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In 2019, a stranger approached chef James Zamory at his food stall in New York City’s massive weekly outdoor food event called Smorgasburg. The stranger said there was a guy in Bellingham, Washington, who wanted to know if Zamory and his business partners wanted to move across the country and open a restaurant there.

“I was like, what’s Bellingham?” Zamory said during a recent phone call.

A lifelong New Yorker, Zamory had never heard of the city. He’d never even been to the West Coast. So he Googled Bellingham and, intrigued, flew out to meet Williamson.

“I just remember seeing white-capped mountains behind beautiful green mountains. I came out here and scoped out the building and yeah, I was pretty impressed,” he says.

Zamory and his partners wanted to throw an anchor and hold on somewhere. They moved to Bellingham three weeks before the pandemic. After gutting the building, located on State Street in downtown Bellingham, Carnal opened on Aug. 28, 2020. Zamory says it’s impossible to compare anything to New York, but life in Bellingham is good.

“The pace of life is just opposite. Things are calm, they’re peaceful. It’s so much easier to recharge here,” he says.