I met Nick Green ten years ago when he was chef de cuisine at the Willows Inn on Lummi Island, long before The New York Times published its investigations into alleged misconduct at the restaurant and accusations against its former chef, Blaine Wetzel.

Back then, I stumbled into my first position in the vaunted halls of fine dining with fawn-like legs. French cooking terms sounded like French to me, and expectations towered over the standards I was familiar with. Despite the culture shock of tweezers and pedantic preparations, there were a few buoys who kept me afloat. Some of these buoys became lifelong friends. Others, like Nick Green, I wouldn’t see again for a decade. 

As I meandered through a career in food and wine, I encountered a host of kitchen tropes: alcoholics, burnouts, egomaniacs. I also met positive role models in kitchens, Green being one of them. He was calm and humanizing when things were frenetic. If he opened a restaurant, I thought, I’d like to work there. But where in the world was he?

The answer spanned many oceans, countless hours tying pine needles around sardines, and truffle-laden siestas.

“When I say ‘The Willows,’ people go kind of wide-eyed,” says Green, as we sit in the recently renovated outdoor beer garden and event space at his new restaurant, The Hardware Store. The roof retracts like the roof at T-Mobile Park, inviting the sun into the former alleyway. “But I had the time of my life there and then I left in 2017 before things kind of hit the fan.” 

The Hardware Store on Vashon Island is cozy and charming.

Courtesy of The Hardware Store

Shortly after leaving the Willows, Green headed to Japan, where he worked at Kichisen, a three-Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto. “I was one of the first Western chefs in the kitchen, where the staff spoke only Japanese,” says Green. “It was total immersion. The standards and traditions were incredibly rigorous—even down to requiring me to shave all my body hair.”

Green started at seven in the morning and often worked until midnight. “I was tying pine needles around sardines for like a month straight,” says Green, who moved through the tedium and eventually took on more responsibilities at the restaurant. The chef, who spoke no English, was fascinated with Western culture. He and Green made comical attempts to communicate about Western wine and cars while preparing hyper-traditional Japanese food outside the Shimogamo shrine grounds. “It was just cool to see that level of attention to detail and that pursuit of perfection.”

After nine months of kaiseki, Green hopped over to Italy to spend time with his wife’s family in Calabria. Siestas and cheek kissing were a stark contrast to the rigid cultural norms of Japan. They spent weeks in the hills meeting countless relatives over pizza and meatballs cooked dubiously close to ash-sloughing cigarettes. As truffle season arrived, they jaunted north to work in a restaurant that specialized in the musky delicacy.

Eventually, they arrived back in the States. Green and his wife, Emily, connected with Noble House Hotels, the company that owns the iconic Edgewater Hotel on the Seattle waterfront. Together they managed the food and beverage for Noble House at various properties around the country for six years while basing out of San Diego.

“It’s so nice down there, I thought we were going to end up living down there forever,” says Green. However, in 2023, the siren song of the Pacific Northwest brought them back north. “I connected with someone back up here who wanted to open a restaurant in Seattle.”

Green moved back to Seattle. The restaurant didn’t come to fruition, but it set the wheels in motion. Shortly after, a mutual friend connected Green to Rob and Janie Andrews, the owners of The Hardware Store on Vashon Island. Built in 1890, The Hardware Store was the first commercial building on the island. Over the course of a century, it changed hands several times before reopening as a restaurant in 2005. In 2020, the Andrews became the sole owners. 

“They really wanted to keep the restaurant going but were struggling a little bit with the management piece,” says Green, who joined the team and became the operating partner in 2025. “It’s really funny, I grew up in Seattle, but I think the first time I came out to Vashon was about a year ago to see the restaurant.”

In the year since his first visit, he’s developed a strong affection for the island and the community. “This business is very community-facing. We have guests that come in literally twice a day,” says Green. “The past year has been really fun, even though we’ve been building the plane while we’re flying.” 

There has been quite a lot of literal building within the restaurant as well. During the winter of 2026, Green worked with local builders and woodworkers to refresh the interior of the restaurant. It was important to Green to maintain the character of the structure and honor its role in the island’s cultural history. Green had the original stained-glass windows from the 1890 buildout restored and installed above the bar. A woodworker brought the timber charm of the Puget Sound to the bar and booths. The walls tell the island’s history through historic photos of icons like K2 (the ski and snowboard company founded on Vashon), Island Queen (the longtime burger-and-ice-cream spot), and the annual 4th of July hydro race.

“I was a little nervous opening the doors back up because people really like things to be the way they know them to be. I wasn’t sure if we threaded the needle. But it still feels like the same restaurant and people really have received it well.”

Similar to the physical space, Green has updated the menu with both locals and visitors in mind.  “I want this place to be somewhere people can have a burger and a drink, and it’ll be really good quality and they could also come and order around the menu and have more of a dining experience.”

Roasted chicken with basil and summer corn salad.

Courtesy of The Hardware Store

To connect the menu to the island, Green has been working with local farms to source more fresh produce. “There are amazing farms on the island. Like one down the street that is growing Japanese heirloom vegetables which is really fun,” says Green. Behind the original K2 factory, Makanai Farm is growing vegetables on the historic Matsuda Farm property. The farm now supplies The Hardware Store with specialty produce like Japanese cucumbers and mustards. Green’s hunger for local ingredients extends into the Sound, where he sources spot prawns, sole, crab, and more. 

In addition to the food offerings, Green sees The Hardware Store as a community space. His late-summer event lineup includes hot wings parties, a dog show, and live music. “Music is huge out here. There are a lot of well-known and retired Northwest musicians, which is just one of the many awesome parts about being out here,” says Green.

As Green settles into The Hardware Store, he’s bringing the thoughtful calm that I appreciated in the kitchen to the whole community. After years of cooking around the world, Green seems to have found an island to call home.