It's all about the island at Chef's Kitchen

After blazing through the Seattle restaurant scene as a high-profile chef, Matt Costello has found a restaurant of his own.

At the aptly named Chef's Kitchen at the Inn at Langley, Costello happily does it all. He devises each night's six-course, set-menu dinner; buys the fresh produce, much of it from Whidbey Island farmers; does a lot of the prep work; and cooks each course of the elaborate meal in the open-plan kitchen in front of diners.

"I have complete control every step of the way," says a happy Costello, who is also general manager of the inn. Before arriving at the inn four years ago, Costello, who grew up in Olympia and started cooking as a student at The Evergreen State College, worked at high-profile Seattle restaurants including Dahlia Lounge and Palace Kitchen.

While he obviously likes being a one-man show, Costello is a soft-spoken, modest man for whom the restaurant is more than fine dining and a 3,000-bottle wine cellar. He's trying to build an island community that revolves around high-quality food — and connect out-of-town diners with it.

Before each dinner, Costello gives a brief talk about the ingredients he's using in the night's meal.

Later he paints a larger picture: "You might drive by the farm where the radishes are growing, bump into the lady who raised the beans, see the lamb on the hill. The local economy is a big thing for me."

"It's an expensive dinner," adds Costello, "and I can sleep at night in good conscience knowing that [money] goes back into helping preserve farmland. We give out seed money in winter months, some no-interest loans to farmers."

It comes back in farm-fresh, island ingredients on the tables of the Chef's Kitchen.

— Kristin Jackson,