How a Seattle chef misplaced her James Beard Award-winning restaurant however got here out hopeful after an unreal pandemic yr

A year ago, chef Maria Hines had run her James Beard Award-winning Tilth Seattle restaurant for nearly a decade and a half. Located in a charming Wallingford Craftsman, Tilth was only the second certified organic restaurant in the country when it premiered. Hines’ cooking in Tilth’s small kitchen supported the work of local farmers, fishermen, collectors, and more, while both local and national critics applauded as their ethos helped define a new era of high-end Pacific Northwest cuisine. Happy regulars and celebrants felt – and tasted – the alchemy going on, clinking innumerable glasses, while the evenings stretched deliciously in Tilth’s butter-colored walls. Hines opened two more places along the way, but after the sad shutdown of one and the sale of the other, she spoke openly of the difficulties running restaurants as Seattle grew, of increasing competition and skyrocketing costs. Tilth would hold on to it, however – as she said in the 2019 Before Times, “It’s my baby.”

MORE ABOUT CHEF MARIA HINES AND TILTH

On March 15, 2020, Tilth’s dining room fell silent. With Washington state on lockdown to contain COVID-19 cases, indoor dining service has been suspended. Hines – who agreed to the public health measures in place at the time and has since said “100% that had to happen, and indeed it should have been more aggressive” – ​​took the “heartbreaking” move, all but three of their 17-person team. The four who stayed tried to refresh the tilth menu for upscale family meals like salmon en papillote at home with fingerling potatoes, citrus fruits, fennel and herb butter. Hines says their sales dropped immediately and dramatically. She and the skeleton crew worked without heat to save money. “We wore jackets and hats,” she recalls. “It was cold in there!”

Hines’ very first cookbook, Peak Nutrition: Smart Fuel for Outdoor Adventure, was published on April 8th last year and represented a dreamy culmination of her external interests and culinary know-how. But the circumstances of the pandemic left little room for celebration. Amid financial stress that book licenses could not cope with, Hines used her non-existent free time to grapple through paperwork for a government paycheck protection program loan. The money was finally there at the end of April. It felt like a lifeline – at least for a while.

As spring turned into summer, Hines tried everything she could to keep Tilth going. The stress only increased. She recalls thinking, “’I can’t lose this restaurant. That is my life!’ … This is how I felt when I woke up and I went to bed and had the same fear – constant fear. “She felt a deep sense of responsibility towards those Tilth supported – the rest of the crew, the local vendors she bought food from, who were also under great financial hardship. What had felt like a community growing together for more than a decade, celebrating land, water and seasons, had a new, stark reality. “Essentially, you’re helping them have a roof over their head and a bed …” Hines realized. “And you are like [expletive] – that will all be gone. ”

In an ongoing process of “constant problem-solving”, she reduced the to-go menu: out with the salmon en papillote, in with pandemic comfort foods such as ribs, enchiladas, mac and cheese. She offered Tilth commercial items for sale: homemade granola, butter, flavored pecans. Online cooking classes using ingredient kits proved unsustainably time consuming. Specials on wine only brought so much. Hines also remained committed to the community as a whole: there was rainbow sorbet for Pride, profit donations to Black Lives Matter, collections for Mary’s Place. When she thought it made sense, Hines reopened Tilth in early July for in-house food, which was allowed with a capacity of 50%, with empty tables with “Reserved for Social Distancing” cards. But even with a pretty, summery terrace, the little house called Tilth couldn’t have enough space to pay the bills.

As autumn set in, the measures Hines took to keep her beloved Tilth afloat became desperate. She stopped paying herself. Then she started topping up her retirement plan to pay the restaurant bills. Sales were down 70% from the days before the pandemic. “There’s not much you can do if you don’t have a big terrace and a big restaurant, so you can only have that many people in there,” she said then. But with the number of COVID-19 cases still rising and rising, the safety of their employees and guests had priority over everything else. “Even though it destroyed my business, people’s lives are at risk,” she said. Since her PPP loan expired in mid-October, Hines calculated that it would cost $ 1,500 a month if left open.

Tilth Hines is closed forever on October 30th. “The support for independent restaurants comes too little, too late,” she said at the time. She talked about wanting to be there “for everyone in their mourning for the restaurant” and also about what still needs to be done. “Nobody tells you how much to do to close a restaurant,” she remarked. “It’s about as much work as opening one.” Then the James Beard Award winner went into unemployment. Her wife was able to switch her music lessons to Zoom, but lost half of her nanny jobs due to COVID-19. In the supermarket story, Hines did math when she put food in her shopping cart and sometimes thought, “Yeah, okay, I can’t buy this.” She took time for what she called “a silence” – her own grief over the end of Tilth and an era in her life – but she also spoke of a surge of support and said she felt “in Love wrapped ”. Compared to the losses of others during the pandemic, she described the loss of her restaurant as “downright trivial”. And she managed to inspire hope, for herself and others like her who were facing financial devastation.

“These independent small craft businesses that we start – they are a reflection of ourselves,” she noted. “It’s our creativity, our hearts and souls that we put into every project, so it’s important that we remember that all of this is still alive in us.” She said she still had faith in the community , in yourself and in the universe.

In November, Hines started sending out a newsletter and took to Instagram with a suggested restaurant of the week to take away to help support others in the Seattle industry. She started sharing recipes to improve home life during the pandemic. She presented a 30-day wellness challenge full of positivity and humor – an “EMBRACE FAILURE” video showed how she laughed and got stuck in a culvert on cross-country skis. (“Get down and get up again!” She wrote.)

To Hine’s great relief and gratitude, the new year brought new hope with new projects. Eddie Bauer approached her about a partnership. A business owner sought advice on a juice startup. A plan to sell organic energy bars has been embarked on. More collaborations with local community and environmental companies – including Brandi Carliles Winery XOBC Cellars – are developing, and she has her own irons in the fire too. Hines also felt she could publicly advocate decriminalization of psilocybin – the psychoactive compound in “magic mushrooms” – and more plant medicine through Decrim Nature Seattle. Where three different drugs have failed, she said, microdosing has provided “a great deal of relief from my suffering related to anxiety and depression.” She and her wife are hoping to move their pandemic pup, Hank, to their Mazama cabin all day this spring. He has just turned 1 year old.

Bethany Jean Clement
is a food writer for the Seattle Times: bclement@seattletimes.com; facebook.com/bethany.jean.clement; on Instagram @bethanyjeanclement; on Twitter @BJeanClement.