S TA R T - U P O F T H E Y E A R N O M I N E E
Jonathan Hutton
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BUSINESS AWARDS
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STORIA CUCINA & BAR
A dream come due
Jonathan Hutton rides experience, family recipes to success Tara Almond Opening a restaurant is difficult. Opening a restaurant during a global pandemic — amid business shutdowns, supply chain issues and other disruptions — may be more of a challenge than it’s worth for most people. But Jonathan Sutton, owner of Storia Cucina & Bar in Bellingham, wasn’t going to give up on achieving his dream of owning a restaurant. Sutton, who grew up on Lopez Island in the San Juan Island archipela-
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go and graduated from Johnson Wales University Culinary School, had worked in kitchens across the country, including a restaurant he owned and managed in San Francisco for eight years. But it had always been his dream to open an Italian restaurant based on his family’s Italian recipes. He also missed his friends and family in the Pacific Northwest. So in 2019, he moved home and opened Storia Cucina & Bar in May 2020,
amid a roller coaster of pandemic panic. At first, the restaurant was able to offer only a to-go menu, but wordof-mouth spread, and with the help of social media, the restaurant started gaining a following. “It was super crazy,” he said, “because there was a push to get the restaurant open and, right when that was happening, COVID hit, so Bellingham was a ghost town.” Sutton said he started off with to-go
