When Patrick O’Connell first moved to rural Washington, Virginia in 1972, he cooked inside of a decommissioned school bus attached to the back of his house. O’Connell, then 26, grew up about 80 miles away in a Washington, D.C., suburb and had saved enough money working as a waiter to buy a plot of land, and a home, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Appalachian dwellings like his often originated from scrap. “You’d add on,” O’Connell says. “It would become better and better.”

The inn’s historic main entrance.

The inn’s historic main entrance.

Now, approaching his 50th year in Washington, population 135, O’Connell, the 75-year-old chef-owner of the Inn at Little Washington, holds the deeds to 21 buildings in town, the result of a purchasing spree that began in the late 1970s when the chef first decided he wanted to run a brick-and-mortar restaurant rather than the catering outfit he’d been operating for five years. (In those days, O’Connell also worked as a butler and a house painter.) The buildings he has since acquired, first with business partner Reinhardt Lynch and then solo, after their 2006 separation, constitute the inn’s campus: 23 lavishly decorated guest rooms and cottages, a Michelin-three-star dining room, a ballroom and shops.

Directed by Justin Kaneps

Aside from the inn’s kitchen, which is housed in new construction and recently underwent a roughly million-dollar upgrade, O’Connell classifies each of his buildings as a “restoration, transformation or resurrection.” This summer, work will be completed on one such project, Patty O’s Cafe & Bakery, O’Connell’s first new restaurant since 1978, when he opened the inn itself.

O’Connell’s holdings date back to the 18th century and represent a number of different styles of architecture, from Colonial Revival to Jeffersonian. Throughout the decades, O’Connell has bolstered his real-estate portfolio in order to accommodate the sustained demand to visit the inn. In doing so, he continues to build a world of his own florid design: a series of meticulously restored colonial American facades whose interiors bear Moroccan lanterns, Balinese umbrellas and animal murals. It all reflects his maximal and fantastical ideas about hospitality, which he describes as a feeling of going to your grandmother’s house if your grandmother dropped acid. “People can come here and be whoever they want, wherever they want,” O’Connell says. “They can bring their own script and escape.”

O’Connell, known as the Pope of American Cuisine, in the inn’s kitchen.

O’Connell, known as the Pope of American Cuisine, in the inn’s kitchen.

O’Connell owns about a block and a half of the four-block downtown. Washington’s mayor, Thomas Catlin, calls O’Connell a visionary, describing how the chef’s oeuvre has helped safeguard Washington against the kind of rural decay that’s ubiquitous throughout Appalachia. In addition to the inn’s long list of accolades and its critical success (O’Connell won the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, and the inn remains the only restaurant in the Michelin Guide for Washington, D.C., with a three-star rating), it is also its county’s largest private employer. The inn’s tax revenue has long paid for the vast majority of Washington’s budget. “We pay them well over $1,000 per day,” O’Connell says. In O’Connell’s case, municipal interest and self-interest have merged. For the inn to thrive as a world-class destination, he believes it must be aligned with the town. “The more we’ve invested, the more there is here for us to protect,” he says.

Grilled king lamb chop perfumed with rosemary on lentils du Puy with minted béarnaise from Patty O’s Cafe & Bakery, which is scheduled to open in August.

Grilled king lamb chop perfumed with rosemary on lentils du Puy with minted béarnaise from Patty O’s Cafe & Bakery, which is scheduled to open in August.

“The last remaining piece of our little puzzle is the ugliest building in town,” O’Connell tells me, via Zoom from the duplex suite named for Alice Waters. (Several of the inn’s rooms are named for American culinary legends, including Waters, Edna Lewis and Julia Child.) Seated under tented fabric, atop a velvet sofa and among fringed throw pillows, O’Connell is ensconced in patterns: florals, butterflies and stripes. And his chef’s pants are dalmatian print, modeled after the spotting on his first dog, Rose. (His current dalmatian, Luray, wears a seersucker vest to occasionally greet summertime diners before their meals.)

When O’Connell speaks, his hands sweep, flutter and slash. His voice, deep and sincere, sounds articulate and all-knowing, like a movie trailer’s narrator. (He says being at the inn is like being in a movie.) Even O’Connell’s laughter sounds like the result of elocution lessons, each new “ha” a distinct burst from the last. O’Connell originally wanted to be a stage actor but ultimately found restaurants to have superior sets and more compelling drama.

One of 23 guest rooms and cottages at the inn.

One of 23 guest rooms and cottages at the inn.

For O’Connell, transforming what he calls Washington’s greatest eyesore into a cafe worthy of a great European town square has taken three decades. The two-story brick building that had been covered with creeping foliage sits kitty-corner to the inn’s main entrance. Box-like in its design, it was built in 1952 as a gas station. When O’Connell bought the 2,900-square-foot property 29 years ago, he inherited two tenants: a post office and a diner called the Country Cafe.

The inn’s gardens, which in the spring include approximately 17,000 tulips.

The inn’s gardens, which in the spring include approximately 17,000 tulips.

O’Connell especially abhorred the parking lot in front of the building. “You’re looking at the butt end of pickup trucks,” he says. “The first thing I wanted to do in this town was remove all the cars.” O’Connell envisioned replacing the lot with densely planted flower beds and tables with umbrellas. He’d build a sidewalk cafe like the ones he loved in Rome and Monte Carlo. “Every town needs a living room,” he says. “When you live in the country, it’s something you realize can still be done—you can control your visual universe.”

A sunroom in a suite in the Carter House at the inn.

A sunroom in a suite in the Carter House at the inn.

But some in the town of Washington had different ideas about what their collective living room should look like. “Each time we made forays toward doing [the cafe],” O’Connell says, “there was a sense of panic on the part of the local people that…coffee might cost $17, and there would be no place for them.” (Coffee at Patty O’s will cost about $4, and entrées will start at around $14.) Catlin, Washington’s mayor since 2018, confirms O’Connell has endured varying degrees of opposition ever since moving to town. “There’s always been this antipathy between longtime residents and the wave of people who started coming in the ’70s,” he says.

“ “People can come here and be whoever they want, wherever they want. They can bring their own script and escape.” ”

— Patrick O’Connell

Both Catlin and O’Connell—a local elected official himself, having served on the Town Council for 11 years—suggest that the hostility has mostly cooled. “Patrick is the most visible agent of change around here,” Catlin says. “People don’t always want change.” O’Connell, characteristically unflappable, describes the cafe’s completion as fated. “It’s all looking like it was destined to be as it is,” he says. “It just took us a long time to get there.”

The Carter House at the Inn at Little Washington.

The Carter House at the Inn at Little Washington.

When O’Connell finally decided to proceed with the cafe in early 2019, he reasoned that his guests at the inn who stayed multiple nights would benefit from having another dining option in town. He thought they might like a crock of French onion soup or a finely made hamburger (more than 50 versions of the burger were tested before a blend of chuck, sirloin and short rib on a brioche bun was chosen for the menu) as a counterpoint to the more haute offerings at the inn: caviar courses, cheese trolleys, desserts dusted with warm herbs.

O’Connell targeted a spring 2020 opening for the cafe. By then, his tenants could relocate. The post office moved to a larger facility on the edge of Washington; the Country Cafe rebranded itself as the Country Cafe Pit Stop and moved to nearby Sperryville. Covid-19 delayed the cafe yet again, shutting down the inn and its dining room for two months and casting great uncertainty around the idea of restaurant dining. “Our bank advised us to wait on opening anything new because we had basically no income,” O’Connell says. In late May, the inn reopened for indoor dining at 25 percent, lodging fully, and has followed strict Covid protocols and precautions. Since there was no restriction on lodging, O’Connell could compensate for a 75 percent empty dining room with nearly fully booked guest rooms touting premium room service. Profits stabilized somewhat over the summer, and the construction of Patty O’s resumed.

Friends at the inn’s farm.

Friends at the inn’s farm.

One of two llamas on the farm.

One of two llamas on the farm.

Design meetings via Zoom did not suit O’Connell. “I must touch everything,” he says, every fabric sample, every prototype for a dish or a chair. While the interiors at the inn have been a near-exclusive collaboration between O’Connell and the British designer Joyce Conwy Evans, this time he looked to Paris, hiring Pierre-Yves Rochon, whose firm has designed a number of Four Seasons hotels as well as restaurants for Joël Robuchon, Alain Ducasse and Paul Bocuse. “Covid hit just at the point where Pierre was about to come over, and so he’s never been to our town,” O’Connell says. “So, I keep trying to impart to him that this can’t be slick. It has to be a little bit funky. I told him, ‘I know there’s no word in French for funky.’ ” O’Connell laughs, as he does often. “I’m not entirely sure he gets it.”

The boxy exterior of the cafe’s building has been updated with crown molding and striped sage-colored awnings. The wild, climbing foliage has been cut down. The once brown facade is now white. O’Connell says he has “softened the old gas station.” Inside, a stone fireplace anchors the dining room. O’Connell commissioned muralist William Woodward to paint a dream-like scene depicting a joyous barn dance above the bar. “Hopefully after a few drinks, you’ll hear banjo music and feel like you can just enter the mural,” O’Connell says.

“One of the things I’ve always said to my teams is we have this opportunity and responsibility to create magical worlds, especially during a time when the world needs more magic,” says the restaurateur Will Guidara, whose pursuit of the magical led him to the pinnacle of the restaurant business at New York’s Eleven Madison Park, where he was partner from 2011 to 2020. “I don’t know of anyone who has created a magical world as effectively as Patrick.”

As O’Connell’s team began putting the finishing touches on the cafe in mid-April, the inn’s gardens and grounds became saturated with color. “The tulips are just a few days away from their peak—17,000 tulips in the beds around the place, in soft pink salmon and white and ivory,” O’Connell tells me. “Underneath them are pansies. And the dogwood is coming on. And we have a cherry orchard about a day away from being in full bloom.” O’Connell pauses for a breath. “It’s dazzling.”

The grounds of the inn cover 24 acres.

The grounds of the inn cover 24 acres.

After a difficult year of closings and delays, reduced dining room capacity and shrunken revenue, all amid larger questions about public life and health in America, O’Connell talks about the state of the inn with the same sense of renewal with which he describes the flora. The inn too is flourishing in the new season. “We’ve accomplished more in the last two years than we have in the last 10,” O’Connell says. The kitchen is gleaming and state of the art. A glass conservatory and Japanese garden have recently been completed off the inn’s dining room. And the cafe is finally aiming to open in August. O’Connell has not stopped buying Washington’s buildings either. Most recently, he took possession of the old bank, with plans to turn it into a general store.

As we all inch carefully into a late-pandemic dining landscape, O’Connell has picked up on something new from his guests and has derived fresh purpose. “Every night we see people who are out for the first time,” he says. “They are euphoric.”

O’Connell had been reclining in the throw pillows but now sits up straight. “We are providing a sanctuary, providing a healing space,” he says. “The guests desperately need to find a place where, for a brief period of time, they can forget what they’ve been going through—and they can feel that life is wonderful, life is good, that they are safe.”