Green pairs local food options at Camas Prairie Park
Published 1:30 am Friday, July 10, 2026
Jordan Green, chef at the Coyote Crow restaurant at Camas Prairie Park, banters with a luncheon group after they finished their meal. Green, who grew up in Port Townsend and graduated from Port Townsend High School in 1999, has worked in various restaurants, including Port Townsend’s former Public House, and in Boston before returning to the Olympic Peninsula and Port Townsend in 2022. (Steve Mullensky/for Peninsula Daily News)
PORT TOWNSEND — Jordan Green got his first restaurant job when he was 15, washing dishes at The Surf, a long-gone spot on the Port Townsend waterfront
Six months in, he was promoted to cook
The food was basic — “fish and chips and burgers and stuff,” he said
But he loved it
“It was that whole energy and everything,” he said. “It kept my mind going.”
That energy carried Green a long way through kitchens in New York, Boston, Seattle and California. The road out of town was in many ways easier than the road that brought him back. But he has landed — gratefully — at Coyote & Crow, the restaurant at Camas Prairie Park, formerly the Port Townsend Golf Course
Green’s ascent in the kitchen was quick. After The Surf, he moved to the Public House Grill, where he worked under Doug Seaver, who would later be the chef at Fins in Port Townsend, Cedar Creek in Sequim and Michael’s in Port Angeles
“He really opened my eyes to multiple possibilities of what you could do,” Green said. “It was incredible.”
Shortly after he graduated from high school, he was in charge of the kitchen at the Ajax Café in Port Hadlock
Green has had no formal training, except for a brief stint at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park in 2012 that ended when Seaver called: would he be interested in assisting with a dinner at the James Beard House in New York?
The “Dean of American Cookery”?
Green had written a report about him in the ninth grade. Yes, he told Seaver. He’d be there
While there, Green caught the eye of Kevin Long, executive chef at Big Night Entertainment Group in Boston, who invited him to visit
“He liked me and asked if I would come and check it out,” he said
Green did — and ended up staying six years, working mostly at Empire, an Asian fusion restaurant, as well as Big Night’s Gem and Red Lantern. As the tournant, Green filled in at stations as needed, developed specials, trained cooks and checked every plate before it left the kitchen
It was fast, heady and high-pressure. He loved it
“It’s an acquired insanity,” Green said. “You have to be out of your mind to do this job.”
When his father passed away, he decided it was time to step back and take some time off
“I felt just needed a break,” he said
He spent some time in Port Townsend and traveled. Then, it was back to restaurant business, this time in Seattle, where his drinking, which had been building for years, got worse — leading to a 45-day rehab program
After rehab ended, he followed a girl to Santa Cruz and ended up helping run a poke bar there. When COVID-19 hit, the business moved to a “cloud kitchen” — a storage facility carved into some 30 commercial kitchens. He and a partner rented a unit, brought in equipment and set up shop
It worked, but for long stretches, he was the only one cooking
“I was overworking,” he said, “and then I started drinking.”
For a second time, he went into rehab. He returned to Port Townsend in February 2022 with no intention of working in a kitchen again
When he ran into Buster Ferris of Edensaw Woods and Ferris asked when he’d start cooking again, Green’s answer was firm: “I’m not,” he said
But he did accept Ferris’ offer of driving a forklift in the Edensaw warehouse, even though he had no experience
Before long, Edensaw sent him to North Carolina to train on a new molder, and he came back running the machine that made the company’s trim and flooring
He’d never done woodworking in his life, and that suited him fine — none of the punishing hours or pressure that had come with running a kitchen
“It was fun to do, something completely different,” he said, with “no stress.”
Then, an opportunity to return to a kitchen appeared
Kristan McCary, former owner of the Ajax Cafe, where he had worked, recommended him to people opening a new restaurant
He came in, talked to them and turned them down
“It was too soon,” he said
What eased him back into the kitchen — and into Coyote & Crow — were, of all things, wine pairing dinners
By this time four years sober, Green created the menus without ever taking a sip.
“They give me tasting notes,” he said, and from there, he designed each course to match the wine — building flavors in the food that complement what’s in the glass
It was a low-stakes way back into the kitchen, but on his own terms. And, when he was approached to be Coyote & Crow’s full-time chef in March, he was ready to say “yes.”
Green has kept many of the restaurant’s lunch items – sandwiches, salads and hamburgers — but revamped the dinner menu with a focus on local ingredients
“I like the things that are surrounding me to decide what’s going to be made,” he said
So, he builds from whatever’s fresh — the vegetables, the cuts of meat, the shellfish and seafood that are good that week
Dinners feature small plates of sweet and spicy green beans, pan-fired oysters and beet carpaccio. There is fresh truffled portobello pasta, blue cheese and fig ravioli and honey garlic chicken
The wine pairing dinners continue — the next one is on July 30 — but Green wants to take the pairings further with a non-alcoholic version
“The drink would be paired to the food,” he said, “instead of the food being paired to the drink.”
Coyote & Crow is operated by the nonprofit Friends of the Port Townsend Golf Park, which manages Camas Prairie Park under a 22-year lease with the city of Port Townsend. Though the restaurant isn’t designed to turn a profit, it still has to break even
As part of the restaurant’s remodel, a wall was knocked out to open up the dining room. Large windows look out on the golf course and to the Olympic Mountains beyond
Two of the long dining tables — one of ambrosia maple and the other of claro walnut — are Green’s own, constructed during his time at Edensaw
He still has a stockpile of lumber from his mill work days — enough to build more tables if he wants to
For now, though, he’s home, and back in the kitchen, cooking good, affordable food — something for the locals
“Focus on the people who actually live in this town and try to take care of them,” he said. “That’s a big staple in what we’re about.”
Coyote & Crow
Camas Prairie Park
Address: 1948 Blaine St
Phone: 360-385-4547
https://www.ptgolfpark.org/dine
Lunch: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday
Brunch: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Dinner: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m Friday through Monday
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com
