Blaine Wetzel

Willows Inn Blaine Wetzel (left) cooks for a collaboration dinner at Smyth in Chicago, May 2018. In 2010, Riley Starks, the owner of the Willows Inn, placed a Craigslist ad seeking a new chef. Wetzel, then 24, responded with a 1,000-word cover letter pitching Starks on "a small chef-driven kitchen with the emphasis on the garden." Starks hired Wetzel, who planned a menu that would incorporate local salmon, Lummi Island's many varieties of berries, seaweeds and beach plants, local shellfish and produce from Starks' organic farm. Working alone in the kitchen, Wetzel began serving five-course meals with a single nightly seating in the fall of 2010. Wetzel's reputation as a former Noma chef brought the inn its best autumn under Starks' ownership, Starks said. The inn closed in January 2011 for a three-month renovation.

The restaurant re-opened in March 2011 with an 18-course tasting menu priced at $85. Wetzel later became a co-owner of the Willows Inn.

The Willows Inn was known for purportedly hyperlocal Pacific Northwest cuisine, with news reports describing the ingredients as sourced "almost exclusively" from Lummi Island and reporting that the staff "grow, forage, cook and serve everything. The only thing they buy commercially is oil and salt." Wetzel and his fellow chefs could be seen on Lummi Island foraging for ingredients. Wetzel also reproduced Noma's presentation style, with "unconventional vessels" and dishes delivered to the table by the chefs themselves.

Despite the acclaim, Wetzel's management of the Willows Inn was the subject of numerous controversies starting in 2017, with a U.S. Department of Labor investigation and settlement over wage theft claims due to the Willows Inn's staging program for trainees.

Wetzel's pink scallops dish photographed in 2018.The New York Times in April 2021 published a lengthy article quoting 35 former Willows Inn employees who alleged that the restaurant often used non-local foods and obscured their true origins, that Wetzel verbally abused and intimidated employees and that male staff members sexually harassed female employees. According to the Times, employees said that "most ingredients were ordered from distributors and farms on the mainland. When local produce ran out, cooks routinely bought supermarket ingredients, like beets and broccoli, that were then passed off as grown or gathered on Lummi." One signature chicken dish was made with chickens purchased from Costco, the Times said. A former line cook reported cutting frozen Alaskan scallops "down to the shape and size of pink singing scallops." In November 2022, the Willows Inn permanently closed. He collaborated with Kyle Connaughton of SingleThread Farm in California and John Shields of Smyth in Chicago on a series of collaborative dinners held in each other's restaurants.

In 2020, Wetzel explored opening a new restaurant in Los Angeles.

Personal life Wetzel was in a long-term relationship with Raquel Ruiz Diaz, whom he met in culinary school and who managed the Willows Inn until 2017.

Wetzel met fellow chef Daniela Soto-Innes while in Bilbao in 2018 for an awards program. They began dating and became engaged in March 2019 and, according to Soto-Innes' Instagram feed, married in January 2020. Soto-Innes worked alongside Wetzel at the Willows Inn before its closure in 2022 and added Mexican elements to the inn's menu.

In 2022, Soto-Innes announced that she and Wetzel would open a restaurant in Nayarit, Mexico, although Wetzel later stated that the project was solely that of Soto-Innes.