THE NEW FARGHER Lakehouse restaurant opened in mid-January at 15517 NE Fargher Lake Highway in Yacolt. The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
THE NEW FARGHER Lakehouse Restaurant in Yacolt has been filled to capacity since its mid-January opening, and these are the guys that keep things running behind the scenes. Pictured from left to right are chefsSteven Schmidt, Branden Marsh, Elliott Deotsch and Cory Smith. Marsh, the head chef, calls his food ‘modern American comfort food’ and says he loves using local, seasonal ingredients as much as possible.
YACOLT – Some restaurants struggle to fill seats in the first few months, but at the long-awaited Fargher Lakehouse restaurant in north Clark County, the opposite seems to be true – just two weeks after the restaurant’s grand opening, the Lakehouse is already packing in lunch and dinner crowds.
“It’s been very busy and the feedback from the community has been extremely good,” says Jennifer Goodenough, who runs the restaurant with her husband, Dan, and brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Dani Christiansen.
“People have been surprised that the food is above average,” adds co-operator Dani Christiansen. “It’s different from what people are used to.”
Goodenough and Christiansen should know. Both women are entrenched in the Fargher Lake community: Goodenough and her brother, Joe Christiansen, grew up in the area and have stayed to raise their families on and close to the same property where they roamed as children.
The families wanted to create a restaurant that not only has high quality service, food and drinks, but also a restaurant that unites the community and provides a place for North Clark County to gather and mingle.
“That was really Bill’s vision,” Goodenough says of the property owner, Bill Doty. “His dream was to have a community, family-friendly restaurant.”
Doty, who also owns the Fargher Lake General Store across SR-503 from the new Lakehouse restaurant, has been working on this vision since 2012, when he purchased the Lakehouse property, razed the original 1940s structure and started work on the 3,000-square-foot Lakehouse. Designed to seat 91 and employ 30 workers, Doty wanted the Lakehouse to become a landmark for locals as well as tourists on their way to explore the nearby Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
“The construction took quite a few months,” Goodenough says. “But that gave us time to plan.”
It also gave them time to find the perfect chef and bar manager. Chef Branden Marsh is leading the restaurant’s food menu, while bar manager Jeff Nelson creates a drinks menu that compliment’s Marsh’s selection of upscale pub food.
“This is my take on modern American comfort food,” Marsh says of his menu, which includes dishes like the popular bacon wrapped meatloaf, made from natural, grass-fed beef, and the shrimp and potato gnocchi sauteed with fresh sage, garlic and roasted butternut squash then finished with sherry and butter. “I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel.”
A lover of fresh, seasonal ingredients, Marsh says he plans to incorporate locally grown foods as much as possible.
Marsh, who has been cooking professionally for 16 years, grew up in the Battle Ground area and says his job at the Fargher Lakehouse is “like coming home.” He and his wife, Amanda, a server at the restaurant, are raising their two young boys, Easten, 3, and Conlen, 5, in Vancouver, but Marsh says he hopes to move back to north Clark County soon.
Marsh plans to change his menu to reflect the seasons and to take advantage of the freshest ingredients available. Currently, the menu offers a wide selection of salads, sandwiches, entrees, pastas, starters and desserts. A few of the local favorites include:
• Pan Seared Salmon – Northwest salmon sauced with an orange and fennel butter, served with steamed wild rice pilaf and seasonal vegetables.
• Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf – a blend of ground tenderloin and chorizo wrapped with bacon and finished with tomato demi sauce, accompanied with a fully loaded baked potato and seasonal vegetables.
• Smoked Salmon and Spinach Dip – a crowd-pleaser from Goodenough’s catering days, this starter includes smoked northwest salmon and sauteed spinach, folded together with cream cheese and shredded parmesan, served with lightly toasted mini naan bread.
• Chopped Lakehouse Wedge – roughly chopped iceberg tossed with cherry tomatoes, candied bacon, hard boiled eggs, dressed with cilantro ranch and topped with chives and blue cheese crumbles.
• Fargher Lakehouse Burger – the “FL Burger” is a grilled one-half pound Angus grass-fed beef patty topped with white cheddar cheese, candied bacon, red leaf lettuce, tomato and onion inside a brioche bun.
Desserts include Marsh’s take on the traditional cheesecake, which instead incorporates a light and fluffy ricotta cheese and seasonal ingredients. Currently, the cheesecake is flavored with in-season Meyer lemons. Bar manager Jeff Nelson has pulled together a drink menu that, like Marsh’s food menu, puts a new twist on classic American favorites – the Violet Martini, Loaded Bloody Mary and Ruby Cosmo are a few examples of this. And the Lady of the Lake and Hard Hack Swamp recall the Fargher Lake history.
“Fargher Lake used to be called ‘hard hack swamp,’” explains Goodenough. “The lake was drained in 1921 and has been a few things since then. Now it’s blueberry fields.”
Goodenough and Christiansen say they’re excited by the fact that Fargher Lakehouse has, so far, been a hit with locals. They’ve tried to give the restaurant a local flavor, installing a community board in the hallway near the restrooms and hanging gorgeous, local landscapes by local artist Kevin Miller, owner of the Amboy Frame Shoppe. Eventually, the two co-operators hope their own children will be able to work at the Lakehouse. Goodenough’s sons, Josh, 21, Luke, 16 and Nate, 13 are already angling for jobs and Christiansen’s children, Makenzie, 14 and Austin, 10, aren’t far behind.
The vision is in keeping with Doty’s original plan for a community gathering spot – Goodenough says she regularly sees friends and family and neighbors dropping in for lunch and dinner and Christiansen says one of her favorite things about the Lakehouse is watching customers get up and go to another table to greet each other and catch up.
“We’ve had people from Battle Ground, Yacolt, Amboy, La Center, all over the area,” Goodenough says. “The response from the community has been great.”
The new Fargher Lakehouse restaurant is located at 15517 NE Fargher Lake Highway, and is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
For more information, visit the restaurant’s Facebook site at www.facebook.com (type Fargher Lakehouse into the search bar), or call (360) 263-1200.
