We’re proud to present our new menu for Winter 2012, focusing on ingredients from — and flavors for — this season of indulgent comfort food.

As always, our menu is inspired by the traditional regional cooking of France, and as per tradition, we use the finest local ingredients wherever possible. We do our best to ensure that the produce, meat, and fish we use is farmed or harvested in a sustainable fashion, and are pleased to serve delicacies such as foie gras that is raised in a humane manner.

If you have any particular dietary requirements or allergies, please be sure to notify us at the time of your reservation.

Click here to see our menu for Winter 2012. 

Like many of our guests, Zoe & I love to eat out. More often than not, we feel like the chef is cooking at us, rather than for us. When we opened LPM, we thought that it would be nice to take into consideration our own style of cooking, our guest’s preferences, and match that to what was currently best, freshest, and à propos to the occasion.

In addition to our standard menu, we offer a 5-course prix fixe menu which I create every afternoon after visiting the market. Highlighting the day’s most inspiring ingredients and techniques, it offers our guests an introduction to the cuisine and leisurely pace that a multi-course meal offers.

I like to think of our Prix Fixe as a starting point to my preferred way of serving food at La Petite Maison – a variety of small courses until our guests tell us “Enough.” Then maybe a couple more courses, a pause, and something to finish the meal. Another pause, perhaps a digestif, and soon there’ll be room for another taste or two. I love the idea of spoiling our guests, and sending them home with some memories, and perhaps a little reminder of the night before for them to enjoy the morning after.

For small private groups of like-minded gourmands, we offer the Chef’s Table – for those wanting something a bit more special. It gives us a chance to get to know our most adventurous customers and share with them our favorite dishes while we recreate their own, paired with our cherished selections from our cellar.

— Chef Wells

Through our love & passion for wine, we’ve built an amazing cellar over the years, and now feel privileged to have a place to to share it with our guests.

At any given time we have over a hundred selections from our cellar of thousands, plus an incredible selection of wines by the glass, each thoughtfully paired to our current menu. Our cellar is both broad and deep, featuring wines at every price point, with a special focus on hand-crafted wines from our beloved France, and a selection of rarities from our own Washington State.

If you have your own special bottle you’d like to celebrate with, we offer corkage at $15 per bottle, maximum two bottles per table (2 x 750ml or equivalent).

For serious wine lovers, we have a reserve selection full of celebratory bottles with vintages dating back over 50 years, and will be pleased to develop a custom tasting menu around your preferences. Feel free to contact us directly if you’re interested in perusing our entire collection for a special bottle before your visit. If there’s a specific bottle of special significance to your event you’re interested in, let us know in advance and we will do our utmost to source it for you, be it a birth year, anniversary year, or a special producer whose wines are hard to find.

Due to the ever evolving nature of our wine program please feel free to contact us directly using the form below for our most up to date wine list.

The old farmhouse that is now home to La Petite Maison was built in 1903.

It was first converted into a restaurant in 1977 by a gent by the name of Rick O’Reilly. It eventually became the beloved Portofino, where we  had our first date, and eventually celebrated our wedding. When the restaurant became available, we thought it was serendipity and seized the opportunity to make it our own.

— Justin & Zoe Wells

A photographic tour of life behind-the-scenes at the restaurant.

Welcome to La Petite Maison, a restaurant dedicated to bringing a taste of French culture to Olympia, Washington.

We celebrate the French way of life with accessible fine dining, the freshest seasonal ingredients with a menu that changes daily, an extraordinary wine cellar curated over years of collecting wine, and the very highest level of service.

So tell us why Olympia needs another fine-dining restaurant?

Chef Wells: [laughs]

Zoe: We saw an opportunity in the market here in Olympia and thought that with Justin’s experience, our shared love of wine, and my time in the business of creative arts and event planning, we had the perfect shared experience to seize the opportunity, and embrace the challenge of owning and running a one of a kind fine dining establishment, catering to the growing sophistication and desire for more in Olympia.

Chef Wells: I feel like people need options. I feel like options keep everyone honest and on their game. Olympia has an incredible amount of corporate dining establishments, but our residents crave local food in the style and sophistication that has become more and more common across America during the “foodie revolution” of the past decade. If anyone was primed to give that to Olympians, we are.

Justin and I grew up in Olympia, we love Olympia, being able to stay in Olympia made the risk that much more worthwhile when we decided we wanted to make LPM a reality.”

— Zoe Wells

So was it more a factor of taking your own shared experiences with eating and drinking and exposing Olympians to a higher level of food, service, and wine?

Chef Wells: I think so. I think it stems from my wanting somewhere to eat out. My vision for LPM is crafted around a place that Zoe and I want to eat at. We constantly talk about what we would order, where we would want to sit, what we would order to drink, what we would think of the food, etc. if we ate at LPM as a customer.

Zoe: LPM is a huge gamble. Chef’s who choose to be selfish with their menus either knock it out of the park, or fail miserably. We’ve been lucky that the food, service, and the renovations we’ve done have been well received. I was born and raised in Olympia, and I have to say that we are blessed with an amazingly open-minded clientele that are looking for a decidedly different experience when it comes to eating at the farmhouse, and we’re thankful that so many people have found their home here.

Chef Wells: We knew the things we wanted to do, we just didn’t know if people would accept them. To us, the excellence we strive for is the standard. We don’t see it as being any other possibility.

Ultimately people should have a choice when dining out. People are becoming more and more discerning. The average cook at home is doing things only found in high end restaurants 15-20 years ago.

— Chef Wells

That leads us to the dining experience at LPM. The trend globally it seems has been to emulate the fussy presentation, small plates, and standoffish service of haute cuisine (the conceit of molecular gastronomy amongst the many recent trends), yet increasingly people seem to enjoy a more relaxed, casual dining experience with exemplary levels of food and wine service. Where does your philosophy fit in between those two extremes?

Chef Wells: To be honest, we take inspiration from everything that appeals to us, and find a way to make it work at LPM. I struggle with wanting to do things that are cute and fussy, generally utilizing my Amuse course to do something whimsical and a little bit out there, even if it’s a bit contrived.

Zoe: We’re squarely on the side of the democratization of fine dining. We want people to feel comfortable and at home when they eat here, but that’s not to say that in any way our food, service, and wine are anything but the same level of 3-star service we strive for. There’s no reason that casual and perfection can’t combine together to form the perfect experience when dining out.

Chef Wells: I think the leisurely pace of LPM works well with more traditional, comfort foods. It works better with a wider range of wines. We have clients who want to eat meat and potatoes, and we have clients who want to be wowed with every single course that hits the table, and everything in between. I think we strive to strike a balance. More and more clients are returning and leaving themselves in our hands to show them what we’re about.  I love chatting with a table and gleaning a bit of info before I start their meal. With food, just like wine, we try to work with what people love to eat and drink. Just a tiny bit of info can make a huge difference in our ability to give people exactly the experience they’re after.

Zoe: Ultimately, I think Justin would be most gratified if people said to him, “Just cook for me.” He has an amazing ability to read people, and we’re hoping that in the next few years as we gain more loyal customers, people will put their faith and trust in his hands to show them a fantastic time. When I think of LPM, I hope that people consider each and every one of their meals here a celebration in and of itself.

Listening to the two of you glow about LPM, despite the hard work and the considerable investment and risk in what you’re trying to do in Olympia, can you tell me a little bit about your personal connection to the business?

Zoe: Justin & I had our first date here in 2006. At the time it was an Italian restaurant under different management. Two years later we were married in the restaurant, and then in January 2011, we purchased the restaurant for ourselves. [laughs]

Chef Wells:I don’t think it’s possible to have a more personal connection to a restaurant than ours. Zoe. Mrs. Wells. No way I could do this without her. She’s the reason this place can do what it does. We keep each other honest, and accountable. I think we have an immense respect for each others opinions, and she reigns in my crazy streak which comes out to play once in a while. She has a great palate, and understanding of balance, as well as adapting what we’re trying to do here with the realities of the business environment.

Zoe: People tend to have a very personal connection to food & wine, so we’re trying to share our dream with our clientele. Ultimately this is Justin’s vision, but I’m here to make sure that from farm to kitchen, from cellar to table, the experience is exactly as both of us would expect it ourselves, nothing less. And from time-to-time – hopefully something more.

It’s about the evolution of culinaria on both a personal as well as a global level. Being part of the next food renaissance is exciting. Information is being shared at an incredible pace, and food, wine, and the restaurant experience is evolving at a tremendous rate. Chefs were secretive before, but now it’s “This is what I’m doing with this product, this is why I like it, here now you play with it”.   Few restaurants are able to sit back and rely on what they’ve done before to continue their success. I’m shocked by how much the average diner knows about food & wine these days, so it’s a challenge for us to keep challenging them.

— Chef Wells