The Shire Bar & Bistro recently welcomed a new chef who has brought a variety of new menu items to the business as it approaches its 22-year anniversary in downtown Chehalis.
The Shire was originally opened in 2003 by Joel Wall. From Green Bay, Wisconsin, Wall moved to Portland in the early 1990s before relocating to Chehalis in 1997 to manage McMenamins Olympic Club Theater, a job he kept until opening The Shire.
Now, he’s got a new chef and a new menu — although a few staple menu items are still available.
Originally from Portsmouth, Virginia, chef Joshua Breland first got his start cooking as a teenager at local businesses in the Virginia Beach area.
Breland first started working at a restaurant called Tropical Smoothie in Virginia at the age of 14.
“The first skills I ever learned was how to roll a burrito and chop lettuce,” Breland said.
From there, he had his rebellious teenage phase and bounced around the East Coast, working in various restaurants as far south as Florida and as far north as New York.
“Then I ended up back in Virginia Beach for a period of time,” Breland said.
There, he worked as a sous chef for a whiskey and burger bar directly on Virginia Beach’s pier, which during the summer would average around $40,000 a night in sales. Following a breakup, though, he began to look for another place to live.
His stepdad's mother lived in Washington state at the time and had suffered a bad fall and needed assistance. Originally, he was seeing if he could just visit her to spend time with her while also looking for work in Washington.
“It kind of snowballed a few days later into them asking me if I would move out here to take care of her instead of hospice because that was the state she was in,” Breland said. “I was super on board with that. I was out here a couple weeks later. But four days after I got here, she died. I hadn’t even unpacked yet.”
Despite the tragedy, he quickly found work in Olympia and settled here. There, Breland has worked for the Dockside Bistro & Wine Bar and the Chelsea Farms Oyster Bar, along with Ricardo’s Kitchen + Bar in Lacey.
“Working for Ricardo’s was mentally draining and exhausting. I got to the point where I had to leave to save my mental health,” Breland said.
He added it had an alcoholic culture among the staff, which he also wanted to get away from.
“In between all that I met my wife, got married and had a kid who’s starting kindergarten this week, actually,” Breland said.
Eventually, he moved to Lewis County and began cooking. Breland cooked at Jeremy’s Farm to Table, McMenamins Olympic Club and Papa Bear’s West Family Restaurant & Bar.
With his new family, he wanted to spend more time with them, something working at busy restaurants such as Jeremy’s and Papa Bear’s didn’t provide, he said. While at Papa Bear’s, he would have to wake up at 2 a.m. in order to get to work on time for the morning breakfast shift.
So when he saw there was an opening at The Shire, he jumped at the chance to work there.
As for the new menu, fans of the old dishes — including the voodoo shrimp, the branch salad and the lobster and prawn dip — can still order them.
Aside from that, Breland’s own creations can now be ordered including a pork belly BLAT (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato) sandwich, duck confit, a coffee rubbed New York strip steak, a baseball cut sirloin steak, a spicy chicken sandwich and more.
“The duck and sirloin were on the menu before too, just with different presentations,” Breland said. “Also, I’m the only chef in the region for some distance who makes my own demi-glace.”
All other sauces, including pesto, chimichurri, mayo, mustard creme and more, are also made in house.
He recommends the glazed pork belly appetizer along with the pork belly BLAT.
Having been The Shire’s chef for just over a month now, Breland said he’s loving it so far, as not only is he getting to spend more time with his family, but he’s also getting to know the regulars who have frequented The Shire over the past two decades.
“We have a lot of diehard regulars here man, some that got lost along the way in life but still came back. People have come in here and told me this is their Cheers bar,” Breland added.
The Shire Bar & Bistro is located at 465 NW Chehalis Ave. in downtown Chehalis and is open from 3 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and closed on Sunday and Monday.
For more information, call The Shire at 360-748-3720, or follow the restaurant on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheShireBarandBistro.
