This time of year food often takes center stage, and in keeping with that, The Beachcomber asked five islanders — all experts in the kitchen — what they believe makes for an ideal holiday feast. Some responses came steeped in tradition and childhood memories, while others veered toward experimentation and setting new traditions with new families. Combined, they showed just how big a table would be needed to hold this season’s favorite treats and the people who would gather round to share them.

Tom Conway

Tom Conway calls Vashon “Potluck Island” because of the shared dinners’ frequency and says that if anyone invites him over and asks him to bring a salad, it means they have not connected personally.

“I am the dessert guy,” he said, noting that he does not discriminate between the complicated and the mundane — and all desserts in between.

Conway, a self-taught cook, is busy these days tending to his dog, house and property at Tall Clover Farm and entertains less than he used to, though he rises to the cooking occasion when he receives an invitation.

“I put my full attention on my potluck dish,” he joked.

While salads are not his calling, he appreciates locally grown food and at Thanksgiving and Christmas, he usually makes applesauce from his trees at the farm.

“You know there is a new season coming when you are eating apple sauce from the apples you grew,” he said.

As for his favorite desserts to make, the list is long, and includes dacquoise, a French layer cake with layers of buttercream, hazelnut meringue and icing. Making it is an all-day endeavor, allowing for time to let the meringue dry.

“It’s like a construction project,” he said.

Conway is also partial to English pudding — like a moist fruit cake — and English pudding molds.

“Think 50’s Jello molds except with cake,” he added.

The pudding itself is baked in the oven in a water bath, and, if spritzed with booze, lasts a long time, he said, offering a tip.

Selecting a holiday dinner main course, he chose two items often featured in the Northwest: prime rib and king crab.

“If I was on death row, that would be my last meal. That is my ultimate Christmas dinner,” he said.

At his ideal holiday feast, Conway said a combination of island friends would be gathered. In Seattle, he noted, he and his friends were all fairly similar, but the picture is more eclectic here.

“On Vashon, it can be anyone from my neighbor Phoebe who is 91 to the neighbor down the street who just had a baby,” he said. “It is really great that way. You have a lovely mixture of people.”

Conway also brought up a favorite treat from childhood, which he said he named to give it Christmas flair: Manger Hay. It is a combination of Chun King flash fried noodles with peanut butter and butterscotch morsels, set on waxed paper in hay stack shapes.

“They are wickedly good because they are salty and sweet and they have peanut butter in them,” he said. “I can eat them like popcorn.”

Asked if he might make them this year, he said yes.

“I think I will,” he said. “I have a potluck to go to.”

Emily Wigley

Emily Wigley, the owner of the Orca Eats food truck, grew up cooking alongside her mother, an excellent cook, and by age 16 had a job cooking professionally. By 17, she was making all the desserts — pies and torts — for the restaurant.

For her, big holiday meals should include food from people’s traditions and history, along with “a dash of something different.” Her own family was German, she said, and when she was growing up, Christmas dinner was potato pancakes, ham and applesauce.

If she were adding the dash of different to that dinner, she would include “an interesting, good salad,” likely a simple romaine salad with grapefruit and avocado with a vinaigrette dressing.

“It is the weirdest dinner in the world, but it is really delicious,” she said.

For dessert, passing a big plate of holiday cookies would be her first choice, with peppermint ice cream and chocolate cake coming in second.

She has not set many standards for big dinners this time of year except being together and having a good time.

“This is what a holiday gathering is all about — you do what works, and you make it fun,” she said.

Samantha Weigand

Some might think that baked goods and sweet treats would be featured high on a holiday feast hit list for Samantha Weigand — and indeed, a trip to Vashon Island Baking Company reveals holiday temptations such as peppermint bark candy, fudge and fruit cake. But those foods are not central to the holidays for her.

Weigand grew up with a Jewish father and Catholic mother. On Christmas, her mom, who was Puerto Rican, would stay at home and cook pernil, a pork roast, while her dad took her and her siblings to the movies.

“We would come home to this great garlic smell,” she said. “That is what Christmas was to me, going out, going to the movies to see the latest and my mom’s Puerto Rican cooking.”

Weigand, whose family includes three young children, is looking to create a different kind of tradition with them. She will close the bakery for its annual break on Christmas Eve and donate the leftovers to a shelter for teens in Seattle. She noted that many people like to donate around this time of year, but she would like to the shelter to be able to count on this substantial Christmas Eve donation every year.

“I would like to make it a tradition with my kids that we pack up the car with everything left at the bakery and get on the ferry and drive to Seattle,” she said.

Lia Lira

Lia Lira talked about the the perfect holiday dinner — and seasonal treats — while she was making a buche de noel, or yule log, as a prelude to Christmas Eve at Bramble House.

Setting the mixer aside, she spoke to the importance of people and food this time of year.

“The most important part is the community aspect, the connection and conviviality, not what you are eating, although I think dessert is really important,” she said.

When she worked at the acclaimed restaurant Jean Georges in New York, she made many buches de noel, and she noted holiday desserts can be fun to make once a year, even if they are sometimes a bit unusual.

“Why would you make a dessert to look like a rotting log?” she added, laughing.

On Christmas Eve at her restaurant, she will host a Feast of the Seven Fishes, a tradition with its roots in southern Italy, that includes seven courses of seafood. It stems from the Italian, “La Vigilia,” or the wait for the birth of the baby Jesus. It also encompasses the Catholic tradition of not eating meat on specific days, when many people would eat fish instead.

“It is spending time with your family, eating and waiting for Jesus to be born,” she said.

The meal at Bramble House will not be religious, she said, but a “fine celebration.”

From her childhood, her holiday favorites included a much different treat than the labor-intensive meal and dessert she is serving on Saturday: homemade popcorn balls with cinnamon candy.

Despite her years as a chef, she spoke highly of the simple holiday food.

“It (the holiday season) is about coming together, cooking these things and having fun,” she said.

Dre Neely

At Vashon’s Gravy, owner and chef Dre Neely talks about holiday feasts growing up with a large extended family in Alabama.

Those traditions included a large New Year’s feast, he said, with salt-cured tenderloin and smoked fresh ham from a neighbor’s pig.

His grandfather and uncles mastered all the food that was cooked outside, while the women tended to all the food cooked inside: black-eyed peas, cornbread, yams and more. As a child, he went between both groups preparing the food.

“I did all the shelling of the beans and cleaning of the collard greens and helped make cornbread,” he said.

Dessert would be red velvet cake, Key lime pie or German chocolate cake, his grandmother’s favorite.

The meal, with lots of family gathered round, occurred every year, but now, New Year’s dinner is not so grand, he said, and features steak or oysters.

At Gravy, New Year’s Eve will feature the regular menu with some specials for the evening added: freshly shucked oysters, salmon with herbed gnocchi and butternut squash, along with a tenderloin for two.

Neely joked he does not have the patience to make desserts unless they have only three or four ingredients. At the restaurant, he plans to serve banana pots de creme and may offer Vashon Island Baking Company’s pecan pies.

At home, he said he likes to experiment, and he plans to make roast goose for the New Year’s holiday.

“My wife is not super excited, but I think it will be delicious,” he said.