Sea Breeze Farm

Saw this shop while strolling through Ballard Sunday Farmers Market. The guy with the hat was rude. We wanted to try some cheese but he would only sell it to us. I only want a few slices and he cut me over a ¹⁄₃ of a lb at $ 24/​lb. Of course the cheese was just mediocre.

I haven’t been to the farm yet but I have been to the farmers market where they frequent. Some of the best porchetta I have ever had, great pâté, great sausages, everything is really good! 5 stars without hesitation.

I visit these guys at the University District farmers market every Saturday. Their stuff is not inexpensive, but the quality is amazing. Love their breakfast sausage. It comes ground and not in a tube and I grill it and then cook an egg or two with it and mix it all together. Wow — better than a restaurant by far. They have good raw milk as well. And lots of other good meats, but I usually just get the sausage. Oh, they’re really friendly too — which never hurts.

The pâté, bacon, and brisket were really good. However, I will never spend one red cent there ever again. The guy in the hat is way too rude and arrogant for us to ever try this place again. He treated the folks before us rude, us rude, and the folks behind us rudely (she stomped away). Other farms have comparable products and are polite… I am pretty easy going too.

This meat vendor is one of my favorites at the farmers market. The pork sugo is delicious, and the spaghetti sauce is very good too.
They also have some unusual meat items. Check them out!

I saw this place on Andrew Zimmern and he made it look sooo good, so I made my bf take me here for our 4^th anniversary in September. I booked a lunch reservation so we could enjoy the views from the ferry to Vashon and dine outside. Our friend and her baby also came with us so the four of us got a table under a tree outside.
Service was really nice. The menu was very limited at lunch so we were able to make our decisions very quickly. We split the charcuterie plate which had a lot of assorted pates — I wasn’t really a fan, but my bf seemed to really enjoy it. I ordered the BLT (one of their signature items) as my entrée and I enjoyed it. The bacon was very thick cut but it wasn’t limp or overly greasy. The bread was fresh and crusty.
We split two desserts between three people — a strawberry shortcake and a blackberry tart — and they were both perfect summertime desserts.
I would come here again if Vashon wasn’t so darn hard to get to!

Best Pork Chops I have ever had. No question. Got them at the University Farmer’s Market. Brined them for a few hours and grilled them using a meat thermometer. 150 inside temp. Can’t wait to do it again.

I just moved to Seattle from LA where a kids can buy a 1360 calorie cheese burger but raw milk is illegal. What a nice surprise to find Sea Breeze at the University Farmer’s Market with their incredible grass-​fed raw milk. My coffee and fruit loops never tasted so good as they did this morning. I can’t wait to visit their farm and sample all of the wholesome goodness other have described here on Unilocal

1) Outstanding dinner at a warm, obscure, intimate, and off the beaten path agriturismo-​style restaurant on Vashon Island. (Feast on the deck in season…)
2) Amazing meat counter, complete with appetizing and unusual pig parts, cured meats, and delicious sausages for sale and displayed in the butcher case.
3) Fresh and delicious retail farmstead foods (and cheeses, and wines, and carbonated sodas, and all manner of preserved foods…)
Sea Breeze is all three of the above. If you like their farmers market offerings, it is well worth traveling to Vashon to eat at their restaurant. If you’ve never been to Vashon, it is a great reason to visit. (If you’re vegetarian, go for a cheese plate, a glass of wine, or dessert… but don’t expect an entrée!)
Wonderful food; try the gnocchi w/​braised goat if they have it, or the confit chicken, or the sausages. If there are four of you, start with the cheese and charcuterie plates. The wine is quaffable and not too expensive, but my tip would be to bring an outstanding bottle of your own to match the high quality of the rest of the meal if you are a serious oenophile…
Eating at this meat-​focused restaurant is as close as I’ve come in the US to eating at countryside agriturismo restaurants in Tuscany and Piedmont. The owner, his wife, and/​or the farm manager are very likely to be serving you, and will give you as much information about the food as you’d like to hear.

This place offers fresh food right off the farm. We called ahead of time letting them know that we dont eat meat. We were told that wasnt a problem. We had a wine tasting along with a cheese plate and two salads to the tune of 86.00. What a rip off. I was in such shock I just paid and left. That is my fault I should have said something right off. Granted everything was fresh and made from their farm, but I am sorry 86 for a salad and a cheese plate? Please… The wine tasting was not good the girl didnt even explain the wines. Oh well. BEWARE

This is my first Unilocal review, I just signed up because I feel compelled to tell the world the Sea Breeze Farm has amazing superlative meat.
The chicken and the lamb I have purchased from Sea Breeze Farm were more intensely flavorful than any other meat I have ever eaten. I buy meat from a variety of local farms, and Sea Breeze is more spendy but also more delcious, a great special occasion purchase.
The milk, cream and stock are also favorites of mine.
I shop at their Ballard farmer’s market booth and their service has been very helpful and friendly. They gave me helpful suggestings for cooking and storing my meat.
Enjoy!

There is more to this farm than I can possibly review here, but I will try. I am writing now not only as a customer, but also as someone that has known George and Kristin since before the farm existed. I have watched their struggles trying to create a dream of cuisine, culture and sustainability and now it has become a standard by which I measure most of my food consumption.
As a business, running a farm is difficult, especially an alternative model such as this. As such, there have been a number of glitches that sometimes make the customer experience variable, but that is also what makes it special. It is real and that frustrates some people. The products, service, availability and experience all change daily because the world changes daily. Sea Breeze has always first and foremost served one goal above all else — to create /​raise /​grow the most most natural, excellent and nutritious food possible using time honored traditions & methods. That being said, it is very labor intensive. A bad storm may ruin this week’s market goods or a simple infection can wipe out your winter’s supply of chicken. The farm must continue, the people that work it have to live and eat and heat their house, the prices sometimes go up. You pay a premium, but you get a premium. The philosophy here is pay more, but also get more. More nutrition. More flavor. More community. More tradition. More culture. And for those that complain there needs to be more customer service, did you realize there was not a SINGLE booth at the farmer’s market that accepted credit cards until George found a way to make it happen?! How about wine? Meats? Raw Milk? So much more… this farm has innovated not just with regards to food but also in how to bring that food to a market like Seattle and make it accessible and conevnient. But convenience will always take a backseat to the product and to the relationships of the people surrounding it, and that is how it should be.
The products don’t always look like what you are used to seeing in a store and the flavors are also often different, but that is because we have forgotten what food actually looks and tastes like. We have been duped into believing that the shrink-​wrapped chicken in a store is what chicken looks like. Sea Breeze has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to reviving traditions of raising animals, making cheese, butter, wine, sausage, cured meats, etc… George is driven and he works more hours in a day than most of you. The market stands are often overwhelmed with people. They are tired, but they love what they do, but they can’t always cater to you as if you are royalty. You are not. You are just human, as are they. So, be patient and be generous with your time and your spirit. This is not just about buying food, it is about buying into a different way of living within a community.
For the foodies out there, you will have a hard time finding products superior to George’s. From the intensive pasture model he uses to raise his animals to the creative curing and cuts of his meat, you will find that the quality here is top notch. His eggs are outrageously priced, but they are outrageously good too. Try it, buy a cheap dozen from Safeway, then buy a good «organic» egg at Whole Foods and then buy some of these eggs. Hard boil each and compare. The same goes for most everything here.
If you truly want to treat yourself, be sure to head out to Vashon Island, stop by the farm and then have a meal at their restaurant, La Boucherie. You can also buy their farm products here, including raw milks & cheese. The dining, the life and the community, it is an entire package and I hoep it continues as a model to others about the type of food industry we should have and should support!

I too have never been to the farm itself but have spent oodles of money and time at their stand at the west seattle market.
Some of the best lamb I have ever tasted came from these guys, and their charcouterie is to die for.
Yeah the guys are little rude but you’d be rude to if you’d been there since 4 am standing in the rain. So i deal with it but will always get my special occaision stuff here.

That bloke with the Tom Waits hat is the rudest person in the entire University District Farmers Market — it was either that I appeared to be as tiny as an invisible ant, or that he only panders to long time customers and people who buy 8lbs of smoked ham a week. Waited for 15 minutes right under his nose, was rudely IGNORED, and the person right behind me was promptly served.
Thanks for giving pigs, cows and chickens a good life but I’ll take my raw milk buying to some other farm that deserves it.

I can’t speak to the farm itself, only the delicious goodies the farm has bestowed upon the world.
Dear lord, the meats they provide to me at the Madrona Farmers market are outta control. They have changed the way I think about pork, which I already worshipped.
The chops have about ½ in. of fat around them (see pictures) and are juicier than you can imagine.
The bacon brings back memories of some proto-​childhood conception of what bacon was. It’s like eating the essence of a morning, campfire breakfast sprinkled with nostalgia. I almost wept.
Also, they have new goodies every week: homemade butter, raw milk, paté, pasta sauces, ricotta, mozzarella, and more!
Also, I’ve found the folks (John) to be the nicest, most approachable vendors there.

We bought some stuff from Sea Breeze farms at the Ballard Farmers Market. You could tell they have a dedicated following, the owner seemed to recognize everyone and know what they wanted.
Mitchell got the chance to try head cheese — turns out it’s very very fatty. We bought a big hunk of bacon, not slices, but a big, fatty, smoky, hunk! Our whole refrigerator smelled amazing for the week and a half it managed to survive our devouring it. My only complaint is it’s really hard to slice your own thin bacon slices. And the bacon was so fatty you had to cook it a pretty long time to get crispy. It also had a very strong smoky flavor which had a tendency to mask other flavors.
Tonight we opened up our bottle of Cock’s Red by Sweetbread Cellars. It’s a 2005 and the guy who sold it to me said it was his favorite. It was good, with a sweet tobacco smell combined with cherry. Mitchell claimed it’s nose was like pipe tobacco. It’s a blend and went ok with my burger, but really well with a reese’s peanut butter cup. So I declare it good with dessert!
Check them out at the Ballard FM on Sundays!

I’m really disappointed a never had a chance to enjoy anything from their new location by IGA market. I wanted to use some of their eggs and if I liked those go on to the cheese-​etc etc. The staff was just so slow and rude– I couldn’t stand being in there. Every question I had took five minutes to answer– with the rate of about a single sentence a minute. Very surly. I might get over the venomous rudeness by summer and try again.
It’s just too snarky for even an island business– I’m sorry. But I left before he came back from the back room after being there half an hour and being ignored for 25 minutes while he arranged things on a shelf.
Yeah– I clocked it, twenty five minutes of ignoring the woman standing ten feet from him and five of him being as rude as possible– I think trying to move me out the door.

Pigs are the most intelligent of the domesticated animals and are as well or better trainable than dogs. That’s the word from PBS anyway. A little knowledge can be a bitter pill and this snippet produced a few pangs of guilt last week as I wolfed down some of the juiciest, tenderest pork loin chops I’ve ever eaten. I consoled myself with the thought that this particular pig had spent its life happily wallowing in mud, roaming Seabreeze Farm doing what pigs naturally do, and hadn’t been injected with hormones or antibiotics or fed chemical laden feed. A good life for a pig up until butchering time.
I spent the next week wondering if I could actually give up bacon forever (*shudder*) and still hadn’t made up my mind by Saturday morning when I made my weekly trek to the University District Farmers Market. I headed straight for the Seabreeze Farm stand and noted with intense relief that chicken was back on the menu! I could put off the «omnivore’s dilemma» for at least another week. (Forgive me, but Michael Pollan’s book has changed me forever). I bought a chicken and roasted it with olive oil, kosher salt and rosemary that night. My son pronounced it «the best tasting chicken I’ve ever eaten in my life. That is THE BEST chicken.» He’s only 15, so while that’s really not a long enough life to reasonably judge a lot of things, in this case he was right. This chicken too had spent its life roaming a pasture without fear of being injected and fed with unnatural substances. The intelligence level of the chicken bothered me far less than the pig, having spent my youth raising chickens on the same island this chicken came from. Chickens are rather dim, pretty much devoid of affection and can get vicious when gathering their eggs. (It’s not fertilized and will never hatch anyway you dumb clucker — we didn’t have a rooster).
I count myself a regular customer of Seabreeze Farm now. Lactose intolerant me can tolerate their creamy, rich raw milk, and the duck eggs are loaded with flavor. Vache de Vashon raw milk cheese is creamy, slightly tangy and melts beautifully. Yes, I paid around $ 20 for a chicken that fed 3 people and whose carcass is now simmering in a pot for stock. I’d have to pay that or more for just a quarter of a chicken and some vegetables in a decent restaurant. A quart of milk is $ 4, but it isn’t pasteurized and is milked from free ranging, grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free cows. If you don’t know why that matters (a lot) read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’.
I don’t compare prices of sustainably and organically farmed products with the prices at my local Safeway. If you know anything about our food industry and farming you wouldn’t either. I compare it to a good meal at a good restaurant, and from that viewpoint it’s a bargain. Seabreeze has a number of products I have yet to try, including stocks, demi-​glacé, WINE, sausages (dare I?) and lamb. You can visit their farm on Vashon (I haven’t yet) and find them at the U District Farmers Market on Saturdays and the Ballard Farmers Market on Sundays. They even take credit cards. They’ll be getting my business for as long as they (and I) are around. I’m hoping that will be a long, long time. Me, I mean. ;-)