Home Sweet Home: Walla Walla at Night

Before Jose Mesa arrives at the Walla Walla restaurant he co–owns, he stops at Castoldi Family Farms and picks some spring onions for a special dish. Thirty minutes later, in the kitchen of TMACS, he begins sautéeing the small, bright white bulbs in butter.

"This is the beginning of the season," says Mesa, who is also the restaurant’s executive chef. "These potentially will become the Walla Walla Sweets. They’re a lot milder, sweeter than the actual onions."

After the onions have finished sautéeing, Mesa plates them alongside steak, fingerling potatoes, and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, topping it with a special demi-glace and garnishing the dish with pea shoots. Mesa and his co–owner, Tom Maccarone, work with local farms as often as possible to source the ingredients for the restaurant’s seasonal dishes.

"Everything on this plate is all locally sourced," Mesa says, adding that even the steak comes from Washington. "I started working on a farm, so I know what it is to cultivate, to harvest all this stuff."

Maccarone says Mesa works with local farmers to determine what produce to grow for the restaurant each year, and the farms sometimes grow specific crops just for TMACS.

"Anything we can get local, we get local," says Maccarone. "That’s what we’re all about."

Maccarone opened his first restaurant, T.Maccarone’s, in 2005, and in 2019 moved the restaurant to a new location in Walla Walla and renamed it TMACS. But even before becoming a restaurateur, Maccarone always loved entertaining and cooking for people in his home, introducing new friends to each other, and making connections. He wants that same atmosphere in his restaurant.

"I want everyone to feel welcome," he says. "I want them to feel like they’re at home — this is my home."

Customers recognize that quality when they dine at TMACS.

"It kind of feels like you’re coming into someone’s house," says one patron. "The service is really attentive; the food is delicious. It’s just a very comfortable place to be."

Another diner says TMACS feels like a city restaurant, but with a hometown feeling.

"You can come here dressed up, or you can come here wearing jeans," she says, "and know that you’re going to get great food and a great cocktail, a great glass of wine."

Maccarone is a third-generation Walla Walla native, and he loves his community.

"We have a great arts scene here," he says. "We have a great wine scene here. Our culinary food program is like no other. You don't have this in a lot of small towns between here and Seattle."

And, of course, he says, Walla Walla is also a farming community: "Whether it’s the grapes for the wine, whether it’s the wheat, whether it’s the produce, it’s always going to be a farming community."

And the restaurant’s incredible dishes reflect that dedication to representing these local farms.

"When you’re using really fresh produce, you don’t have to manipulate; it is what it is," says a customer dining in the restaurant. "It’s beautiful on its own."