If I didn't have the seasons to cook by," Christina Orchid admitted to Pacific Northwest magazine, "I would have been fried years ago." Located on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands between the coast of Washington and Vancouver Island, Christina's is the type of restaurant you read about in travel magazines. You cut out the article, save it, and dream of visiting sometime. The cooking is seasonal and fresh, the setting is beautiful, and the feeling of being away from it all but well cared for is terrifically tempting.

The people who have actually made it out to Christina's and come back to tell agree that the journey is rewarding. Writing in Harper's Bazaar, Molly O'Neill called the restaurant a Northwest refuge. "Christina [née] Gentry incorporates the bounty of the region in her innovative menus...Beef is cooked to perfection, and local garden produce provides unusual salads and dessert," O'Neill wrote. Sunset magazine's Jena MacPherson summed up the restaurant in a single word, "heaven."

This Seattle native's sensibilities asserted themselves at an early age. In her teens, her grandparents gave her a tour of Europe. They stopped for dinner at Fernand Point's legendary restaurant Le Pyramide, and it was the resonance she felt with his simple, seasonal approach to food that made Orchid realize her future lay in the kitchen. At her own restaurant-which Northwest Best Places holds as the premier restaurant in the San Juan Islands-she heeds Point's philosophy of using only local food in season. "The delight and pleasure of the first superior cases of spring greens or the first flat of raspberries are the joy in my workaday life," she has said. "That, and turning them into something to eat, something that is simple and doesn't disturb the integrity of the flavors."

How could we not love someone who told Bon Appétit that she was inspired by Northwest native James Beard to go back to her native Pacific Northwest and open a restaurant specializing in Northwest cuisine? Save yourself the trip and come to the Beard House when Christina Orchid cooks in Jim's kitchen.