A preamble to this Road Tips entry on Wally's Chowder House -
I've been a map nut ever since I was a real little kid. I'd look at maps, study them, got to know the state capitals by the time I was 5 years old. (My parents used to bring me out at parties and have the guests ask me what the state capital of New Hampshire was; or the state capital of Montana. It was a pretty good parlor trick for my parents friends.) I think I had a bit of wanderlust at an early age looking at the map and wondering what it was like in New England, or in the Southwest.
But I was also enamored with names of cities - especially realizing that there were multiple states with cities of the same name including the towns of Kellogg and Newton near where I grew up. Iowa's state capital of Des Moines was a pretty unique name and there weren't a lot of places called Des Moines - actually just 3 places. There's a Des Moines, New Mexico - a small village in the northeastern part of that state; and there's a Des Moines, WA located just south of Seattle. I'd always wanted to go to Des Moines, WA (the locals pronounce it "deh MOYNZ" instead of the "duh MOYNE" pronunciation we Iowans use) and on a recent trip I was able to do just that as I had lunch at a spot called Wally's Chowder House.
Mike Nordean has been associated with restaurants since he was a teenager. He started out busing tables at a Doubletree Hotel restaurant while he was in high school. He continued to work at the restaurant through his college years eventually becoming a bartender and the catering manager. During his time in college, he met his first wife and they were married in 1978.
However, tragedy struck just after he graduated in 1979 - his wife was killed in a car wreck. A few years later, Nordean met and married his second wife Judy, but Nordean continued to be close to his former in-laws. In 1991, the opportunity came about for Nordean and his former in-laws to buy a restaurant - Wally's Drive In - in Buckley, WA, a small former logging and coal town southeast of Seattle that sits at the foot of Mount Rainier.
In 1992, the Nordeans and his in-laws opened a second restaurant - Wally's Chowder House - in the Seattle suburb of Des Moines. Nordean eventually bought out his in-laws making Judy and him the sole owners of both restaurants.
The political and cultural upheaval that started in 2016 has given Wally's Chowder House some unfortunate notoriety. Mike and Judy's son Ethan literally grew up in the restaurant business. By all indications, he was a good kid growing up helping at the restaurant while Mike Nordean taught him how to ski and ride ATV's. Ethan and his step-sister - Judy's daughter from a previous marriage - were destined to take over the family's restaurants at some point.
Out of high school, Ethan joined the Navy hoping to become a Navy Seal. However, it turned out that he couldn't make the cut during training. After washing out of the Navy, Ethan became disillusioned and in 2017 he ended up joining the Proud Boys, the extreme right-wing all-male faction that has been labeled as a hate group by law enforcement officials. Ethan continued to work at the restaurant, but his views became extreme and well-known amongst people in the community. When Ethan was prominently caught on camera fighting with left-wing protestors in Portland, OR in the summer of 2018, Mike was forced to fire his son from the restaurant.
However, community backlash continued against Wally's as Mike was deemed guilty by association even though he publicly disavowed his son's societal stances. As Ethan grew more prominent in the Proud Boys organization, the boycott by some in the community against Wally's Chowder House continued to grow. It didn't help that Judy Nordean seemed to back some of the rhetoric that her son exposed. She used social media as a platform railing against gays, left-wing activists and Muslims. Local civic organizations either dropped Wally's Chowder House for membership, or outright banned city events to be held at the restaurant.
Hoping to get his son set straight, Mike Nordean rehired his son to be the assistant manager at the Wally's Drive In in Buckley. He had hoped that putting him there would get him away from the influences of the Proud Boys. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Ethan Nordean became more radicalized and became one of the leaders of the Proud Boy faction.
In 2019, Nordean was forced to fire his son once again. Ethan Nordean's wife - who was a waitress at Wally's Chowder House - was also let go. And he persuaded his wife Judy to take down her Twitter account and quit espousing right wing views. He hired a communications crisis management company to come in and help soften the image of the Wally's restaurants hoping to bring customers back.
Ethan's troubles came to a head when during the January 6th insurrection of the U.S. Capitol in 2021, Ethan was one of the first persons who stormed the building that day, leading a group of about 100 Proud Boys past barricades and into the Capitol. Because he was known to law enforcement officials from being front and center at previous rallies, Ethan Nordean was also one of the first to be arrested for leading the insurrection. The FBI raided his home in Auburn, WA and took him into custody. In September of 2023, Ethan Nordean was sentenced to 18 years in prison and 36 months of supervised release.
Mike Nordean used to be the first person you saw when you went into Wally's Chowder House, but he has kept a low-profile over the past couple years as the community still has hard feelings about his son's and his wife's views. Now in his late 60's, Nordean lives primarily in Arizona. Business had been tough during the pandemic, but with Ethan Nordean now in prison and the Nordean's no longer running the day-to-day operations at the Wally's restaurants, the crowds have started to come back.
Now, let me say that if I had known all that before I found Wally's, it would have given me pause. But I will point out that when I went there, I followed a black couple into the restaurant. There were two Hispanic girls at a table near me, and an Asian lady was part of a group of four women seated at a table in the dining room when I got up to leave. It appears that some in the area have strong feelings against the Nordeans and still boycott Wally's, but it was apparent to me that there was some diversity in the restaurant when I was in there.
Wally's Chowder House is located on Marine View Drive S., the main north-south road through the city of Des Moines. (see map) It was tough to miss the restaurant with massive petunia arrangements hanging from baskets and in planters around the perimeter of the building. I went in the wrong entry way taking an entrance to the north of the restaurant into a parking lot with signage all over the place that said that was NOT parking for Wally's. But that lot emptied into an alley way that allowed me to get into Wally's parking lot just to the south.
The main dining area is just past the host stand. It was rustic in decor with reclaimed barn boards paneled on the wall. Antique light fixtures and fans hung from the low slung ceilings. It wasn't a big place and was rather cozy.
I asked if there was seating at the bar and the young man at the front desk said that I could go back. However, as I was walking toward the lounge area, the young man was told by a lady, "The bar is full and she's really slammed back there," The lounge looked like it had been added onto from the original building with a much higher ceiling with recessed lighting and a large contemporary fan hanging from the ceiling. There was a half-wall partition between the dining area in the lounge and the bar itself.
The bar wasn't very big and it sat just six people. It was, indeed, full when I caught a glimpse of it when I walked into the lounge area. There were three televisions one the walls - two directly behind the bar and one off to the side. The Seattle Mariners were playing in Oakland that afternoon and they had the game on one of the TV's.
There was a table just off the bar in the patio on the side of the restaurant. It had full view of all three TV's, so I took a seat there. The patio wasn't all that large and featured seating for 14 to 16 people. It was a warm day for Seattle-area standards - upper 80's into the low 90's. But the humidity was low and the ceiling fans and additional fans moving the air made it tolerable inside Wally's Chowder House.
My server that day was a young man by the name of Bryden. After getting a menu to look over, he asked me what I would like to drink. I asked if they had any hazy IPA's available and he said they didn't, but they had a local IPA on tap. I said I'd take that. Moments later, Bryden scurried past the table and said, "Sorry. We just blew the keg. I have to go change it."
He reappeared and dashed behind the bar. A couple minutes later he brought me out a cold glass of Manny's IPA from the Georgetown Brewing Company located just south of downtown Seattle. "It's on the house," he said. "Sorry you had to wait." Now, that's called good customer service.
It was a pretty lengthy menu at Wally's, but most of it was geared toward seafood. Appetizers such as fresh dungeness crab from the Pacific Northwest, shrimp cocktail, clams, and calamari were on the menu. Entrees such as fish and chips were on the menu - salmon, halibut, Arctic cod, and local Ling cod were the choices for fish. Platters with deep-fried prawns, shrimp, clams, scallops and oysters were also available, each with bottomless French fries.
Specialty plates of a blackened salmon filet, almond crusted halibut, and fresh crab cakes were part of the menu, and they also had a USDA prime cut New York strip and a garlic-marinated grilled chicken breast to choose from. Pasta dishes such as a seafood fettuccine and a cioppino pasta plate were also available. There sounded like a lot of good things to choose from.
Wally's Chowder House also featured a lunch menu with smaller portions of a handful of items on the menu. They also had sandwiches and burgers, a kid menu, and daily lunch specials. It would have been very tough to not find something you like on the menu.
Since it's called Wally's Chowder House, I had to start out with a cup of their house-made New England-style clam chowder. It was topped with parsley flakes and a couple small bags of chowder crackers came on the side. The chowder was thick, creamy and very rich - and very delicious. It left sort of a buttery taste on the tongue. It was some of the best clam chowder I had ever had.
For lunch that day, I ended up getting the fish tacos. I had a choice - Arctic cod, local Ling cod, halibut or prawn tacos. The seafood could be either grilled, breaded and fried, or blackened. I got the blackened halibut tacos on soft flour tortillas. (Corn tortilla shells were also available.) The tacos were topped with a house-made chipotle crema with cilantro, and fresh house-made salsa came on the side. The chunks of halibut were big, but they were light and flaky inside with a crispy shell of blackened spiced on the outside. They were simply excellent.
The food and service at Wally's Chowder House was very good. I can't say enough about how good the blackened halibut fish tacos were, and the house-made clam chowder was some of the best I had. Bryden did a good job of making sure I was taken care of while I was there. Family issues have helped drive a wedge between the Nordean family and some in the community, but from the looks of the crowd that was in there for lunch on a weekday, it seems like many have gotten beyond those past problems caused by Mike Nordean's son and wife. I would have no problem recommending or going back to Wally's Chowder House.
By the way, the capital of New Hampshire is Concord, and Helena is the capital of Montana...