"After all is said and all is done, it's just me and you."
Victor Lewin can pull Willie Nelson lyrics from thin air, like this one from the country legend's ode to friendship "Me and You."
"There's no such thing as a stranger," Lewin says. "There's just me and you — it goes back to Willie Nelson. That chord really made a difference to me, like making sure that we're welcoming everybody."
Lewin is the chef and heart behind Locos, a Texas comfort food spot in Hillyard's United Building. The antique bank is now a modern-day food court that also hosts Bellwether Brewing and Derailer Coffee.
Originally from Waco, Texas, Lewin's Southern hospitality prioritizes good food and good friends to share it with. His restaurant Locos is a spinoff of The Grain Shed, a local brewery and bakery that champions high quality Palouse grain and Dolly Parton merch.
Locos leans into Lewin's background with barbecue, brisket and burgers, but a similar respect for ingredients. Quality meat from nearby ranches, local veggies, and a smoker, griddle, or broiler set just right mean dinner's gonna taste good. Once guests get to the table, Lewin would rather people talk to each other than fuss over food.
"Once everybody sits down at the table to eat, there's no classes," he says. "I feel like that's something that's pretty Texan. You know, come in out of the weather, get something to eat, share a story, tell a joke, sing a song, listen to music."
Lewin is well over 6 feet tall, with a long braided ponytail and a low baritone voice sweetened by a Southern drawl. He's known for hitting up the antique shops up and down Market Street and bringing back random accoutrements like mini trains, Kiss figurines and a real leather saddle. (He offered to wear a luchador costume for this photoshoot.)
Lewin grew up in Texas to a mother from Scotland and a father from Chile. In central Texas, he had friends from Vietnam, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
"I knew that food was a special part of my life, if not the biggest part of my life, before I was a teenager," he says. "I was always interested in food and eating and trying new things, experiencing new cultures, and sitting around a table with friends and family and other people's friends and families... I've been very fortunate to experience a majority of cultures without traveling to those countries."
Lewin's Scottish grandfather was a pastry chef who inspired Lewin with the time and technique he invested in mastering a culinary skill, plus his ability to adapt to his surroundings.
His grandfather would spend summers with them in Waco and would "get a sunburn on his bald head, then go back to Scotland with a tan and a new bolo tie," Lewin says. "He was an honorary Texan. He loved Texas and was just enamored with the wide open spaces and the countryside and the abundance of barbecue."
Even though you can take a man out of Texas, you can't take Texas out of a man. When Lewin and his mother moved to Denver, Lewin took a job at an Italian deli. The teenager was front row to salamis and formaggi he had never heard of, but he was also taken care of as part of the family. He fell in love with Italian hospitality, which wasn't a far cry from the Southern generosity he was used to.
"It was really neat to be able to try all this new stuff that I'd never seen before — these amazing cured meats coming out of Italy, these really delicious cheeses, and then hands on learning how to make sausage," he says. "But then, there was always something cooking. We never went hungry. Part of the job was to make sure we were well fed."
Later, Lewin moved to Seattle to pursue cooking even further. He spent hundreds of hours cleaning carrots and leeks for fine dining restaurants.
"I've spent quite a bit of my career chasing the Michelin stars like everyone does," he says. "I realized that the customers in the dining room have no connection to me. I don't get to know their name. I don't get to know their story."
Lewin found more purpose as an executive chef at Microsoft. The Seattle campus had plenty of young, hip employees who wanted to eat healthier than typical cafeteria food, plus a huge population of Indian employees. Lewin and his team learned to make authentic Indian curries from scratch for hundreds of lunches each day.
"Indian food, it's fun to cook," Lewin says. "The more exposure you get to cooking something, the more it challenges you, and the more depth and flavor you can create and figure out. I don't think that a chef should be a one hit wonder. They should be able to interpret almost anything."
Lewin and his family eventually moved from Seattle to Spokane for a slower pace of life and a better chance at opening his own business, though it wasn't clear what that would be.
From Scottish baking and Italian sandwiches to fine dining and mass-produced curry, it gets harder and harder to put Lewin in a box. He's a Texan who absolutely loves the snow in the winter. And even though he's currently settled on selling barbecue, it turns out he's a pit master who often prefers eating plants.
"Truth be told, I cook a lot of meat here. But in my personal life, I don't eat it every day," he says. "I'm completely comfortable cooking plant based, vegetarian, vegan, whatever."
No matter who you are or what you eat, Lewin wants you at his table. He's the perfect chef for The United Building's mission to create a welcoming gathering place in Hillyard. The working-class neighborhood had lost some of its luster in recent decades. But Lewin is helping create a beloved third place, a second living room, for his neighbors to share life, ideas, and some good jokes.
"We want to be a place where you make up, break up, and everything in between," Lewin says.
