Good breads, pastries and sandwiches at the Walla Walla Bread Company

Here’s what the wine industry can do for a place. As recently as the late 1990s, Walla Walla was a relatively sleepy farm town that produced wheat and its signature sweet onions. Oh, and it had maybe three wineries.

Fast forward to today, when the number of area wineries has exploded to more than 200. You can tour a good number of them over a few days. Or you can take the more efficient route and stumble through a dozen tasting rooms in a couple of downtown blocks.

Walla Walla has a few other things going for it. Like gorgeous surrounding farmland and an impressive, well-kept downtown, with wide, shaded streets and lots of restored, historic brick buildings. It thus attracts not just wine sippers but also a growing number of retirees.

Dog sculpture in Walla Walla’s lovely historic downtown

Where there’s good wine, there’s invariably good food (you have to pair those merlots and chardonnays with something!) And while the wine crowd tends to prefer haute cuisine, enterprising road trippers can find some great, creative eats at most reasonable prices.

Could you resist this fresh fruit pie at Walla Walla Bread Company?

Besides the places I’ve been writing about the past week, I would add Olive Marketplace and Cafe (try the wood-fired pizzas) Walla Walla Bread Company for pastries and sandwiches and the unique Walla Walla Worm Ranch, serving good Mexican inside a bait-and-tackle shop. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a streetside dog at Walla Walla Sweet Onion Sausage.

Beautiful deli display at Olive Marketplace and Cafe

Overall, I’d rate Walla Walla a top road-trip food destination for a city its size (population 32,000) in the Pacific Northwest.

Kevin tends the grill at fabulous Andrae’s Kitchen in Walla Walla, Washington

This can’t be right, I’m thinking, as I drive around and around a gas station in Walla Walla, Washington. Finally, I go into the attached convenience store and there, just off to the cashier’s side, it is: *Andrae’s Kitchen.

Andrae’s is serving up no convenience store snacks, let me tell you, but scratch-made breakfasts and lunches, produced in a little, open kitchen. And diverse to boot. How about a pork schnitzel sandwich, halal-spiced chicken, short-rib tacos or grilled corn salad? They even sometimes slow-roast pigs and goats out back.

Andrae’s Kitchen is inside a Walla Walla gas-station convenience store

It’s the brainchild of Andrae Bopp, a French-trained chef who migrated to Walla Walla and eventually set up this gas-station kitchen, along with a roaming truck.

“I wanted to cook, not just open bags,” says Kevin, who’s running the early morning grill. “I’ve learned more here in three months than I did in five years at other places.”

He flips my perfectly over-easy eggs onto a toasted biscuit, melts some topping cheese under a lid. Voila, I’ve got a first-class breakfast biscuit ($5), which I scarf down at a plastic table.

A great, inexpensive breakfast biscuit

It seems Andrae has made a convert of the convenience store cashier, too. “You’ve got to try the Voodoo fries (with pulled pork),” he calls out to me as he’s rings up a gas purchase. “I never knew French fries could be a meal.”

Andrae’s Kitchen
706 West Rose Street (Co-op gas station), Walla Walla, Washington (check the web site for truck locations)
Daily 6 am-6 pm, except 6 am-4 pm Sunday at the Co-op