29-01-2025
Soup, salad, monstera? Have your next lunch date inside this breezy Pierce County nursery
Nurseries can be a sort of refuge, a quiet place where you can get lost in part-sun and part-shade, where the woes of the world can soak into the dirt instead of settling in your soul. What if they also served lunch?
While other restaurants dot their shelves and windows with dangling philodendrons and towering ficus, Terrace Café lives among plants in a more literal sense. It's located inside the inside the 32,500-square-foot Watson's Greenhouse on Pioneer Way East, in what is technically Puyallup.
I had been to Watson's a few times in search of yet another houseplant I definitely didn't need or a particular varietal of lavender to add to the butterfly garden — or maybe it was solace and a snack. So it was that I found myself at Watson's one day last spring, although I'm pretty sure I also left with a plant.
The server/host kindly asked if I had a reservation. It was a weekday, about 10:30 a.m., and I thought it odd that I would have bothered. First, I was alone, and second, how busy could it be?
Then I noticed the white placards on most of the tables that read, 'RESERVED.' By the time I was crunching away on a super-parmed Caesar salad, wanting even more of the delightful housemade croutons, the place was abuzz.
Huh. So this is where ladies lunch.
What was for years nothing more than a modest coffee bar has been transformed into a full-service restaurant with a professional kitchen that offers seasonal salads and flatbreads, sandwiches and soup, hearty plates of short ribs and roast chicken. Since its debut one year ago, the menu has changed a few times, largely with the seasons. Executive chef Jordan Fisher will shake things up again come March.
The cavatappi, for instance, has transitioned from a decadent Dungeness crab mac to the current version, the curly-cue pasta tossed in the pan with a creamy tomato sauce and Italian meatballs made with beef from Royal Family Farms in Central Washington. The summer presented halibut with pesto butter and Copper River salmon with asparagus risotto.
Handhelds have ranged from sliced steak with garlic aioli to chipotle chicken with smoked gouda, and since last August have included breakfast sandwiches, like the classic with Tillamook smoked cheddar and red-pepper jelly or one with bacon, a folded egg and sundried tomato schmear. This fall and winter, the rotating sourdough grilled cheese blends brie and gruyere with a jammy note of cranberry and sliced pear.
Espresso drinks with Monroe's Vinaccio Coffee also vary, such as winter's vanilla-eggnog that evokes crème brûlée. They pair perfectly with the homemade pastries — a compelling reason to take the Pioneer Way route between Tacoma and Puyallup in 2025.
Pastry chef Vanessa Poisson previously baked at Zylberschtein's, the Jewish-style deli and bakery in Seattle's Pinehurst neighborhood. Her case at Terrace holds bagels, cookies, sourdough cinnamon buns, wonderfully knobby scones, muffins, quickbreads and croissants. Homemade ice cream and luscious cheesecake are among the plated sweet treats.
The only thing missing is house bread, which is sourced instead from Macrina Bakery.
Watson's has had a cafe since the late 1990s when the family built the big, Belgian greenhouse that now holds seemingly endless houseplants and homewares. They leased it to several tenants over the years, most of whom ran it as a coffee shop with pastries and light bites. They had 'been kind of marinating' on the idea of taking it under their wing and kicking it up a notch, explained CEO Maidee Watson.
'We knew how to run a garden center,' she added. 'We didn't know how to run a restaurant, but we knew what we wanted.'
The Watsons have been in the plant business since 1974 when Maidee and her mother, Fran, developed a little U-pick patch. They grew all sorts of produce but customer sales — from a garage — hinged on cucumbers and beans, recalled Watson recently.
Her late father, Don, had always 'wanted land he could grow things on,' she said. He continued teaching high-school biology for another decade before joining his daughter and wife at the family business full-time. Larry's Market, a regional grocery chain that fell into bankruptcy in the early 2000s, asked them to grow bedding plants. So they built a greenhouse and on Valentine's Day 1984 hung a cowbell near the makeshift entrance.
'We didn't know if anyone would come out this way, but people started showing up,' said Maidee. 'They did, even the first day … Now all three of my sons work here.'
Today the nursery is at least four times its original size, growing 'almost all our own annuals,' she added. In 2021 they opened a small second shop in Federal Way and last November took over Bark and Garden Center in Olympia.
In Puyallup, the then-cafe tenant kept it closed during the pandemic. Amid many pivots — Watson's had never sold a thing online until 2020 — the family decided it was time.
In 2023, Maidee's son Addison, a graphic designer by study, fleshed out the concept and aesthetic. They completely overhauled the layout and greatly expanded its footprint with the help of their in-house construction team. (Garden centers, it turns out, always have a need for custom builds.)
I wish they would bring back the beautiful, flaky, fluffy quiche, whose Instagram image first compelled me to visit. On a subsequent late-lunch date — a friend and I made a 1 p.m. reservation — the day's allotment had already been consumed. I get it; the egg game got weird last year, and people can get angry when menu items are M.I.A. There's plenty more to dig.
The family's ambition is to nurture a café as reliable as their core businesss, and Terrace is 'the food representation of Watson's,' said Fisher.
It all feels inextricably intertwined with the rest of the greenhouse. They went with a streamlined, timeless black-and-white theme, a smart move. Let the plants do the talking — most restaurants would kill for this kind of natural light.
▪ 6211 Pioneer Way E, Puyallup, 253-251-25274,
▪ Details: full-service coffee shop and cafe with breakfast, lunch, house pastries, wine and beer; catering and private event rentals available
▪ Reservations: recommended on weekends and peak lunch hours, but walk-ins welcome
