TL;DR: Discover why Crafted restaurant is quietly one of Yakima’s best-kept secrets for birthday dinners. It’s a James Beard Award-winning restaurant, too!
Ask Yakima area residents where you should go for a fancy night out on the town and I guarantee that you’ll see someone recommending WaterFire, Ozeki Japanese Restaurant, Cowiche Canyon Kitchen, Yakima Steak Company, Purrr, and the place owned by James Beard Award-winning chefs, Crafted.
Crafted is open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. A great time to go there is just before the dinner rush before 6:30 p.m., although the doors open at 5 p.m. every Thursday through Monday.***
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I recently was invited to a birthday dinner for two of my friends who both have June birthdays. We got to sit outside on the back patio, and it felt like we had been transported to some other town. It felt very posh.
The menu varies each week because Crafted serves seasonal farm-to-table style meals. After our group at dinner (I ordered the salmon, which came with a thick savory glaze inside a mini-casting iron), we each chose our dessert.
The Desserts Were the Star of the Show
When our server brought out my friends’ selected desserts, they had a birthday candle for them to blow out. We sang a quiet ‘Happy Birthday’ song to them, and they made wishes and blew out candles.
The desserts were the star of the show:
- A lemon tart with torched lavender meringue and pistachio crumble
- A huckleberry goat cheese cheesecake that came with a scoop of the best ice cream I’ve had in years–huckleberry ice cream.
One of the other friends in our group ordered the PB&J, which is a gorgeous peanut butter mousse creation covered in chocolate ganache and garnished with raspberry fruit leather, which to me looks like a fruit roll-up (remember those?).
If you want to try the desserts at one of Yakima’s best places to have a luxe birthday dessert but you aren’t able to dine-in, order your food to-go.
***Crafted restaurant is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
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Gallery Credit: Reesha Cosby