Inside this iconic Tacoma restaurant, a pop-up looks to shake up COVID-era dining

A year after closing his Steilacoom restaurant De La Terre, chef Blake Lord-Wittig returns to Tacoma, albeit in a somewhat surreptitious fashion.

Starting Wednesday, he will helm the kitchen at Spice Lab, a new venture tucked into an underused corner of the vast space that is Harmon Pac Ave. Officially it’s a pop-up, but the Tacoma-born and Michelin-trained chef, known for his attention to local ingredients and hardcore seasonality, hopes to eventually secure it “a forever home.”

For now, he told The News Tribune in a phone call last week, “It’s all about just trying to do something fun for Tacoma.”

Spice Lab marries the bounty of the Pacific Northwest with Middle Eastern and North African spices. Grilled octopus, first cooked sous-vide, is accompanied by an eggplant and chickpea chutney with golden raisins ($22). A simple salad is dressed with the Egyptian dukkah, a medley of nuts, cumin, coriander, fennel and sesame, plus dried cherries and homemade labneh ($12).

You’ll also snag that tangy, thicker-than-Greek-yogurt spread on a side of glazed carrots with harissa, a spicy red pepper condiment worthy of the spice deity.

Followers of Lord-Wittig’s cooking at De La Terre, which he operated from 2015 until last August with his wife, will respect the curated menu: six appetizers, four mains, three desserts, three sides. But where he frequently swapped dishes at the whim of farms and of his creative muscles in Steilacoom, in downtown Tacoma he has developed recipes that follow “one cohesive style.”

“It is a departure from that,” he said. “De La Terre was kind of like this big — not hodgepodge — whatever I felt like cooking. It was almost like Seinfeld: The Restaurant; it was a restaurant about nothing. That was the beauty of it, but … it really relied on whatever I felt like cooking. I had played around with flavors like this plenty of times at De La Terre, but with this I’m trying to have more of an identity.”

His care for local ingredients has not wavered, but Spice Lab provides a foundation to “build the pantry of this New American cuisine,” one inspired by global flavors that know no political boundaries.

He pointed to the octopus dish as quintessential to the style — “this really flavor-packed food that has this own unique identity.”

Bread won’t rely on the perhaps expected pita but rather house Parker rolls dusted with za’atar, the it-spice blend on menus across America but one that has been a Middle Eastern staple for centuries, as common as salt and pepper on the table.

This style of food and the Spice Lab menu lends to sharing, he said.

Cocktails will likely invoke similar flavors, such as a sumac Negroni or black Manhattan with housemade allspice dram.

Wine will remain simple with a red and white chosen by the former Jean-Georges chef, who is also a sommelier. (He worked as the beverage director for Hotel Theodore in Seattle until the pandemic hammered hospitality.)

Spice Lab Tacoma

Spice Lab, which will share Harmon’s kitchen and front door but otherwise function independently, will seat about 30 guests at its current “maximum” of half-capacity, per Washington state’s Safe Start guidelines. With only five tables, reservations are encouraged.

Launching a restaurant in the midst of COVID-19 also translates to takeout being integral, rather than an afterthought or necessary pivot. Lord-Wittig hopes this menu will provide an option for an at-home dinner experience nearly as special as a night out. That sounds easy to do, especially with the addition of a dessert ($10) like chocolate coffee custard with a cardamom ganache and candied orange, or an ice cream sandwich of lemon zabaglione between poppy seed macaron-style cookies.

Eventually, as the new executive chef of Harmon Brewing Company, he will overhaul the food programs at the Pacific Avenue restaurant and The Hub in Gig Harbor.

“It’s so important to invest in local Tacoma restaurant talent and continue to progress our food culture here,” said Eric Powers, who bought the Harmon business last year, in a release. “In this difficult time, I think we are all wanting an occasional escape, and when we can safely dine out, we want it to be extra special.”

As for Tacoma’s culinary future, Lord-Wittig is optimistic about a crop of younger chefs making their mark, maybe, thanks to COVID, even more creatively.

Spice Lab at Harmon

▪ 1938 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253-383-2739 (Harmon), spicelabtacoma.com

▪ Details: reservations and takeout available through Tock, exploretock.com/spicelabharmon

▪ Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 4:30-9 p.m.

This story was originally published October 20, 2020 at 10:00 AM.