I don’t think it was a particularly busy Saturday, but still, the ten of us came in right at 12:30PM, and were seated in a quiet corner under the care of the most awesome waitress in the universe. Without batting an eye, she took our orders on separate checks (except for the two couples who had theirs together), and when it came time to hand out the bill, remembered which eight people ate what. (Well, of course she did. She handed out the food correctly, too.) Holy crap. I watched openmouthed as she efficiently collected 4 credit cards and 4 sets of cash, returning with 4 correctly charged receipts and 2 sets of change. Absolutely none of that mandatory 18 percent tip charge, for “parties of six or more” — so I felt empowered to put in as much tip as I wanted to. (I’m sorry — if you feel you need to protect your waitstaff from poor tippers, then I’m in the wrong restaurant.)
I had come in ten minutes behind everyone else’s order, but my grilled cheese sandwich order was only a minute behind everyone else’s order. The two women who had ordered breakfast rolled their eyes as they struggled to finish their food. Curled slices of bacon, meaty rather than fatty, languished indolently on top of the mountain of hash browns. I was envious, a little, until I bit into the best cheese sandwich of my entire life. Farmhouse’s “five-way” grilled cheese has (of course) five kinds of cheese, which is four more kinds than I know about, and I’m only slightly joking. The sourdough bread is not so toothsome that it’s going to fight back when you eat it — but it’s not so soft that it’s going to stick to the roof of your mouth and force you to crowbar it off with a fingernail. It’s spread on the outside with garlic butter and sprinkled with parmesan, and then so lightly toasted that the parmesan is a little crunchy, but the toasty bits don’t scratch the hell out of the inside of your mouth. Inside the sandwich is a huge handful of four other kinds of cheese. Biting into it is like eating a fondue sandwich — and I’m sure that was the point.
As we left the restaurant, we took the time to oggle the dessert cabinet. The lemon meringue pies were at least twelve inches tall and we argued amongst ourselves about how they cut those, but the answer surprised us all. Feel free to make your guess in the comments below, if you like.
The Farmhouse is somewhere along SR20 between I-5 and Anacortes (if you cross a bridge, you’ve gone too far), on the left side of the road at an intersection that has a traffic light. “You can’t miss it,” was all that my group would tell me, but sure enough, I can miss anything, so I drove on into Anacortes and the friendly visitor information people sent me back from whence I came, with the additional info about the bridge. “Where are you visiting from?” they wanted to know, and I couldn’t help thinking “oh, sure, I’ll tell you and then you’ll know where all the dumb people live.”
Farmhouse is truly the perfect place to stop on your way to the ferry. Or on your way to look for tulips or daffodils this spring. I would even make the stop if I was on my way to Vancouver — truly, it’s just a few miles off the interstate for a melting mouthful of cheese.