BLYN — This elk and berry soup, Melody Johnson told chef Jess Owen, “is to die for.”
“Please don’t. It’s bad for business,” quipped Owen, the creator of hearty fare at the Ocean Crest Resort in Moclips.
“I want to take the whole pot home with me,” added Johnson, who lives in Longview.
There it was: a culinary tourism moment among the many at Wednesday’s Olympic Peninsula Tourism Summit.
Some 140 participants, from Port Townsend to Forks, and elsewhere, looked into the region’s future, and saw that it’s not only scenic, but also delectable.
“Tourism, on a whole, is your best bet for economic development, because tourism leaves a soft footprint,” Johnson, community manager of the International Culinary Tourism Association, told the summit crowd at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Center in Blyn.
Take a motor coach of 30 passengers who come to experience the North Olympic Peninsula, Johnson said.
In just one day and night, those 30 will spend a total of $12,000 on sightseeing and other activities — and they will want to be fortified by food that’s unique to this place.
Discovery by Twilight
Hordes have already discovered the Peninsula, thanks to the Twilight novels set in Forks and Olympic National Park’s natural magnificence, added Diane Schostak, executive director of the Olympic Peninsula Tourism Bureau.
Now she — and the restaurateurs, hoteliers and farmers across the Peninsula — want travelers to also discover the diversity of food and drink here.
So the tourism bureau has established the Olympic Culinary Loop, a map of wining and dining pleasures, farms open for touring and other places to taste what’s known as Olympic Coast cuisine.
The region has always had outstanding food, Schostak said.
“We’re going to nail it down as a product,” as an alluring trait found nowhere else on the planet.
At lunch Wednesday, summit participants partook in an Olympic-size feast of delicacies: coho salmon slow-cooked in the Salish tradition, wild mushroom ravioli made with local whole-wheat pasta, roasted Ozette potatoes with chanterelle mushrooms, a seasonal salad of local greens and a lavender-laced balsamic dressing, steamed clams, rustic bread from Pane D’Amore of Port Townsend and Sequim, and that Roosevelt elk soup.
What it all had in common: locally raised, caught and foraged ingredients.
And what all eaters have in common is a hunger for such real food, from real farms and real fishermen, said Katherine Baril, Washington State University Extension director in Jefferson County.
A steadfast promoter of family farms and other locally owned businesses, she sees success simmering all around her office.
Personal stories
The Peninsula’s small-scale growers, restaurateurs and winemakers, Baril said, appeal to travelers because they have personal stories to tell.
She urged business people to share those stories with visitors, stories that spring from their passion about the particular kind of work they’ve chosen.
“Make people feel connected,” she said. “They may find you on the Internet, but you’ve got to make them feel human,” when they come to see your place.
Branding — advancing a message that sticks in the mind — is also crucial, said Keven Elliff, a Seattle-based marketing consultant.
When he heard that a national magazine called Port Townsend “the Paris of the Pacific Northwest,” he thought: Now that’s a brand.
Eliff also saluted Olympic Cellars’ Kathy Charlton branding success story in creating, defining and marketing the Working Girl wines.
Charlton chimed in that one of her keys to success is finding one thing she does very well and embracing it.
In addition to promoting “working girl road trips” to the winery between Port Angeles and Sequim on U.S. Highway 101, Olympic Cellars markets its products at all manner of local events and fundraisers and continually highlights the growing of local wine grapes.
Everything we need
“We’ve got all the things we need to do this,” Brassica of Port Townsend chef Arran Stark said of the Culinary Loop concept.
“We’ve got local seafood, local milk, local cheese, local mushrooms and veggies, veggies, veggies.”
And travelers “want that wholesome feeling,” of fresh food, cooked for them to savor slowly, added Stark.
“We’re getting back to the way things are supposed to be.”
The Olympic Peninsula Tourism Bureau is poised to promote Culinary Loop members with a Web site now under construction, Schostak said.
She also plans to use the International Culinary Tourism Association and the state of Washington to spread the word about Olympic Coast cuisine.
“What we have here that some don’t,” Schostak added, “is agritourism. We can connect people with the farm experience,” in fields from Chimacum to Dungeness.
The Peninsula also has thriving farmers’ markets from spring through fall in Port Townsend and Sequim — and year-round in Port Angeles.
We’re at the beginning of something here,” Schostak said.
“We have an incredible backdrop of scenery; people will discover that we have a just as incredible culinary experience.”
To learn more about the Olympic Culinary Loop, phone the Olympic Peninsula Tourism Bureau at 360-452-8552 or see www.visitOlympicPeninsula.org.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
