State grant helps Mexican restaurant expand
Published 1:30 am Thursday, March 12, 2026
PORT TOWNSEND — La Cocina restaurant is relocating to the historic Belmont Building in Port Townsend at the end of the month.
The final service at its location at 221 Taylor St. will be March 24. Once it moves by the end of April, it will be located at 925 Water St. Owners Cassie and Lisette Garay will celebrate five years of La Cocina in July.
“We naturally have outgrown the (Taylor Street) space and it was finally time for us to look for a bigger space,” Lissette said.
The family owned and operated restaurant makes its move as its wholesale tortilla operation is ready to grow.
The expansion comes after the restaurant was awarded a food processing grant from the state Department of Agriculture, which funded the purchase of two tortilla-making machines, one for corn and one for flour.
Winning the grant was a surprise, Cassie said. She had written the application three years in a row.
“I honestly was shocked that we got it this year,” Cassie said. “It’s such a competitive grant.”
Cassie, who managed the front of the house as the restaurant got off the ground, now manages the administrative side of the business, including sourcing, operations, personnel and marketing.
While La Cocina has always produced its own tortillas, it had to pause its wholesale operation. The Garays needed to rethink their approach.
The new machines are the result of thinking through the process of sustainably producing tortillas with room to grow.
Previously, staff could produce about 100 corn tortillas per hour. Now, at full capacity, they can produce 2,000 per hour. The four-tortilla machine will produce about 1,500 hourly.
The operation had several wholesale accounts previously, including the Port Townsend Food Co-op, the Chimacum Corner Store and Bay Hay and Feed on Bainbridge Island. The Garays hope to resume stocking their product with those retailers and plan to expand in the future, with the aspiration of eventually supplying tortillas statewide.
The new space, which grows the business from almost 1,000 square feet to about 4,000, will include a downstairs tortilleria, where patrons can view the process of the tortillas from the production of husked corn to bagging.
Also downstairs will be an office, employee lockers, dry storage and a prep kitchen. Upstairs will be a main kitchen and dining room, a raised dining area with a view of Port Townsend Bay and an outdoor dining patio. The main dining area will include a bar.
The building’s renovation, carried out by Port Townsend architects from Studio STL, won the Bricks & Mortar Rehabilitation award from the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.
La Cocina’s food reflects the meals Lisette ate at home.
“Mexican cuisine can be very complicated but also very simple and fresh and delicious,” Lissette said. “I have steered towards the simplicity of the flavors.”
La Cocina prepares all of its salsas, tortillas and chips, something Lissette attributes for the success of the restaurant.
“The fish tacos are the No. 1 thing on our menu,” Cassie said. “If you’ve never been here before, eat the fish tacos.”
The batter is prepared with rice flour and is gluten-free. The menu also offers a number of vegan options.
Lissette grew up in the Salinas Valley in California. While she didn’t get to help much in the actual cooking, she would fetch the salt and anything else that was needed.
She can still remember the fresh stack of tortillas her grandmother would prepare every morning.
Her grandfather was a farmer who grew corn for the family’s use.
“A lot of my family were farmworkers,” Lissette said. “Being a chef and being able to train with some of the best chefs in California brought me to the idea that respecting the farmers and using what they have available is extremely important.”
The tortillas operation sources its ingredients locally. Its flour comes from Chimacum Valley Grainery and its primary corn supplier has been Chimacum Workhorse Project. The restaurant plans to pursue more partnerships with local farms to grow corn for the product.
The farm also sources ingredients from Red Dog Farm in Chimacum and gets some of its staples, like onions and potatoes, from eastern Washington.
The importance of connection to ingredients goes even deeper for the Garays and their crew. In 2024, they rented a plot of land to grow their own corn.
“As we were trying to make more partnerships with farmers, a lot of people felt like corn doesn’t grow here,” Cassie said.
Organic Seed Alliance already had produced a hybrid strain of corn strong enough to endure Jefferson County’s temperate climate.
“Working with them we decided, ‘Let’s test this out and prove to other farmers in the community that this can happen,’” Cassie said.
The restaurant staff would take turns tending the crops, planted in the late spring.
When things got busy at the restaurant during the summer, the team would rise early to tend to the farm before going to the restaurant.
The experience forged a deeper connection to the corn that goes into the ancient and ubiquitous food source. Lissette said the staff were incredible for their work and their belief in the Garays’ vision.
The Garays first met in 2008 at a restaurant where they worked together in San Francisco. They were in college, learning to live as adults, Cassie said. In 2018, they were married.
In Napa Valley, the couple’s careers took off, with Lisette going to cook at three-Michelin-star restaurant The Restaurant at Meadowood and Cassie working at Las Acolbas, a luxury hotel.
The decision to open La Cocina came when Cassie’s dad and step-mom, who live in Chimacum, offered to help the two open a restaurant.
They started their business at the end of 2020, at a time when many restaurants were going out of business. The couple reflected that if they didn’t take that opportunity then, they weren’t sure when they would.
“Kind of crazy, to think about it,” Lissette said. “At the time, it felt right.”
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
