Well folks, I am here on location at Mason Health talking with culinary manager Ashley Johnson in the newly reopened, it's been open less than a month, the bistro that so many folks have got so many great memories about. It is revamped and a great new opportunity for people to come down. Ashley, how are you? I am awesome.
Thanks for doing this. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to talk a little bit about how the Mountain View Cafe has changed over the nine months it was under construction here.
I see when you walk in a whole bunch of new artwork, some new opportunities for people to have conversations, and then as you kind of read the press releases that are out there, a new opportunity for folks to have some great local fare and that's kind of part of the mission here. What's happened over the last nine months is we were closed. We did have a light remodel in here.
Mostly that was to reinforce our wall for the MRI machine that weighed, I heard like 10 elephants worth. That's a metric there. We opened up an express lane for our staff.
It's kind of a controlled area. There's a lot of healthy grab-and-go options over there. Yeah, community space for people, integrating more local food.
Talk to me a little bit about how this cafe works. A lot of people might think that it's specifically for, like you said, the staff here or the patients here, but it's open to the public, right? Yes, it's open for the public. This is a historical date night for all of our community.
It used to be surf-and-turf Fridays. It's affordable for everyone. When we shut down around COVID time, we had a lot of people kind of disappointed because this was their date spot.
Yeah. It's definitely a diamond in the rough. I never knew about it until I started working here six years ago.
Are those types of things come back now that it's reopened? Are people able to come on back on a Friday night? Yeah, we have prime rib Friday nights. It's $12 a plate. We serve from 4.30 to 7 o'clock at night.
We're open Sunday through Monday. We have breakfast entrees from 7 to 10.30, lunch from 11.30 to 2, and then again dinner from 4.30 to 7 o'clock. Explain to me a little bit about the healthy options and kind of that shift in this new look to the cafe.
I know you've worked a lot with the folks from Blue Zones and Mason Matters and things like that, and you have been able to source some great local partners bringing food in. Yeah, you know with anything there's always a foundation that's laid, and I definitely want to give some props to Chef John Cruz and Chef Cody Shipley. They were the culinary managers here prior to myself.
Chef John, he really laid the foundation to start this by local, source healthy. I know that Chef Cody, that was always really important to him. When I took over, I really didn't know anything about anything, and then I was connected with Blue Zones and super vulnerable with them.
Told them I really didn't know much about farming or really, you know, stuff. So they took me under their wing. I worked with Julie Knott.
We worked very close together, set our goals for a healthy food environment. With Mark Batty, he was the COO, now Vin Free. He is the COO, and we worked together to just make sure that the healthy choice is the easy and accessible choice.
What does that mean for kind of the overall mission for the hospital, the green initiatives that have been going through, and how giving these, giving folks here a healthy options allows them to continue on and work for better health overall? Yeah, I think we started practicing with Practice Green Health at least five years ago, gen caps, please correct me wherever I can be corrected. But, you know, we really set out for a mission. It just keeps getting better and better.
This ties into our community, you know, we're fostering the connections with local businesses all around here. Definitely about keeping my word and commitments. So, yeah.
Talk to me a little bit about how you create the menus for the patients here. That's a great question, because we just revamped all of those. The way that we did that is we just took a look into, again, our commitments for, you know, uniting the community and making it local affordable.
We really wanted to make it more friendly for vegetarian or just different diverse cuisines and options for everybody. Matt, he is not hooked up right now, but my supervisor and sous chef is sitting next to me. He had the great idea to locally source all of our ground beef from Colvin Ranch, located in Tenino, Washington.
So, all of the meatloaf that goes to our patients, that's locally sourced beef and most people love meatloaf, so that was one thing we did. We partner with Andrea and Paul from Skokomish Valley Farms and we have their produce and we're looking to partner with them for the future. What does it mean to kind of stay local here? You're a high climber just down the road and now you've been able to parlay that hard work there, moving into the culinary field here, and now you're the top dog here in the cafe.
Yeah, that's a really funny story, Jeff, and perhaps a different one. I'm maybe a climber, I don't know about a high one, like high climber maybe. Maybe like a mediocre one.
I actually dropped out of high school when I was in 11th grade, maybe my senior year. School was pretty difficult for me. Went on to do various different jobs and then when I heard that the hospital was hiring, I applied, went back and got my GED so I could have the credentials to work here.
So as far as top dog here, I'm just somebody who's here in the middle of the pack with everybody. It feels really good to have this position though because I am well supported with all my passion, so that feels really good to be heard. And I think working for Mason Health, I feel I've always been heard and well received here.
I feel good enough as I am. Definitely want to strive to get a little bit more education, but feeling good enough as I am to be here, that's my favorite thing. What are some of the things that you'd like to see this cafe evolve into over the next six months, year, into the future? Oh, fun question.
I'd really like to open this up to do more just little community things, like I was kind of playing with like a story karaoke where somebody could come here and just share their their story, have some farmers in here. If you want to listen, listen. If you don't, that's fine too.
Kind of like karaoke at a bar. Some people are gonna listen, some aren't. Kind of wondered if anybody, like a local artist, would want to come do a little paint class or just arts or just for people to come and read a book in the corner.
That's what I want. This is their place. When we reopened, we wanted to make it for our community, make that really forward.
We have a lot of regulars that are coming back and, you know, they stopped us the other day just to share their their joy that this is open, this is their place. So my goal is more community and then also just leaving it alone as it is and how it has been for people for the last 15 years. One of the cool things about the place now is the artwork.
Breanne Waite, a local artist here, has a great four-piece mural. Jen Rutledge has provided some photography around the space here, kind of just adding into the local fair and flavor that you've been able to kind of curate. Yeah, that was super important to me because, you know, we're not just about local food.
We're about local everything, you know. We're community and that includes art, it includes all sorts of things and that's kind of where we want to go with this. It's just more unity in our community and just visibility.
That was a big thing for me. So people are starting to hear, come back, Prime Rib Night is back here and what are some of the other things that you would encourage folks to try on the menu? Well, we post a new menu every week. It's rotating.
Matt, again, not on audio. He's sitting here, he makes those menus, he spends a lot of time with them. There's a new menu every week, so different breakfast entrees, except for Eggs Benedict and Biscuits and Gravy, Prime Rib, those are the ones that you can count on.
But if you want to know what we have, you can go on the Mason Health website, you can look up the menu. But I would encourage everyone to come here. I think sometimes people don't know that we're using the same ingredients at Fine Dining.
We have hired so many incredible, talented chefs that just want to be here. Some of them worked at a lot of the restaurants around here, so sorry if I have one of your past employees, but they're fantastic. We'll put the links to those in the notes here for folks as well.
We'll let you get back to it and it's a great opportunity for folks to come and visit in, see what's going on, not only just at the hospital itself, but the reopening of the Mountain View Cafe. It was just earlier in the month of February and a lot of folks have been talking about how great it is to be reopened. Ashley, thank you.
Yeah, thanks Jeff. Nice to meet you.