Washington top chef Mike Easton announced big restaurant news on multiple fronts on Wednesday morning: The four-time James Beard Award nominee has shuttered his renowned Bar Bacetto in Waitsburg. He plans to open Bacetto’s Detroit Style, his hotly anticipated Walla Walla pizzeria , at 5 p.m.
today . And he has taken on the role of executive chef role at high-end winery restaurant The Kitchen at Abeja, also in Walla Walla. Originally renowned in Seattle and beyond for his late, great pasta spot, Il Corvo, and upscale Italian favorite, Il Nido , Easton sold the latter to two staffers and decamped to Eastern Washington in 2022.
There, in historic Waitsburg, he and his wife Erin Easton opened Bar Bacetto , and the small-town restaurant housed in an 1884 Oddfellows Hall building quickly gained major acclaim — first landing on local and national lists, then getting Beard finalist status in the nationwide category of Best New Restaurant this past spring. More Now Easton has put Bar Bacetto on indefinite hiatus. He calls the restaurant “a really beautiful thing that we did out there,” and “a success in many, many ways,” but, he says, “financial longevity is not necessarily one of them.
” It’s unlikely, he notes, that the place will return in its original form. But as Easton closes one door, he opens another — and then some. Pending a final health department inspection Wednesday morning, today marks the opening of his new project, Bacetto’s Detroit Style, located .
