Starting this month, islanders have two new dining options on Vashon, with both establishments offering extended hours and open on Mondays and Tuesdays when many other eateries in town are closed.
Vashon Community Pub and Smokehouse
Michaella Olavarri, already well-known to islanders for her baked goods and other take-out menu items at Mica’s Kitchen, has purchased Vashon Community Pub and Brewing from its owner and founder, Cliff Goodman, who announced his impending retirement last fall.
Mica’s Kitchen has now closed, although Olavarri will continue to do some baking out of her former workplace, for the time being.
She has named her new restaurant — which offers both indoor and outdoor seating on its expansive grounds in Vashon Village — Vashon Community Pub and Smokehouse, reflecting both Goodman’s original vision for the place as a community gathering spot, and her own passion for cooking classic Southern comfort food.
Starting Friday, Jan. 13, the restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week — joining only a handful of other spots in town — Anu Rana’s Healthy Kitchen, Casa Bonita, Camp Colvos, Sporty’s, O Sole Mio Pizzaria, Cafe Luna, and Caffe Vin Olio — that don’t shut down for at least one or two days a week, though hours vary at these establishments.
What’s on the menu? Get ready for comfort food, starting with breakfast — farm eggs served up in grand slam plates, burritos and omelets, and biscuits blanketed in gravy.
Lunch will include an array of salads as well as Po’ Boy, Cubano, deli-style and grilled sandwiches, served on bread made from scratch daily.
The dinner menu will feature baby back ribs, hot links and chicken platters, with an option for classic side dishes including collard greens, mac and cheese, baked beans, potato salad, and red beans — plus buttermilk biscuits or cornbread.
Olavarri also plans to offer pot pies, brunch on the weekends, tapas nights, and surf-and-turf meals on Friday — as well as keep the pub’s tradition of open mics, game nights and other community events alive.
But most of all, Olavarri said she is looking forward to making her restaurant a great place to eat.
“I have the best ribs on the island,” she said. “There are those who know me for my baking, but I think my strength is in my savory food.”
Even many of the appetizers in Olavarri’s restaurant will be smoked — everything from mushrooms to pickles to smoked cheese dip for pretzels, and fire-roasted jalapenos.
She said she is also excited to offer beer and wine with her food — something she has not been able to do at Mica’s Kitchen. She loves beer, she said, and a favorite pastime for her, over the years, has been visiting regional breweries.
The brews served at her new restaurant will come from notable breweries in the Pacific Northwest, and she’ll also give diners the chance to pair her food with local wines and ciders.
For Goodman, a local brewer who opened the pub in 2018, Olavarri seemed the perfect buyer for his restaurant — keeping much of the pub’s casual charm intact while enhancing its cuisine.
“She gets to take the food to a whole new level,” he said.
Sauced, at Gravy
With little fanfare but a whole lot of umami, a new Italian restaurant, Sauced, open last week in downtown Vashon, serving both dine-in customers and offering takeout from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. six days a week, and only closed on Wednesdays.
The only hitch? Sauced is a pop-up, cash-only restaurant, which will only be open through the end of February.
The eatery is the creation of Chef Jacob Wiegner, an islander and talented chef best known on Vashon, perhaps, for his acclaimed West Seattle restaurant, Blackboard Bistro, which closed in 2017.
His business partner, islander Andy Hennessey, is also a veteran of the restaurant business and is the face that customers see when they first enter the restaurant.
The pop-up — housed in the restaurant, Gravy, while Gravy’s owners, Dre Neeley and Pepa Brower, take a vacation — has already developed a word-of-mouth following for its menu of house-made, hand-rolled pastas, with sauces that change according to the chef’s inspiration.
On the night a reporter visited, the menu included two different gnocchi dishes, two creamy lasagnas, marinara pappardelle with basil, Italian sausage, fennel and peppers pappardelle, pork cheeks in creamy garlic sauce, over polenta, and other wonders.
Starter dishes included crispy lobster mushroom arancini, with garlic mayo, truffle marinated burrata, winter bean bruschetta, a caesar salad made from island greens, and more.
Sandwich offerings included a pork meatball sub and an eggplant sub.
For dessert, Sauced offers choices of cannoli and other handmade Italian confections. The wine and beer menu is strictly Italian, too — San Pellegrino water and soda, Peroni beer, and two choices each for red and white Italian wines.
Customers can take out food, or dine in, with meals served casually on paper plates and containers.
“There are only two of us here,” said Hennessey. “We don’t have time to wash dishes.”
Correction: A previous version of this article omitted naming several establishments that offer food seven days a week on Vashon. The correct list of these is now incorporated in the article. The spots that were omitted included Anu Rana’s Healthy Kitchen, Casa Bonita, Camp Colvos, Caffe Vin Olio, Cafe Luna. We strive for accuracy and regret the error.
