Recognition & Press

The Herbfarm Restaurant in Woodinville Keeps Setting Standards

Leslie Forsberg AAA.com  

As we entered The Herbfarm via its unassuming front door, Brian and I were welcomed with a glass of sparkling ros� and a crackling fire in a vintage, sea-themed fireplace. Glasses in hand, we were invited to peruse the chef's 1,000-book library loft or check out the restaurant's highly acclaimed wine cellar before dinner. It was clear we were in for a far-from-ordinary dinner. At The Herbfarm, the Woodinville restaurant whose extravagant dinners are legendary, that would be an understatement.        READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE        Link to full article

Best Meals Testify to an Odd Year

Jery 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        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.        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 legendary for is nine-course, five-wine themed ($149-$179 per person before tax and tip) and tough-to-snare reservations.

Young Woodinville Chef Makes 'Impractical' Food From the Northwest's Bounty

Amy Pennington Seattle Magazine  

"You get one shot," says Chris Weber, executive chef at The Herbfarm (Woodinville, 14590 NE 145th St.), about the uncompromising seasonality of the ingredients used for the menu at this legendary 31-year-old, farm-to-table restaurant on the Eastside. An East Coast transplant, Weber has long admired nature�s bounty in the Pacific Northwest. �The seasonality and ingredients and getting to revisit them every year is incredible.�        READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE        Link to full article

The Herbfarm's Ultra-local Collaboration

Andy Perdue The Seattle Times  

PERHAPS NO OTHER restaurant in the Pacific Northwest embraces Northwest cuisine like The Herbfarm in Woodinville. Legendary nine-course meals perfectly paired with regional wines make this a culinary experience everyone should enjoy at least once.

The hallmark of The Herbfarm is its dedication to fresh, local ingredients that come with a story. Proprietors Ron Zimmerman and Carrie Van Dyck were farm-to-fork before it was trendy.        READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE        Link to full article

How to Pair Basil with Wine

Nils Bernstein Wine Enthusiast  

Nothing screams �August farmers� market� like the spicy-sweet scent of fresh basil. The name comes from the Greek basilik�n, meaning �royal,� and, indeed, it�s often referred to as the royal herb or king of herbs. Basil is a member of the mint family and a good replacement in juleps and smashes. And stop arguing: Both BAYZ-uhl and BAZ-uhl are accepted pronunciations.

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Tips From a Townie on What to Do in the Real Twin Peaks

Hannah Kirshner Vogue  

Make a reservation at The Herbfarm, where the restaurant has served award-winning food from its own garden for 30 years. Link to full article

The Best Farm-to-Table Restaurant in Every State

Food & Wine  

Washington: The Herbfarm

After wine tasting in Woodinville, the next stop is a five-hour dinner at The Herbfarm, the pinnacle of farm-to-table dining in Washington. Just 30 minutes from Seattle, the meal begins with a garden tour and meet-and-greet with Basil and Borage, the property's pet pigs. The nine-course exploration of Pacific Northwest cuisine is reliant on the season's daily changing offerings sourced primarily from the restaurant's own garden and farm, and the menu is often finalized only shortly before being presented. Food themes range from Truffle Treasure to Super Cattle in Seattle to Salmon Nation, but the quality and ingenuity is a constant. Expect dishes like Boletus and Dungeness Crab Handkerchiefs, Lummi Island Reefnetted Sockeye, Muscat-Poached Peaches, and rare items such as water-grown wasabi root and artisanal caviars.
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A Carnivore's Idea of Heaven

Nicholas O'Connell iSante  

The Herbfarm located in Woodinville, Washington is world-renowned for its fresh organic produce and pungent herbs, but carnivores take notice: it serves up some of the tastiest, most imaginatively prepared beef around.

On a recent visit, my wife Lisa and I experienced the wonders of the "Super Cattle in Seattle: An Exploration of Bovines" menu. This is one of the restaurant's rotating repertories of inspired seasonal menus.        READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE        Link to full article

The 10 Best of Everything

Nathaniel Lande & Andrew Lande National Geographic Society  

Destination Restaurants
#1 of 10
The Herbfarm

Each evening The Herbfarm offers a nine-course meal, served with matching wines to suit the courses. The Herbfarm's commitment to excellence shows in each finely crafted dish, displaying to perfection the best ingredients that the Pacific Northwest has to offer. Local growers and suppliers keep The Herbfarm stocked with both common and unusual produce --wild mushrooms, heritage fruits, handmade cheeses, and fresh-caught fish, to name a few. Each night's menu is a new creation that draws inspiration from the season.

A Place to Root for: The Herbfarm

Hsiao-Ching Chou Seattle Post-Intelligence  

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       

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       

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.        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 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."

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