Found Treasure: Norbu’s on Orcas Island

October 28, 2022 – More than 1,000 miles from the Monterey Bay—on a remote island in the Salish Sea, not far from the Canadian border, tucked next to a ferry port surrounded by temperate rainforest—sits The Most Interesting Restaurant in the World. 

Norbu’s opened recently, after months (and months) of anticipation, planning and COVID delays, with major Monterey-area players laying its foundation. 

Its interesting elements run rampant, starting fast with the first things we had: a cherrywood-smoked Old-Fashioned with Japanese Toki Whisky and a rock crab dip splashed with rum. 

They are infused and set ablaze on the table, respectively. Fire for the eye and for the taste buds.

The fact that Norbu’s throws down a Hawaii-inspired menu doesn’t seem all that logical at first, but adds to the intrigue. 

Both chef Quinn Thompson and Orcas Hotel co-owner John Cox, himself a celebrated chef (and occasional Ediblecontributor), have lived for extended stints in Hawaii and fell in love with the food. On top of that, the San Juan Islands historically enjoyed a strong connection with their sea-faring cousins across the Pacific.

The food is thought-provoking, the kind of fresh, light and inventive fare I could eat several times a week—and did while on island, partly because there’s nothing approaching it for several area codes.

I also tried foraged seaweed salads in sesame vinaigrette; white miso soup with local mushrooms and charred scallions; a salt-cured lomi lomi-style salmon poke with avocado and pickled ferns; tender Hawaiian butterfish slow-cooked in lemongrass, lime leaves and ginger; a “Dakine” roll with yuzu crab and pickled green mango; and a vegetarian “loco moco” featuring a taro patty smoked over alderwood and topped with a local farm egg and mushroom gravy. 

Then there was my favorite taste of the sequence: a “SPAM” musubi made with wild boar paté and toasted nori. 

It serves as a functional metaphor for the whole endeavor, simultaneously playful, familiar, creative, comforting and, yes, interesting AF. 

The dish and wider eating experience evoke something Thompson told me way back when I was living in the haunted hotel for two months in 2020 as its first writer-in-residence, while helping paint the restaurant space, and navigating other duties.

“I want…something few and far between, not one of those fine dining places copying one another,” he said, “but one that [communicates,] ‘This is what we do here and what we’re proud of and you can’t find anywhere else.’” 

So that’s interesting enough. But perhaps the most compelling thing about the restaurant—which happens to be booked while a number of nerby eateries are up for sale—is that it’s staffed by apprentices. 

In order to have a sustainable work force in a distant and expensive place, a bunch of things have to happen to recruit them in the first place: Cox and his wife/co-owner Julia Felder provide below-market housing (their house, a converted hostel, is surrounded by tiny homes, and they continue to acquire more housing, while some staff stay at the hotel). They entice them with family meals, training in everything from bookkeeping to housekeeping to innkeeping, and stirring descriptions of the island itself. Then the co-owners have to sift through hundreds of apprentice applications. 

But then there’s a most difficult demand left: Somebody’s got to convert them into functioning cooks willing and able to pull off, say banana leaf-wrapped Kahlua pork and kelp-cured snapper sashimi, within a few minutes, while sharing a 120-year-old kitchen with the staff of the bustling cafe, without losing their cool. 

“It can be challenging,” Thompson says. “You really get to enjoy their company, and then when they start to get really good, it’s time for them to leave.”

That’s another element that makes Norbu’s interesting. So much has to go right. So much can go wrong. But it’s actually working.

Thompson is very much a Big Sur soul and a Hawaii devotee at the same time. But now his attention is consumed by making Norbu’s—titled after his middle name—as good as it can be. 

When I texted a question about his recent discoveries around the San Juans, he replied with on-brand candor and quirk. 

“I’m the pressure that pushes on the carbon, wanting a diamond,” he wrote. “I don’t want to do anything else until this shines.”

Even when he did take a rare off-island voyage to visit his mom in Salinas, his focus remained on Norbu’s. The two of us caravanned south with beverage chief Kyle Odell, a Monterey native. 

When I asked if they wanted to check out the decks of the ferry we rode to the mainland, they demurred. Instead they stayed in Thompson’s car to discuss how Odell’s new drink menu would dovetail with the latest seasonal foodstuffs.

“Being able to work so closely with Quinn has been inspiring in a lot of ways,” Odell says. “We’ve shared time and space together in many kitchens, and I trust his palate and skill set, and it’s mutual—we’re lucky to have a great synergy [wherein] we can bounce things off each other and organize ideas in a way that comes together nicely for an experience in the restaurant specifically and at the hotel broadly.” 

Odell’s drinks, BTW, merit attention too. The alum of such spots as Carmel Belle, Casanova and Cultura does his own artistic dance on the palate and planet of possibilities.

Two compelling cases in point: a cucumber-cooled Thai basil gimlet with Gray Whale Gin and the Norbu’s Sunburn with hibiscus, lime, bourbon and watermelon juice. (He also curates a brief and thoughtful sake lineup.)

“I seek out more tropical flavors to complement what Norbu’s is doing—bright, refreshing, satisfying, flavors that aren’t found around the island,” he says.

He directs that while working as host, busser, server and general support for the apprentice mafia. 

“I have to be conscious that I’m not always going to be behind the bar and whoever is won’t be a trained bartender,” he says, “In that context the drink program led me to a lot of good batch recipes that have worked out better, in terms of balance and quality, than I would’ve hoped.”

A final reason I find Norbu’s to be The Most Interesting Restaurant in the World is big fat personal bias. 

During peak COVID, as I watched from my spot at the dish pit cleaning the cafe’s plates, I saw a small and scrappy mashup of professional cooks and neophytes forge bonds by doing an insane amount of burger and fish ‘n’ chips to go with ambitious daily specials. 

That would be an accomplishment at a restaurant with a steady and time-tested staff, let alone with a team this small, fleeting and remotely located. 

I got to see what makes an eatery great—identity and enthusiasm, dedication and execution—from the other side of the kitchen door.

My bias also hails from an affection for the hotel and the island proper. I know I can count on Thompson, Odell, Cox, Felder and company to invest in their craft with abandon. I know the island will provide special inspiration—as I wrote in 2021, Orcas is “a pinch yourself kind of place”—without knowing from which direction it will come. 

One of the last nights I was there, an apprentice named Sofia Poe spontaneously dared me to splash in the Salish Sea beneath a waning midnight moon. 

She also encouraged me to check out the bioluminescent plankton swimming around us. 

I had no idea Orcas deploys that magic too, but thought, Wait, of course it does. 

I swung my arms through the offshore waters at North Beach. They exploded with light, brilliant, ever-changing and alive. 

It was a most interesting thing to behold. 

Much like Norbu’s.

More at The Orcas Hotel website, Instagram page, and via Edible’s previous spotlight on the project.