Chehalis Mainstay Mackinaw’s Weathering Coronavirus Downturn

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Laurel Khan still gets a bit of stage fright every night she prepares dinner service at her restaurant. Khan, the owner, founder and executive chef at Mackinaw’s in Chehalis, strives for perfection. But when she sees a plate return with food left on it, more often than not it’s because the customer couldn’t finish it all, not because they didn’t like it.

“You’ve got to be on your feet all the time,” Khan said. “It’s a huge challenge. I love it.”

Khan obtained her culinary skills while working at a million-dollar, two-Michelin-star restaurant, Tru, in Chicago, fresh out of Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in 2005-06. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t rise above working in cold service there, such as preparing caviar. She wanted to get to the stoves, grills and flat tops.

“I did notice as a woman chef that it’s hard to work your way up the hot side, in kitchen terms, the one on the stove and not just doing salad or desserts,” Khan said. “Which a lot of women get stuck doing.”

She grew up in a business-like family, as her dad is an entrepreneur, so she figured the best way for her to be happy was to have her own business and run the kitchen the way she wanted to.

Mackinaw’s, started by Khan in 2007, has a menu that she wouldn’t quite call fine dining, but it’s the closest Lewis County food gets to it. It’s homemade cooking jazzed up with top-notch ingredients. Her menu pre-coronavirus outbreak included dishes such as filet mignon, braised rabbit and duck breast.

“I try to say it’s upscale,” Khan said. “The dining experience in the United States is relatively new. It kind of came about in the 60s and 70s.”

In addition to her main menu, she has a “curious menu,” which features what she calls “down and dirty food.” Dishes, pre-coronavirus, included Korean barbecue wings, Chicago Vienna dogs and fried battered green beans with spicy ranch. 

Most importantly, she’s wanted to combine affordable down-home American cuisine with a European-style communal dining experience.

“I wanted to bring that more than anything here,” Khan said. “People have different courses, sit, drink wine and just socialize and sit around the table together.”

That, of course, has been put on hold the past month with the in-dining restrictions across the state. Khan has adapted her menu to reflect this shift to delivery and pickup service. 

The main menu now has dishes such as pork belly “mackin” cheese ($19), parmesan-crusted white fish ($20), smoked ribeye ($31) and chicken ravioli ($21), all items that will stay intact and delicious through delivery and curbside pickup.

“If you look at my food, it’s pretty much what I would have had for Sunday dinner back in my day,” Khan said.

The curious menu also has changed with items such as smash burgers with smoked gouda and caramelized onions ($12), New Orleans barbecue shrimp ($13) and firepot ($15), which is clams, mussels and sausage in a spicy tomato broth.

Even though her menu includes dishes not often found anywhere else in Lewis County, she prepares and cooks them the old way, like one’s grandmother would, still stirring food with a wooden spoon. 

Ethnic food is her specialty however, born from traveling and tasting a wide range of meals. Her ex-husband, Khalid Khan, is Pakistani, so she has a background in cooking with spices from that region. His family lived with them for a while, so she learned from them and also traveled to Pakistan. It helped her come up with her own version of an oxtail curry, known in India as nihari, which is a slow-cooked beef curry stew with basmati rice and veggies.

“Many other cultures use a lot more spice than North American culture,” Khan said.

But the past month has flipped everything upside down for Khan and Mackinaw’s. When Gov. Jay Inslee first mandated the closure of in-house dining, she was upset with the validity and reasons for it. She knew her restaurant, as well as every other one across the state, would be severely affected. By day three, she shifted her mindset to persevering and saw it as a challenge to better herself and her establishment.

“I took this as I have a huge challenge in front of me,” Khan said. “My numbers aren’t going to be the same, the whole to-go thing, the food is going to sit for maybe 10 minutes in someone’s car. I was used to onto the plate, onto the table. I needed to not rest on my laurels.”

All of a sudden, things like having customers come into the kitchen to give her a hug and seeing their pleased reactions in the dining room, reasons why she does this job, were gone. Now she’s been in survival mode, learning to crunch the numbers to stay afloat, not only for the community but for her employees.

“It’s like, ‘OK, this is what I have to do.’ And I’m actually enjoying the challenge,” Khan said. “With that attitude, my business is going to be as strong as it always will. It’s about people being happy and enjoying the meal.”

She’s been able to keep the same number of employees, about six, since before the coronavirus outbreak. The one downside is she often hasn’t been bringing her own paycheck home this past month.

“It’s been super rewarding,” Khan said. “I just look at it as giving and that’s what I’m here for. I just know in the future that I will bring a paycheck home. I’m good with that. Right now it’s time for me to be the one who’s sacrificing. ... I have to be hopeful.”

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Reporter Eric Trent can be reached at etrent@chronline.com. Visit chronline.com/business for more coverage of local businesses.