When Italy comes to Bavaria

Ben Herreid, the head chef of Larch in Leavenworth, says there’s a simple trick he learned years ago to make the perfect homemade pasta.

“Feel your dough,” he tells Washington Grown host Kristi Gorenson in Season 12, “and if it feels like your earlobe, then it’s the right texture.” 

Gorenson laughs. “That’s a great rule of thumb, or maybe...” 

“Rule of ear?” Herreid finishes, laughing.

In the adorable Bavarian-style town of Leavenworth, whose food options are mostly associated with bratwurst, schnitzel, and beer, Larch’s pasta-heavy menu is reminiscent of a country a little south of the Alps — but the Italian-inspired menu attracts a crowd.

“Look at all the little restaurants on the outside, but go to Larch,” said one customer who was dining at the restaurant when Washington Grown visited. “That’s where you’re going to get the best food.”

Larch is the second restaurant opened by Herreid and Spencer Meline, and its farm-to-table menu specializes in homemade pasta, fresh seasonal produce, and local fish and meat.

“We really try to use the bounty of what’s seasonal and what’s local,” said Herreid. “All the Washington produce, all the Washington fish, and all of those things.”

Herreid describes his pasta dishes as Pacific Northwest infused, and he said that he’s always discovering new styles of pasta that he hasn’t made before.

“I'm sure the Italian grandmothers might be a little upset if they saw the ways we take pasta sometimes," he says with a laugh. "There are so many shapes and sizes, it feels pretty inexhaustible.”

In the restaurant, the customers can’t say enough good things about Herreid’s food — and the restaurant in general.

“Every time we come here, they deliver,” says one diner. “It not only looks amazing, it tastes amazing.”

She continues, “The customer service, the food, the ambience, it’s just top notch.”

In the kitchen, Herreid and Gorenson are making Herreid’s signature mushroom ravioli and roasted mushrooms, dishes he says have been “a through line in my entire career.

“I’ve had that in all the restaurants I’ve created — we’ve always featured mushrooms and the mushroom ravioli,” he says, then adds with a laugh, “There might be people marching out front if we didn’t have those on the menu when they came.”

Herreid teaches Gorenson how to pipe the mushroom filling into the dough, which is carefully laid out on a metal ravioli frame.

“You don’t want to overfill it, or they will pop,” he tells her. “Just pretend like you’re doing toothpaste on your toothbrush.”

They add a rolled-out sheet of dough on top and press the stack into little ravioli shapes, then get to work on the sauce, which includes cream, lots of fresh thyme, chicken broth, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

When the dish is finished, they both take a taste.

“It’s a nice subtle thyme flavor in the background,” Herreid says, “and it pairs really well with mushrooms.”

As he begins prepping the second mushroom dish, which is cooked with butter, salt, and pepper, then drizzled with honey before roasting, Herreid tells Gorenson that the mushrooms grown in Washington are some of the best you’ll find anywhere.

“We’re definitely all about the mushrooms,” he says. “We’re a bunch of real fungis.”