Allium to Open at Christina’s in Eastsound

Lisa Nakamura (center) spruces up Christina's restaurant in preparation to open "Alliium." She is helped by her sister Jan and her niece Zoe.

World-renowned Chef brings Family Atmosphere to Landmark Restaurant

Lisa Nakamura is on Orcas Island full-time now, and with her family is painting walls, scrubbing floors and preparing to open “Allium,” Orcas Island’s newest restaurant, within the next few weeks.

She comes to Orcas Island from a position as Head Chef at the esteemed Herb Farm restaurant in Woodinville, famous for its 9-course dinners. But Lisa emphasizes that Allium will be a family restaurant for the Orcas community too. “This restaurant is not about being fancy or ‘cutting edge.’ As you see, it’s a family affair and will be for the family of community.”

It will be open six days a week (closed Tuesdays) in the summer, and in the winter months it will continue to be open four days a week.

“I’d like this to be a neighborhood restaurant; part of the Eastsound scene – not a fancy, gussied-up affair, but just like someone’s house where you’d have a good dinner and conversation.”

Allium is the Latin name for the lily family, which includes onions and their allies. For Nakamura, the onion is fundamental to cooking, providing the base for multi-faceted flavors and dimension.

The dining room will have a warm and casual ambiance. The menu will change frequently, to keep in stride with the growing season while concentrating on the bounty of simple, fresh Pacific Northwest flavors. Allium’s menu is “designed to be fluid and changeable,” says Nakamura. She plans to work with as many local farmers as possible. She delights in the idea that there are local resources that are not known or available to larger restaurants, like saffron in Sequim or green tea from Skagit Valley.

She also enjoys the challenge of serving the produce thatchanges seasonally. “It’s either all at once or nothing, but you can be more adaptable and flexible on the smaller side, more concentrated on quality produce,” she says. Although we’re accustomed to thinking of only four seasons, Nakamura says in reality there are 8, 10 or even 12 seasons of produce harvesting. “The beginning of the season is not like the end of it, so you adapt.”

The "official" Lisa Nakamura

She recalls her Herb Farm experience as taking the concept of “Local Foods” to a higher level. “I had the opportunity to do things as a cook that one rarely experiences, like reef-net fishing, making cheese, brewing mead or slaughtering chickens and ducks.”

With over 15 years in the culinary and restaurant business, Nakamura only heard that Christina’s was for sale in April – through the grapevine from Nick Jones of Jones Family Farm on Lopez. She was ready to take over a restaurant, and with Christina’s high-profile “destination dining” reputation, she was eager to seize the opportunity, even though she’d never been to Orcas Island before.

Lisa says of the lickety-split developments leading to Allium’s opening around Memorial Day that, with the kitchen and structure already in place, there’s no reason not to take advantage of the beginnings of Orcas’ tourist season. “It’s not like any other restaurant opening, but it’s a small restaurant and a lot of the pieces needed are already here; there’s not the groundwork needed for a new restaurant.”

Although she’s opened for “great restaurants” before (and seen things go “really well and really wrong”), this is the first time she’ll be owner-operator of her own restaurant. “Everything in my career has been preparing me for this,” Lisa says.

She plans to offer great food at affordable prices at a place that make people feel welcome. The fine dining market seems really risky, Nakamura says, but “people are still going out to eat – just not to really expensive places. There’s never been a better time to own a restaurant – if you’re smart about it, you can do it well.”

Now she lives in Eastsound, and says her short “commute” to Allium “makes up for all the years commuting.”

Through extensive travel, Nakamura honed her skills as a Chef in Seoul, Munich and Paris. She is the former Chef de Cuisine of The Herbfarm and Sous Chef at the French Laundry. After graduating with the highest honors from LAcademie de Cuisine, Nakamura was Executive Chef of the Woodmark Hotel in Kirkland. Before settling in Puget Sound, Nakamura was the Chef de Cuisine at Pebble Beach Club in California and Executive Chef at The Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, where even in Hurricane Katrina’s wake, she stayed and served her local community.

She’s been in the restaurant business long enough to know that that “days are long by nature….it’s not just cooking; that can be almost auto-pilot. But it’s the running of the business that will take up more time.” She does need kitchen staff to keep to the schedule of serving lunch and dinners and brunch on the weekends.

Nakamura considers herself to be very fortunate to “be given the opportunity here. The public is so welcoming, people look at you and there’s great good will.

“And it’s a huge honor to take over from Christina, that she would entrust be with her baby. I want to do it right.”

Christinas Restaurant was formerly owned by Chef Christina Orchid and her husband Bruce, spanning a successful 28-year run. Christina was an early trailblazer in the locavore movement, and is also the author of Christinas Cookbook.

Allium will retain the phone number for Christina’s Restaurant: 360.376.4904