passion and authority of The Herbfarm, a 16-year-old pillar of Northwest cuisine that has become legendry for is nine-course, five-wine themed ($149-$179 per person before tax and tip) and tough-to-snare reservations. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Nancy in Wonderland

Nancy Leson The Seattle Times

Dinner at the Herbfarm is not merely dinner: It is an unparalleled dining event. This five hour, nine-course theatrical production stars an incomparable chef/genius aided by a crew of 20, features five splendid northwst wines, a classical guitarist and an audience of culinary enthusiasts willing to spend a small fortune for a meal they won't soon forget.
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Nine Courses, Four Hours

Bryan Miller The New York Times

For most of the last decade the Herbfarm restaurant, in rural Fall City, Wash., was so popular that its reservation line was open only two days a year. If you couldn't get through on those days, your only chance of securing a table was lining up in the event of a rare cancellation.

In 1997 fire destroyed the restaurant and for the most part of the last four years it has operated in a building at the Hedges Cellars winery in nearby Issaquah, about 20 miles east of Seattle. In early May, the owners, Ron Zimmerman and Carrie Van Dyck, moved their kitchen to the nearby town of Woodinville, just northeast of Seattle, on the grounds of the Willows Lodge, a hotel and spa. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

The Best Wine Lists in America

Gerald O'Kennard Restaurant Hospitality   May 2005

The Herbfarm offers an incredible wine list, one of the best we've ever seen. Even the most seasoned wine expert would find new information and obscure wines that they have never tried. And for the neophyte, it's like the map of a wine amusement park — everything looks incredibly fun and inviting. The lesson here is that doing you homework, following your culinary convictions, and being creative, detailed, and informative with your list will captivate and inspire you customer to have some great and unique (maybe even local) bottles of wine with their meal. We wondered, however, if the wine list was so captivating that people would spend the whole evening just reading it! But, a quick look at the Herbfarm's wine sales figures of 30% of the bottom line assured us that a lot of wine was being discovered and sold. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE