Once Upon a Thyme — Restaurant in Chehalis

We stopped by this cute little, local spot while driving to the farmers market on Friday. We worked up an appetite walking a state park about twenty minutes south. As they are want to do, our planned activities took longer than expected, so the short of it is we ended up running later than intended. This meant we were arriving half an hour before close. We wanted a spot to give our little putz a chance to drink water and nibble kibble while we ate, so we requested a spot on the front porch. I finagled some menus and walked back in shortly to place our orders, trying to keep things moving quickly so as not to be bothersome upon the impending countdown to closing time.

I did request some water for my mutt and they were happy to let me use a to-go soup container which was more than enough. There is a water dispenser in the dining room, so you can grab a water cup and fill for yourself if you're bipedal.

I noted they had gluten free torte, carrot cake and cookies in a display case and requested one of each to go, knowing we wouldn't have the room after a sandwich and chips. They have unsweetened, in-house, ginger peach and hibiscus-blueberry iced teas. I ordered one of each, figuring my husband and I would have a preferred. He barely preferred the hibiscus, which surprised me as there is a nice tart, background note from the fruit. The ginger peach is just sweet...even without being sweetened.

He had the meatloaf sandwich. I had the brisket, which comes with onion, provolone and BBQ sauce. If I thought about it, I would probably have had them take the cheese off. I'm glad I didn't. I normally think brisket is delicious enough on it's own...let it have the spotlight. They make their own, in-house brisket as well, and it is damn delicious....perfectly tender and flavorful. They sliced it thin for the sandwich. The onions are hand sliced and not too thin or thick. The whole amalgamation was a delicious dance across my taste buds. The chips are loose, ripple cut, potato chips. The spouse says the meatloaf was perfection. He was hesitant to order it, as I guess most of the time it has too much onion in his opinion, or they drown it in ketchup. I tried a bite of his and found it to be moist and reminiscent of a square, slice of meatball (in a complex flavored good way) with marinara sauce. We both had the Udi's gluten free bread due to allergies. They use the good, multigrain one and it was delicious toasted on the panini press. He also tried a bite of my brisket and said it was juicier than he expected. He is usually not a fan and said this was good.

I paid in advance, when I brought the menus back in, again trying to keep us on schedule for getting out of their hair by close. The waitress was friendly and quick to clear the table. I left a bit of sandwich and chips, as I just don't eat much and couldn't finish. We were on the road for another hour, so I wasn't going to try and take anything home.

When we were home the next evening, we shared the deserts with our daughter, who just knew we had sugar so she joined us for dinner and a laundry pit-stop as a newly flown fledgling. She didn't care for the chocolate, chocolate chip cookie (soft and delicious goodness), but she said the torte was good. We were blown away by the carrot cake. We agreed it would be worth a drive to special order a whole cake, despite being about forty-five minutes away. There were obvious pieces of grated carrot, raisins and pineapple. This is real, scratch carrot cake and the cream cheese frosting (to quote a fan of theirs) was "on point".

The front porch has five small, tables, so there is more seating out there than it looks like. I highly recommend this place. I did not get sick from contamination, so they were careful.

There is a gravel parking lot, on the south side of the building, or right side if you are facing the front from the street. There is also a small shop in the back, selling honey, fruits...

4.5 stars from us. as with a lot of folks, we learned of this place through DD&D so we timed our trip through the area for lunch. off the beaten path but worth seeking. eclectic decor makes the wait pass easily. wide ranging menu with interesting ingredient combinations for sandwiches both hot and cold, served on homemade breads. also serving soups and salads. wife chose to go light today and order the salad special along with one of the days soups, salmon bisque. the salad was a local beets and berries combination served with sliced almonds. she enjoyed this very much, with the fresh berries adding a nice sweetness to the tart beets. my order was the hot panini with homemade meatloaf. this was served on a rustic white bread and included marinara, pesto, and grilled onions. staff gladly swapped the cheese from havarti to my preferred cheddar. the sandwich was wonderful, full of flavor but without any one ingredient overpowering the rest. the bread was delicious and perfectly grilled. the meatloaf had great flavor-did i detect a hint of Italian sausage in there? anyway, it was a top sandwich for my '22 dining so far. the one issue we had was with the salmon bisque, which i chose a cup of to go with my meal. First let me say that the whole grain bread they serve with the soup is phenomenally good. Moist and flavorful, I’d buy loaves if I could. it’s that good. The soup smelled great and the broth was very tasty but we just could not get past the unpleasant texture of the salmon meat that was in the soup. truly a bisque should be a cream soup without chunks and this version unfortunately brought to mind the texture of pet food. we would not order again and do suggest a recipe revamp on this. this is the only thing keeping the review from being 5 stars. by the way, the pastries & cakes looked fantastic and it took all my willpower not to try the wonderful looking carrot cake. next time. IMO if you are ever coming this way, you won't find a better...

I’d been enjoying Once Upon a Thyme ever since I moved to the area a couple years ago as the food is tasty & the people have been nice. I recommend their soups- I always get a mix of both daily soups when I stop by. But on my most recent visit yesterday, I was very surprised to hear the staff in back ask the cashier loudly if I wanted something else with my order- and they referred to me as “he” (?!). For reference, I’m a 40 year old woman who happens to have short hair (as so many of us lesbians do) so it was quite a shock to me that the staff chose to loudly call me a “he”, instead of a “she”, which is what I’ve been my whole life since birth back in the mid 80s. I’m pretty sure by 2025 most people in the world know that short haired women exist, right?? We aren’t men just cause we cut our hair. (I’m not trans or anything fancy, just a plain old boring lesbian woman who has short hair, as tons of us do🧓🏼). It was especially confusing for me as I’ve been going there for almost 2 years now & I never once knew the staff mistook me for a man- I always thought they correctly saw me as a woman, until hearing them loudly call me “he” yesterday. It caught me so off guard that I truly didn’t know what to say in the moment but figured I should let you know in a review what happened & why it surprised/offended me. It’s a shame because I did love taking guests here whenever they visit me, but since many of them are also short haired women, we’ll choose a different restaurant for now, where we won’t loudly be mistaken for men for no reason.🤦🏻 Thank you for the soup & good memories (other than...