Monday Interview: Jehnee Rains

Jehnee Rains Before Jehnee Rains became a pastry chef, she was a painter, and to hear the thirtysomething Portland native tell it, the enthusiasms are the same: a fascination with color, with texture; a curiosity as to how elements might work together, and a character that finds inspiration in something as perfectly simple as a peach. After more than a decade in the Bay Area,... [Read more]

Monday Interviews: Philippe Boulot of The Heathman

Philippe Boulot There are chefs who present their craft as precious and arcane as a Faberge egg. There are steady-eyed technicians who get the job done, hold the romance. And there’s an amalgam of the two, the gourmand who craves wild striped bass but whose inner pragmatist knows he must serve rockfish, the culinary general who steadily leads the troops through truffles that... [Read more]

Monday Interviews: Elizabeth Montes of Sahagún Chocolates

Elizabeth Montes “This is for you,” says Elizabeth Montes, sliding across the café table a small packet containing five Sahagún chocolates, curlicue palets sifted with silver and buttery salty caramels crowned with hazelnuts, chocolates exuding both probity and whimsy and so individually stunning they have the quality of jewelry. Over an Americano, Montes (who, with her... [Read more]

Monday Interview: Anya Von Bremzen – The New Spanish Table

“I love this book,” said Anya Von Bremzen, James Beard award-winning author and contributor to Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine and other publications, on her swing through Portland as part of a 25-city tour for her latest work, The New Spanish Table. “This is my fifth book, and it’s got everything that I want in it: really good recipes, very solid… And it also... [Read more]

Monday Interviews: Pascal Sauton of Carafe

Pascal Sauton, chef and owner of Carafe, laughs easily, charms effortlessly, and exudes the sort of corporeal bonhomie one associates with the proprietor of a French bistro. Born and trained in France, with cooking sojourns in New York to South America, Sauton deliberately set down stakes in Portland, because, he says, “Oregon is a candy store for chefs.” Over cappuccino,... [Read more]

Monday Interviews: Chef Marco Shaw of Fife

[Note from FoodDude: Marco Fife sold his restaurant in 2009 and moved out of Portland. However, this interview is still a fascinating read] The gleaming copper structure on NE Fremont could easily be mistaken for a luxury goods shop, until one walks inside, and senses one’s stepped into a dinner party, one hosted five nights a week by chef Marco Shaw. “It should be like... [Read more]

Monday Interviews: Adrienne Inskeep of Siam Society

With her pixyish hair and lithe physique, Adrienne Inskeep may look like Peter Pan, but the chef of Siam Society, the restaurant she owns with her husband, Paul Van Slyke, is absolutely grounded; by her own admission, perhaps too. “I am definitely a taskmaster, and almost to a fault,” says the 26-year-old, who since opening the Thai establishment last October in an historic... [Read more]

White Balls

I have always been the baker; I baked jam tarts for my dollies; I baked cookies for my brother and his friends when they were teenagers and had the munchies; I bake everyone their birthday cake and was given a plaque from my daughter’s grade school for baking every month for seven years. You might surmise this is compulsion is borne of generosity; perhaps, but it is... [Read more]

The Pitfalls of Reviewing

I began my journalistic career as a reviewer of bars, a job that drew the drooling envy of my friends, and more comments than I can count of “I can’t believe that you get paid to drink!” Then, as people turned thirty, as they paired up and had kids, I noticed less envy, more incredulity. “How do stay up late at night,” they’d ask. “We’re asleep by 10:30.”... [Read more]

Reviewing the Reviewers. What Do Ethics Matter?

I hope Nancy doesn’t mind me jumping in on her story. Robb Walsh of the Houston Press pulls a double review at a restaurant at which he is recognized and the results are rather interesting: “As for the experiment, it’s clear I was treated much better than Josh. The point isn’t to punish Gravitas for recognizing a restaurant critic. That’s not... [Read more]

My Oven, J’Accuse!

There are certain things in life we just need to admit. For instance, if you were the tallest man in the world, you’d have to cop to it. If you wrote like Joan Didion—whose beam on the unalloyed truth moves her to write even when she is mad with grief you’d have to acknowledge that the process you call “discovering what’s on my mind and then hiding it” is,... [Read more]

Why You Don’t Want the Pie

Nancy Rommelmann is not only a frequent commenter on this site, but is known for her work in nationwide magazines and newspapers. I asked her if she would be interested in writing now and then for this space, and she agreed. If you have ever been to her house, you’d have had many baked goods pressed into your hands, some of the best darn chocolate chip cookies, pies,... [Read more]

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