Chef Spotlight
Fine Dining and Wine Dining Jamie Guerin’s upscale take on Walla Walla
JAMIE GUERIN WANDERED into the kitchen life. It was just a job that helped him get by while earning his economics degree. He started at the bottom and as he worked his way up, he decided a life running the burners was preferable to a life in academia. Eventually, he wandered west, to Seattle, and worked as a sous chef at Campagne, a fine-dining restaurant in Pike Place Market that has since shuttered. It was at Campagne that a friend in the industry first told him about Sonia and Carl Schmitt, a retired couple from the Bay Area who wanted to open a restaurant in the heart of Washington’s wine country. She told Guerin it would be perfect for him. “I’d never even been to Eastern Washington,” he recalled. “I told her, ‘Are you crazy? I’m not moving to Walla Walla, Washington!’” She wasn’t, and he did, once he realized that although the Schmitts were novice restaurateurs-to-be, they had built out a thoroughly modern kitchen to be housed in a remodeled mill they had saved from demolition. Their restaurant, The Whitehouse-Crawford, would be one of Walla Walla’s first fine-dining restaurants, right down to the white tablecloths. It also maintained some of Eastern Washington’s rugged street cred: About 80 percent of the restaurant’s vegetables are sourced from farms in a 5-mile radius of the restaurant. Guerin said it would’ve been crazy to say no. The Schmitts let him run the kitchen. They made him a partner. And the restaurant made a splash, drawing wine luminaries and tourists to its farm-to-fork meals.
Sarah Koenigsberg
WRITTEN BY CHAD WALSH
Not much has changed with WHC’s mission, but a lot has changed with Guerin. The Schmitts have passed away, and two years ago he bought Walla Walla’s Brasserie Four from his friend and fellow chef, Hannah McDonald. That leaves him little time outside of doing the books and welcoming diners. But Guerin dreams of getting back to the burners. “What I love is when locals who don’t normally eat at restaurants like this come into The Whitehouse-Crawford for a special occasion,” he said. “The most satisfying thing is to help make memorable nights for them. We get a lot of wine people in here, but it’s as much or more fun to serve people who don’t get a chance to do this very often.”
“What I love is when locals who don’t normally eat at restaurants like this come into The Whitehouse-Crawford for a special occasion. The most satisfying thing is to help make memorable nights for them.” — Jamie Guerin www.ontrakmag.com
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