Relish seeks to become a community gathering place
By Halle Wyatt, Reporter
  For over 15 years, The Hardware Store Restaurant has acted as a community hearth. Melinda Powers, the restaurant’s owner, is now looking to expand with the opening of her new business, Relish, right next door.
  Relish is a cooking school that offers both a wide variety of classes every month, as well as instruction on home and life organization. Classes officially began in early December.
  “We want to empower people to be able to know how to cook a handful of great meals,” Powers said.
  Powers’s goal is for Relish to become a place where islanders can reconnect with important values of community values and self-education.
  “Food and drink are part of our most basic needs, and we nurture each other with the gift of good food,” Powers said. “At the most basic level, it starts with taking care of ourselves and our families.”
  Powers believes that a place like Relish has the ability to strengthen bonds between community members.
  “If every community did something on this scale across the United States, I feel like we’d have healthier communities,” Powers said. “If you have healthier communities, you have a healthier country. It’s such a small thing … but sometimes those small things ultimately make a big difference.”
  To Powers, this philosophy is what made The Hardware Store the community space she envisioned for it since its transformation from a literal hardware store to a restaurant.
  “When I do anything, I try to have a vision around it that’s bigger than the thing,” she said. “When I opened The Hardware Store, it wasn’t just about opening a restaurant; it was about creating a gathering place for the community.”
  Powers has a similar vision of creating a social hub with Relish. She hopes that her morals and message will transfer next door.
  “I wanted to create a gathering place where people would come and enrich themselves, work with their hands, their heart, their head,” Powers said. “Put it all together to create something, nourish people, have them leave having learned a new skill they can teach someone else.”
  So far, classes such as “Making Holiday Cookies Together” and “Recipes for Beautiful Skin” have been offered. Classes are typically two hours long and cost $75 per person. In addition to the instruction, food and drinks are always served. Powers plans to integrate hundreds of classes in the future, including basic classes for meal planning, organization, preparation, and meal shopping. She will also offer classes exclusively for kids and teens, and hopes to run cooking camps in the summer.
  Relish is also available to be rented for private dining events. Customers have the option of catered parties or an interactive cooking experience where a chef will give their party a personal lesson.
  Shauna Ahearn, commonly known as the blogger “Gluten-Free Girl,” is working closely with Powers as a teacher.
  “The participants who are there make the community,” Ahearn said. “Melinda and I both really feel that … Relish will be…what people say they want.”
  Ahearn is confident that the business will be a success.
  “We hope people will see it as a refuge,” Ahearn said, “a place where they can go in terribly rainy, wintery, weather … [and] a well-lit place where they feel at home.”
  Powers believes that the educational yet social atmosphere of the business has made it an enjoyable place for people to come. It is of particular importance to Powers that the business utilizes local resources to add to the space’s open ambiance.
  “Everything you see in here was born on Vashon,” Powers said in reference to the interior design of Relish. “We used all local people, and all of our materials are local.”
  Powers hopes the new business will become a permanent island fixture.
  “I want to get back to creating for ourselves,” she said. “It’s good to get back to basics and see what’s important in our life.”
  Classes can be booked online via the business’s website, relishvashon.com.