Avery Hardin
Layers Green Lake | Seattle, WA
December 2025
Avery Hardin began his career in 2002 at a mom-and-pop pizza shop in Santa Barbara, California before honing his craft at Santa Barbara City College’s Julia Child-influenced culinary program. A California native, he went on to lead kitchens like Scarlett Begonia, developing a style inflected with seasonal sourcing, whole-animal butchery, and French technique. Hardin later worked under Chefs Cosmo Goss and Clark Staub, and eventually moved to Seattle to join Chef Renee Erickson’s Sea Creatures restaurant group. At the group's Bar Melusine, he rose from oyster shucker to chef de cuisine.
In 2019, Hardin and his wife launched Layers as a food truck in Seattle, transforming soigné family-meal sandwiches into a thriving business. Layers has since grown into Layers Green Lake, a 24-seat, lunch-only shop serving over 200 covers on weekends, with a menu that evolves seasonally and operates with a near zero-waste ethos. His food resists pretension while wrangling the seasons with technical prowess—a philosophy best embodied by sandwiches like Hardin’s Notorious P.I.G. with crispy pork belly, pineapple-Fresno pepper jelly, spring lettuces, and hibiscus-pickled onions. Hardin engages with his Green Lake neighborhood community through the Seattle Restaurant Coalition, brown-bag food donations, and by designating Layers as a World Central Kitchen outpost for disaster response.
