Lumberyard finishes opening all new restaurants
Variety of cuisine now available, as new food hall works out its kinks
JACQUI THOMASSON | DAILY EVERGREEN FILE
Pullman patrons eat dinner at the Lumberyard Food Hall on Sunday evening. The Lumberyard Food Hall features a wide variety of cuisine in a relaxed eating environment, complete with a playground for younger children.
January 7, 2019
As of last week, Lumberyard has completed its process of opening its multiple concept kitchens to the public. The Food Hall originally opened its doors during Apple Cup weekend, operating just one of the several kitchens, Grand Ave. Gourmet Burgers.
The former Pullman building supply storage space contains rows of food truck style restaurants. Now these kitchens are filled with cooks. Groups can order from any of the concepts at kiosks around the hall and mix and match orders from any of the outlets.
The restaurant collective has slowly opened separate kitchens since late November, starting with La Isla Cuisine, which serves Puerto Rican fare.
“Each one of the concepts had its own kinks that we had to work out,” Jenny Finau, general manager and namesake of Jenny’s Chicken Shack, said.
Kitchen manager Javier Paredes said Jenny’s Chicken Shack was the final space to open last week. The shack offers traditional Southern food including fried chicken, fried catfish, fried green tomatoes and a daily casserole.
On the main floor The Whole Pizza, The Whole Yard Salad and Grain Bowls, Scoops Ice Cream, (509) Coffee, and a bar are all open to the public now. A second bar occupies the loft above, where patrons can access a porch overlooking Pufferbelly Station and the South Fork of the Palouse River.
Pullman residents Alicia Baker, left, and Rob Baker, right, eat dinner with their six-year-old daughter Audrina, middle, at the Lumberyard Food Hall on Sunday evening. The Lumberyard Food Hall features a wide variety of cuisine in a relaxed eating environment, complete with a playground for younger children. “It’s nice to have a place in Pullman that has a place for the kids to play,” Rob said, “that isn’t McDonald’s,” Alicia continued.
Finau said she worked on the development team to generate the theme and concept of every kitchen, except for La Isla.
“Foremost we wanted to bring Pullman something that Pullman didn’t already have,” Finau said. “Most everything we do is from scratch – homemade pickles, homemade bacon onion jam. A lot of our condiments are homemade.”
Finau said salad and grain bowls and Southern and Puerto Rican cuisine aren’t available anywhere else in the area. Grand Ave. burgers are uniquely big, she said.
Though all the kitchens are up and running, the Food Hall will continue to expand their business in coming months, Paredes said. They’ve installed a refrigerator display case to sell their homemade pickles and plan to sell pie by the slice and round once they hire a fulltime baker.
In the late summer or early fall, a back building will become available as an event center, Finau said. And as soon as the weather allows, the patio area will open up to the public.
“Fortunately, Pullmanites are okay with a little bit of chilliness,” Finau said.
The patio fits Finau’s vision for the Food Hall. She said the Food Hall should be a communal area where people of all ages with different tastes can come together. Paredes agreed.
“It’s the atmosphere,” Paredes said. “The atmosphere forces people to be social.”
