• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Kim Boyce. photo: Cheryl Sternman Rule

Pastry chef Kim Boyce previously of Campanile and husband Thomas, former chef de cuisine at Spago in Los Angeles, have landed in Portland

She is the author of the highly rated “Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours” released in 2010. She worked for years with Nancy Silverton, founder of Campanile and La Brea Bakery, who wrote the intro to her book.

I asked her what brought her to Portland, and what her future plans are.

After living and working in Los Angeles for 14 years, we needed a change. Thomas had been the chef de cuisine at Spago for the last nine years, I had worked in pastry kitchens in Los Angeles with my last job being pastry chef at Campanile. I left the kitchen to have kids and then began work on a cookbook. As our girls got older we realized that we wanted to raise them in a smaller city. We took a week in the fall of 2008 to explore Portland and decided that we wanted to be part of what was going on in this city.

The food – we ate at as many restaurants as we could and time and time again we were amazed to see how enthusiastic the diners of Portland were and how good the food was. We noticed that chefs here are making a living cooking the food they want. They were inspiring.

The farmers’ market – we walked into the PSU market to a table overflowing with local chanterelles, which you don’t find in Los Angeles. Then there were apples and squash, local cheeses and honey. We noticed all the bakery stands and we realized that this was a town we wanted to cook in.

The community – the scale of the city lends itself to having a metropolitan flair while it lives like a small town. Like Los Angeles the chefs all knew one another and seemed to support each other. That was important to us. We wanted to know our neighbors.

Once we finally got to Portland, I was sitting on a bench eating bagels with my kids and Nancy [Rommelmann] walked by. I had been to Ristretto during IACP and heard her and Din talk at their Williams shop. I introduced myself and asked if she needed pastries. After a tasting she took on a few items and then more and more and starting Saturday I’ll be baking for both of the stores. Baking for them has been very rewarding because they really like pastry and that’s important.

As for future plans, we’re not sure. Thomas to Portland to cook, I came to bake. Right now we’re taking the time to think through our ideas. In the meantime I get to bake for Ristretto. I’m also teaching cooking classes and holding book signings for my cookbook, Good to the Grain.

Kim is thus far featuring seasonal items from the local area, currently raspberry scones, and sand cookies, and a sweet bread made with Sauvie Island strawberries; two types of savory tarts (ricotta with greens and breadcrumbs, and ricotta with greens and prosciutto (she makes the tart dough; Thomas makes the fillings); chocolate-chocolate nib cookies; rhubarb tarts; and apricot-crumble bars. She can be contacted at KimBoyceBakes.com

[Note: Nancy Rommelmann, occasional contributor to this site, is the wife of Ristretto owner Din Johnson]

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Billy Wilson

Sure, you thought that you’ve been in Portland’s hippest coffee shops, sipped on single-origin French press while enjoying the pour over bar, sleek furnishings and espresso equipment that likely is worth more than your car. But now that’s water under the bridge. Add all of that to a high definition surround sound system (need to hit the restroom? Yeah, there’s a speaker in the ceiling there too), custom woodwork tables, and French inspired wallpaper with coordinating custom wrap around leather benches. Throw in a few taps of fine beer and you’re close to picturing the space Billy Wilson has been working on over the past few months. Barista II is not just another coffee shop; it’s a coffee shop with a strong speakeasy nod that answer’s the question, ‘Oh – this is where I’ve wanted to hang out and didn’t even know it.’

Billy: It looks good in here. We just pulled the paper off the walls – it’s like unwrapping a present. (He’s showing it to his friend Matt)

Let’s talk about the design of the place

Billy: It’s kind of a funny thing how we designed this. Ben (King – the architect) and I work really well together. I initially sat down with him and was like, ‘This is my idea.’ I wanted to do more of this style in the Pearl shop but when that came around it was just not the right space. It was really small – we just needed to be really clean. I’ve wanted to do something a little more classic for a while. I’d really love to open a speakeasy to be honest. Leather booths, everything’s wallpapered. To me that sounds like a good place to hang out.

The other aspect of it is that there are a lot of places I go, bars and stuff, where it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s drink a beer here.’ Which makes sense because it’s a bar, BUT I would also drink coffee here. Like in the daytime, it’s got cool light. Then I was like, ‘Well what about coffee shops?’ There are a lot of coffee shops that try to sell beer… but I wouldn’t want to try and sell beer out of the Pearl shop. It just feels stupid. So I was like, ‘I want to design a place that looks good in the dark.’ Having it look good in the light – for a coffee shop – is one of the easiest things. That’s why we designed it like this. I just love this style.

Barista Alberta. Photos: Tim Roth

As far as everything else, the equipment layout is my design. When it comes to the materials – how to achieve a certain thing, that was Ben.

Ben King: We did a lot of computer models. Like the last one, he mocked up the whole thing in his basement. I do a lot of coffee shops and bars (ie. Albina Press on Hawthorne, Barista in the Pearl, Coffeehouse 5, Extracto) and nobody thinks about flow like he does. He’s pretty hard core.

Billy: I feel bad because this is going to be sooo nice to work on and the Pearl shop is one of the most difficult bars to work on because the grinders are down the line. Whereas here you can go back and forth in a flurry.

What have been the challenges with this one?

Billy: Honestly, it’s kind of gone smoothly.

Ben: We started in the beginning with a lot of work to make sure things go smoothly. So there haven’t been the ugly surprises.

Billy: I mean, it’s going longer than we expected – but that’s to be expected.

So those are speakers (I’m looking at a lot of them). Are you wiring for a full audio system?

Billy: We’re going to give it some time, but we’ve got it wired for high-def. But I want to break the space in first a little bit. I don’t want to be that guy with a TV in his coffee shop, but in the evenings? I’m going to be selling beer here from 6-10pm, so who knows what we’ll end up doing.

Billy: Oh there’s all kinds of things… a film night… Again, it’s all family. One of my dearest friends Peter, his dad owns a video/audio installation company, so he gave me the massive hookup on these. We got eight JBLs in the main café here; we got one in the bathroom. We got ‘em going in outside. I’m trying to make the best space I can.

Why here on Alberta St.?

Billy: I live in North Portland. I was always trying to get Kevin (Fuller, owner of Albina Press) to open up something out here. We really couldn’t find anything for a while. And we weren’t ready to open up a second store. I mean, the Pearl shop’s only been open a year, but the landlord came to me with a screamin’ lease. The numbers looked right… it was really hard to turn it down.

I’ve said it once; I’ll say it a thousand times: I have the best staff… the best employees I’ve ever worked with. Within six months they were totally running that shop. I was just in the way. So that freed me up to really pursue, ‘Well, what if we do another shop?’

Are you planning the same roasting menu here?

Billy: Yeah, it’ll probably be the same coffee with a little variety I suppose.

A while ago you made some waves in your Twitter account when you asked what the reaction would be if you didn’t allow wifi. What’s the update on that? Are you going to have it?

Billy: We’ll have wifi. But if you look around, there’s only like three plugs in here. You’re more than welcome to come in here – hey, people gotta work. You’ve got your smartphones and people need access but I don’t want people to sit here all day. I don’t want it to be like a library in here. I want this to be a place where it’s loud – people are talking – I don’t want people studying all day. There’s no laptops allow at the bar. Unless you own the place. I want to have fun; make lots of coffee.

What’s the neighborhood reaction been like going in here? Such as with the other coffee shops.

Billy: Here, yeah, there are multiple coffee shops on this street. I could throw a rock and hit one right now. But look at this. It’s a total different vibe. I think there’s definitely room for everybody.

Are you ever surprised about how well coffee does here?

Billy: It makes total sense. Portland is full of foodies. I can’t give an exact answer as to why people serve so much coffee here – Stumptown helps. If there hadn’t been Stumptown here I think we’d be a few years behind where we are now. Duane’s (Sorenson, owner of Stumptown) one of the front-runners. He’s really influential in my life. He’s one of the reasons why I’ve stayed on the path.

In terms of competing, are you still in that world?

Billy: (eyes widen – head down) Oh my God. You know… yeah, we’ve got competition coming up. Depending how this thing goes, I’ll do my best to compete. But I’m fifty fifty right now if I’m going to compete or not. Next year will be easier for me. There’s just too much going on right now. If Barista’s going to succeed at what I want it to be, then I have to make sure my baristas compete and do well. For me it’s important to support them. My goal with Barista is to really turn the job into a profession – really make a living making coffee for people. The build out here is reflective of that seriousness.

• Barista Pearl District is located at 539 Northwest 13th Avenue, Portland
• Barista II is located at 1725 NE Alberta St. Portland
• Barista SW Portland will be opening Summer 2012.

This original post is by Catherine Cole, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Owners Brian Snyder, Walt Alexander, Kevin Atchley. Photo: Catherine Cole

Kevin, Brian and Walt are anxiously awaiting the opening of their third Pine State outlet on NE Alberta and judging by the near constant around-the-block lines at the Farmers’ Market and Belmont shop, the new location will further fuel their cult following. And while the space is double that of their Belmont location, don’t expect a leisurely restaurant experience. They’re staying true to their quick eat ‘em and run, to-go biscuit kitchen set up.

Is it typical for you guys to all be together:

Brian: Not at all – it’s very atypical.

Describe your different roles:
Brian: Walt and Kevin both work in the shop; I don’t work in the shop at all. Walt’s the coordinator for all the contractors and any kind of shop maintenance. He did our build out on Belmont. He’ll do a lot of the finish work on Alberta. Kevin is our one-man-HR-Department. [laughs] I’m the bill payer. Then we meet every week to talk about operational issues.

So you guys are all friends from North Carolina:

Walt: Yeah, we all went to school there. Brian moved out to Portland in 2001. I followed shortly after in 2002. Kevin was at Arizona State. On the way out to Portland, I visited Kevin. Once I established myself here, Kevin came and visited a couple years later over Christmas and really liked Portland. He was winding things up there in Arizona and decided to move up. We ended up living together and that’s about the time we started thinking about Pine State. It was about 2005.

Kevin: The house that we lived in was Pine State for a little while we got the Farmers’ Market rolling. We worked out of the house. Brian would come over for the first year or so. We’d have our meetings there – worked out of shared kitchen spaces all over town.

Was the idea from the three of you?

Biscuit smothered in mushroom gravy. Photo: Catherine Cole

Brian: You guys pretty much approached me – Originally the talk was, ‘Let’s open a restaurant.’ But all of us were non-committal. None of us had run a restaurant before and it was more financial risk we were willing to take at that point. Kevin, you came up with the idea of the Farmers’ Market.

Kevin: I was working for the VP of the Farmers’ Market board (Scott Dolich of Park Kitchen) at the time. I thought it’d be a good idea to get our feet wet. Walt and I made biscuits ‘n’ gravy one day, took it down and handed it out to the crew at the Farmers’ Market. They were game – so we got on board to do the Market. We mulled around for weeks trying to decide how to buy one oven between the three of us. And if it was feasible to make biscuits outside. We kept working out of these communal kitchens. We were at Simpatica first. We were supposed to go to Gotham (Tavern). The week we started was that they shut down. While Tommy was a really good friend of ours and we wanted to sympathize – we’re like, ‘Oh man, that’s such a drag, but where are we gonna go?!’ We didn’t even know John at Simpatica. I just went down there and was like, ‘Hey man, I don’t know you but can I use your kitchen?’ He actually said, ‘Sure.’

Brian: I think he’s from North Carolina?

Kevin: I think he’s from Virginia. Then once they got their catering stuff we had to find a different space. So we went over to Park Kitchen and worked out of there for about a year, year and a half?

Brian: We finished out the first year of the Market there. The second year we worked out of Apizza Scholls. It was fun; it was good to work in those different spaces. It helped us figure out our setup – what we wanted our kitchen to look like.

Walt: Find out what we didn’t want to do. Yeah, there was a lot of fumbling around the first couple years – we didn’t really have a flow. First year, for sure – second year we got our feet under us a little bit and actually hired someone. It was like Wednesday all night and Saturday for about 15 hours.

Brian: And everyone was working full-time jobs on top of that.

Walt: And we misspelled our sign on opening day of the Farmers’ Market. Me and Brian were up real late … One of our customer’s like, ‘You guys are from North Carolina. You can’t spell biscuits.’

Tell me a little bit about how Belmont happened and what it was like to actually have a space.

Brian: We’d been shopping around for a while.

Reggie Deluxe

Walt: We looked on Killingsworth… then a girl working for us mentioned the place on Belmont. I called Kevin and told him to drive by this spot; it’s a little coffee shop going out of business. He did and met with the landlord. Then we had an appointment to all look at it. We originally walked in and were like, ‘Wow. This is pretty small… but I guess we ARE just a biscuit kitchen – to go biscuits.’

Kevin: It was great because we realized we CAN do this in a 10 x 10 foot space.

Walt: We also wanted to project that intimacy on the new spot. We’ve never said we’re a restaurant. Where we come from the whole idea is about getting biscuits to go. If you’re hung over or on you’re way to work; you don’t sit down and stay to eat.

Brian: That’s how barbeque joints are – that’s how a lot of places are…

Kevin: We don’t even use the term ‘restaurant.’ It’s a biscuit shop, biscuit kitchen. I don’t think we qualify as a sit-down place to this day. We try and just say, ‘We’re hawking biscuits.’

Brian: Our focus is what happens behind the counter.

Tell me how the recipes have gotten worked out.

Brian: We all did a lot of work on ‘em. The year before the Farmers’ Market was spent working them out. We would try different kinds of recipes, each other’s recipes.

Walt: We also tried the freshest ingredients versus shortcuts. Like in the South they use lard or shortening.

Brian: It was a solid six months of making and eating biscuits. Which was good for a lot of people. We had parties to see what they liked. We kept going back to one recipe.

Kevin: It made us realize by trying those traditional recipes with lard, we wanted to do something that was more in tune with how we ate – fresher, more wholesome.

Brian: I honestly think that we all eat better than we did when we grew up.

What’s the reaction been like from your family?

Brian: I make ‘em every time I go home. We’re always calling each other, ‘Can you give me the recipe one more time?’

Kevin: [laughs] Yeah, the single batch… I think we’ve all been forced by family to wake up early one morning during the holidays and crank out some Pine State Biscuits.

Brian: The last time I was home I made everyone biscuits for dinner [laughs]. I was like, ‘I’m not gettin’ up! I’m on vacation.’

I’m not even going to ask for the recipe because I know you won’t give it to me [pause]. But will you at least mention the flour?

Kevin: Oh yeah, we use Shepherd’s Grain – fifty, fifty high gluten and low gluten.

Walt: That wasn’t always the case. We tried Bob’s for a while. Then we got a sweet deal on the Shepherd’s Grain since we use so much flour. We try and keep it as simple as possible – we got this one thing.

Kevin: It’s humble food. We play around with it a little bit – we’ve gotten creative with the combinations, but there’s something to be said for doing one thing the best we can as opposed to diversifying yourself to the point where you’re all over the map. We’re really dedicated to the craft of what we’re doing.

Brian: It took us a while to even do hash browns.

Kevin: It wasn’t until we opened the shop when we’re like, ‘Over easy? Alright. We’ll do an egg over easy.’

Let’s talk about Alberta. How’s it going?

Kevin: We’ve all driven by it when it was another business and thought, ‘Wow, that place is amazing.’ Alberta itself is a good mirror in Northeast for Belmont. No one came in and developed it all at once. Brian had heard about the space being available. We went by, checked it out and the business that was there was closing their doors that week. We got the number of the landlord, got in touch with him and found that he was someone we could really jive with. We liked him a lot; the space looked great; it felt solid.

Walt: It was the right size.

Brian: It’s exactly double the size of our current space.

Walt: Plus an outdoor eating area, which was what we all wanted.

But there was no kitchen when you got it.

Kevin: No, we cleaned it to a blank slate.

Brian: We looked at a couple of places with kitchens.

Kevin: On Alberta.

Brian: Yeah, but we couldn’t create the intimacy that we have on Belmont. That’s the one complaint we get though, is like, ‘What is UP with these 14 seats?!’

Kevin: Yeah, it’s small, but it’s what the city allows us.

Brian: But what it comes down to is the food. So that’s what people are going to experience on Alberta. They’ll be able to see all their food being cooked.

Kevin: There’s something to be said for the energy in a restaurant that’s densely populated.

Walt: We most likely will do some late nights too. We can’t do that at our current location because we’re connected to some apartments – it’s in the lease that we can’t stay open passed 5pm. On Alberta we don’t have any of those restrictions. It’s pretty exciting.

Brian: This space will give us room – we’ll have a walk-in, a place to stage the Farmers’ Market, we’re in the early stages of partnering with other businesses. There’s a coffee shop in Washington that we’re going to start trickling them biscuits. We’re dipping our toe in that water, but we’ve talked about doing more catering stuff, maybe doing more Farmers’ Markets. We love that atmosphere.

So you thought of getting into the new Farmers’ Markets?

Kevin: We talked about it, but we kind of have our hands full right now.

Walt: The Vancouver and Beaverton markets are really big and that’s somewhere we might go, but right now it’s hard to keep track of what we’ve got going.

Kevin: We’d need a van that can drive on the highway.

[all laughs]

Walt: Old Bessie. She’s nearing the finish line. That van is packed to the rim.

Anything else to add?

Kevin: We’re sponsoring a t-ball league too. If all goes as planned, on Saturdays you can watch the Pine State Biscuits T-Ball Team. With at least one of us out there in a Pine State jersey.

Expect Pine State Biscuits on NE Alberta/22 to open sometime this April.

You can read a review of Pine State Biscuits here

This original post is by Catherine Cole, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Dave Machado

Nel Centro, Dave Machado’s latest venture, is a hard-hat-only area in late March. Standing amid buckets of grout and workers using acetylene torches, Machado explains how he came to open his third Portland restaurant in the eight-thousand-square-foot space on the ground floor of the Hotel Modera.

“You remember what this place was, that skuzzy Days Inn bar?” he asks. I tell him, I do, and how depending on your mood, the purple lighting and soiled carpet and solo drinkers put you one step closer to either writing the Great American Novel or suicide.

“It was pretty bad,” he agrees. “And the space – everybody in town looked at it and nobody wanted it.”

Everybody?

“Greg Higgins, Bruce Carey and in between,” he says. “It was under demolition and everybody went, ooh, location!”

The location, on SW Clay and Sixth, is pretty amazing.

“It is. But then you walk through the space and think: it’s just too damn big. I looked at it back in March of ’08; did a walk through, went home and forgot about it.”

The people behind the hotel, however, convinced him to take another look. “They also own Hotel Andra, up in Seattle,” he says. “Tom Douglas has a restaurant there.”

Tom Douglas who owns Serious Pie?

“Yeah, and also a bunch of other restaurants,” says Machado, who also owns Lauro and Vindalo. “So I came back and looked again, and look at this.” He turns north, west and south, toward the hi-rises just beyond the floor to ceiling windows. “You have the Portland Building, you have the Oregonian across the street, and PSU owns all those buildings,” he says. “And if you look on Sixth and Fifth [Avenues], you will be absolutely blown away by the number of brand new buildings. It’s staggering.”

Walkway

Machado’s eyes ask, are you seeing what I see? I am; the landscape is monolithic. I don’t think there’s a restaurant in Portland with this kind of big city view. “And one block over you have the Wells Fargo Building,” he adds. “You have six thousand tenants, including [a hundred] attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine, and they have to eat lunch somewhere.”

Where do they eat now?

“It’s not that there aren’t other restaurants in this end of downtown. You have Higgins and Carafe and Veritable Quandary, and they’re busy,” he says. “But there aren’t enough restaurant seats at this end of downtown, not with the arts scene you have around here. It’s a five-iron shot to the Schnitz, a two-iron to the Keller. I’ve got a hundred and twenty parking spots underneath me, and a hundred and seventy-four hotel rooms above – you have a built in breakfast crowd.”

He’s going to need a breakfast crowd if he plans to fill Nel Cento’s planned two hundred and seventy-five seats.

“Yeah, but not all of them are in the restaurant,” he says, mentioning the five discrete dining areas, the private room with the big slab of Doug fir at which folks can dine communally, the three thousand square feet devoted to banquet rooms.

Banquet rooms?

“In hotels, banquets always make up for loss leaders,” he says. “Like room service; you always lose money on room service.”

Machado knows about hotel dining. He spent years working for Kimpton, first in San Francisco and then in Portland, where in 1991 he opened Pazzo in the Vintage Plaza Hotel. “Opening [in Hotel Modera] is like coming home for me,” he says, leading a tour of the spaces that will become Nel Cento’s two kitchens, its rotisserie; pointing out where the Calcutta marble walls will be, and the leather booths, and the giant four-sided bar.

Fire pit

“And if there’s a better public space in Portland, I don’t know what it is,” he says, walking directly from the bar to the courtyard, with its oblong fire-pits and slated wood partitions and thirteen-foot-high “living wall” of stone and steel and lichen-like plants. Designed by Holst Architecture in conjunction with Lango Hansen, the courtyard is urban in a way other Portland public spaces have not yet tried to be, both spectacular and serene, looking more like an adjunct to a museum.

“And it’s open to anyone,” he says, taking a seat at one of the fire-pits. “You can just sit here and read a book.” Which, in fact, a woman is doing as Aubrey Lindley, owner of the certifiably chic Cacao, wanders in.

“What is this place?” he asks, mentioning he’s on his way to a meeting but had to check out the courtyard “because it’s just so gorgeous.”

Not as gorgeous is the current economic climate. While any restaurant venture is risky, at any time, right now it’s especially fearsome. Yet Machado seems remarkably poised about the prospects of Nel Centro, which means “in the center,” perhaps because at fifty-four, he is without illusion.

“Look, restaurants are always real estate deals,” he says. “You can window dress them to be something else; they’re food, they’re cuisine, they’re feelings, they’re good times. But they’re always real estate deals, because it’s a space, and a lease, and equipment, and debt. This deal [Nel Centro] comes at a time when not many people want to take a risk. The deal to get into this hotel space is extremely… beneficent.”

They want to make it nice for you.

“They want me to succeed in the worst way.”

Success, he says, is not about being “a market leader or an educator or innovator”; about foams and hemp and menu arcana that make the customer feel ill equipped to order. “You make food and open restaurants for those that will come in and purchase food and enjoy the restaurant,” says Machado. “Since I don’t use investors, I don’t use partners and it’s all tied up in my own house and my own money, I can’t afford to have failure, or even a near-miss. I can only live in a world where they’re open and they’re generally full. And Lauro and Vindalo generally are.”

The menu at Lauro is heavily Portuguese and Spanish, with some Arabic influences, and Vindalo is “Spice Route” cuisine, broad swathes of land and peoples and cultures and time. While Nel Centro is equally informed by history, its locus, Machado says, “is very, very finite.”

“Both sides of the border in Italy and France, the city of Nice and the city of Genoa, really kind of make up what we do,” he says. “I’m taking classical recipes from those cuisines. An example: a beef daube the same way it’s done in Nice, the same orange peel, the same thyme; we’re putting a pig’s foot in it. The same giant, twenty-five pounds of chuck cut in cubes. It’s classical.”

Also on the menu: salt cod croquettes, bouillabaisse with red pepper rouille, and breads, pastas and desserts from pastry chef Lee Posey.

“She was my pastry chef at Pazzo for five years, and she’s spent the last decade running Pearl Bakery,” he says. “She’s looking for a challenge.”

Speaking of a challenge: the press release says the wines at Nel Centro, put together by David Holstrom, are going to be “playful” and “cerebral.” What does that mean?

Machado chuckles. “Dave is a cerebral guy; he’s got a degree in Slavic languages. He’s very smart, and also very impish and I try to keep Dave in a box. I say, ‘Dave, you can’t say what you just said…”

Because no one will understand…

“He’s just weird that way but I love him because he’s really smart,” he says. “Dave comes to me and goes, ‘I’m having a trouble with the price points, but if you allow me to go to Sicily, everything is going to change.’ So I said, you know, in Genoa, a lot of Sardinians and Sicilians came up to do trade, especially in their cheeses; so I said, if they have trade, and they have cheese that gets transported up there, we’re going to go on it.”

Because you demand a proper historical connection before you put an item or a wine on the menu?

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m very, very historical; everything is history, trade, commerce, warfare: what is the tie-in? As Americans, we’re so…” He pauses. “We don’t know that the port of Venice and the port of Genoa control almost all food products from the Arab and Asian world in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They control everything because they have finance. They’re supplanted by the Portuguese and the Spanish, and later by the Dutch, and later by the English-and the only reason is that each one has finance! The Portuguese and the Spanish, through the Inquisition, get rid of all of the Jews, who are all of their financiers. And guess where they go? They go up to the Netherlands, so the next era of discovery and the next era of trade is the Dutch! It’s all about trade, it’s all about finance; it’s all about warfare: who fought for who could control whom.

“That’s what makers me crazy about Portland and the bloggers,” he continues. “They get all fundamentalist, about authenticity and food. It’s like, where do you think that food came from? Where do you think a dish in Italy came from? It came because some Portuguese explorer put in tomatoes or fava beans. It was a result of trade and commerce that you get cuisine. You didn’t get cuisine in a vacuum; you got cuisine because people brought you products.”

I tell him, don’t get me started on provinciality, as though we should only eat foods from within ten miles of here. That I’m a little more curious than that, actually, curious about coffee and chocolate and chiles and other things that do not grow in the 97_ _ _ zip code.

“You get to a Luddite way of dealing with the world,” he says. “People become fundamentalist about food; you want to say, stop; stop. Stop. Be a little more open.”

So you’ve got your eager pastry gal and your wacky wine guy. Who’s the chef?

Machado measures his answer. “I’m writing all the recipes and developing all the food in conjunction with my team,” he says, but I’ve talked with him enough to know, there’s going to be an addendum.

“This is an often asked question, and it’s a difficult one to explain,” he says. “People like to identify with the chef, so they look at a white coat or chopping in the kitchen; they have these images they need to have validated. But a lot of the stuff I’m doing, I’m the editor. I’m running the business, every aspect, from the cocktails to the menu to the uniforms to the logo; I’m doing all of it.”

Machado looks toward the bar area. “I built and positioned that bar so that if you come into the hotel, and you walk down the lobby, the first person you see is a bartender who says, ‘Hi. Welcome.’ The other bartender is the first person you see from the other door [on Sixth]. I hate when you go into a restaurant and you say, ‘How does this work? Where do we go? Who are we and how do these people feel about us?’ There are so many details in a business like this. Will I go in [the kitchen] and cut something or sauce something or flip something over? Absolutely. But that’s a young man’s game; it’s for twenty-five-year olds.”

Speaking of young men, how did the hiring go?

“First Craigslist ad got five hundred in twenty-four hours,” he says. “Before this particular economy, [we'd get] twenty, sixty, maybe eighty. I have mixed feelings about this: it’s good for any employer; plenty of supply. In terms of pure capitalism, it’s a buyers market. But it’s not a good situation, because it says that the economy is contracting at a rapid rate. When you have qualified chefs saying, I’ll be a cook, or qualified managers saying, I’ll wait tables, then everybody’s throwing their hats in and saying, I’ll take whatever I can take.”

And some are throwing in the towel.

“Yeah,” says Machado, and we talk off the record about who in the restaurant business is on top and who will go under. Which extremely well known restaurants are on rent abatement and which one owes $480,000 in back taxes.

“I’ve had people apply for jobs behind their bosses’ backs because the restaurant stopped paying staff altogether,” he says. When I ask how this is possible, why employees would stay without being paid, he likens it to the Stockholm Syndrome. “They still have a job, the bosses are nice…” Machado shrugs.

“Have you been to Toast?” he asks.

I haven’t.

“You gotta go, 52^nd and Steele,” he says. “One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most this year, my breakfasts at Toast.”

Nel Centro opens in May
At the Hotel Modera
1408 SW Sixth Avenue
Portland, OR 97201
503-484-1099
www.nelcentro.com

This original post is by Nancy Rommelmann, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

By Catherine Cole

Kevin Ludwig

It doesn’t take long to realize the successful chefs and bartenders in this town are a part of a small, tight family. And Kevin Ludwig is definitely an important member. The Portland transplant has been here since 1993 and has strained martinis all over Puddletown’s finest dining rooms (Wildwood, Park Kitchen, Paley’s Place, Clyde Common). Now he’s about to make his dreams come true by opening the doors to Beaker & Flask, his very own bar (or is it a bar/restaurant?). He answered a series of questions just like that while sipping a Trumer Pilsner during our recent interview.

You signed your lease in October 2007. That was a while ago. What’s happened?

The building itself is old and needed a lot of work. The owners had been in there forever, and didn’t realize how much it was going to take to get it up and running. Then I had some issues with the city. It just dragged on and on…

I hired an architect; we drew up the plans, and then just ended up waiting for a year and a half. Yeah, it was frustrating.

So you’ve been working this whole time while waiting for Beaker & Flask to open?

I left Park Kitchen in May 2007. My plan was to take the summer off, think about what I wanted to do, and what my plans were for my place. The summer came and went. Then the landlords actually contacted me since they knew I was looking for a place. I loved it immediately and signed the lease. I was getting bored not working, and not knowing when it was all going to happen. I needed to get a job and was in the Clyde one night… do you know Charlie Hodge?

I don’t think I’ve met Charlie; I’ve met Nate.

Nate, yah, Nate’s the owner. I knew Nate already. He was going to be the original sous-chef at Park Kitchen. Way back when. So I was talking to Charlie and mentioned off-hand if they needed any help… so he got me in there just working one night a week. I did that through the winter, and then in June of this past year, Charlie left and moved down to Palm Springs and opened up the Ace Hotel, so the Clyde needed a manager. It wasn’t something I wanted to commit all my time to, but I wanted to do it. So I took that over with Tim Davey, who’s now going to come with me. We can go into Tim more later, but he’s a huge huge part of what’s going on at Beaker & Flask.

It was a really good experience doing that. He was pretty new. He came from Uptown Liquor and is just an encyclopedia. He’s by far the most knowledgeable person about spirits in this town, and is such an asset to have. He knows the ins-and-outs of the OLCC, and he’s got all these contacts with liquor companies. He just knows how the business works. He gets us to the top of the list, which is nice. Tim wanted to learn how to bartend, so started bar backing at the Clyde, then went over to Castagna – Nate got him a job over there. Then he came back over (to the Clyde). I was there as manager when he basically worked his way up, and has been bar managing on his own these last few months.

How did you come to the conclusion that you wanted your own place?

Charles Baker "The Gentleman's Companion"

It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. My mother tells me that when I was a kid and she’d ask me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to have my own bar. I can’t say that I’ve been on a straight and narrow path towards that. For a while I wanted to be a geologist and went to school for that. That’s actually where the book came into it a lot (note: He is referring to the namesake of his bar and continued source of inspiration: “Being an Exotic Drinking Book or Around the World With Jigger, Beaker and Flask” by Charles Baker). It made me think, ‘This is something I can do as a career.’

For a long time working in the restaurant industry was something you did on your way to somewhere else. It wasn’t a valid profession, so that’s where the book made me think it’s something I could do and be proud of the work.

But obviously I had to learn. I worked with some great people at Wildwood, then I actually ended up moving to Ashland in 1999 right after I got married, with the intention of opening a restaurant there. I had a space and everything; it was all set up; I had a lease… then a whole series of events happened, and it didn’t end up working out. We moved back here, sold the house in Ashland and two weeks later were back. It was like nothing ever happened. That’s when I got the job at Paley’s.

And now you’re taking Ben (Chef Ben Bettinger used to work at Paley’s Place).

Yep; I’m taking Ben. He’s down at the Clyde right now.

I love it.

(Laughs) It’s funny. Pretty much everybody who’s been hired so far has all, at some point in time, drawn a paycheck from the Clyde. So we’re thinking it’d be funny for our opening to do a parade… march from the Clyde, out over the bridge, and up to the space and open the doors… get March Fourth to play… but now it’s just, ‘Get the doors open.’

So Ben, Lance Mayhew (from 50 Plates), Tim… is there anyone else involved we should know about?

Doug Paquin. He worked with me at Park Kitchen. Then he went to help open D.F., and then worked at Lauro for a number of years. At the moment he’s making sausage at New Seasons. Doug is the man about town – everybody knows Doug. He’s in charge of beer. He’s going to be great. We have a very (pause) interesting dynamic.

Doug’s basically a socialist. Lance is a libertarian. They have some funny conversations. Tim and Doug are both huge Red Sox fans; I’m a Yankee fan. It’s just fun. We have a good time together.

There’s also Elizabeth Markham. She’s working part-time at Victory right now and bar manager at Blitz. She and Lance both have culinary degrees, so they bring a lot to the table.

What’s the date you’re shooting for?

The biggest thing now is my liquor license. There’s been a lot of budget cuts with the OLCC, and they’re short staffed. The process is taking much longer than it usually does. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. It could be three months away, you just don’t know. Until I have that in my hands, I don’t want to set a date. The space will be built completely in three weeks. And it looks fantastic.

What’s your approach to unify the food and cocktail menus? Is it going to be a bar or is it a restaurant?

That’s what’s been nice about having this year and a half to develop that. Initially it was going to be a bar; minimal kitchen – just putting out snacks type of thing. I was at Ben’s going away party from Paley’s, I mentioned it, and he was immediately interested. I offered him the job right then and there. I’ve been very lucky; he’s stayed with me. Our plan is to start small. The way we all look at it is: people are going to show up, and our goal is to make sure everything is solid and give them a reason to come back. Then we can expand.

Beaker & Flask construction

Everyone always asks me if we’re going to be a ‘classic’ cocktail bar, and no, not at all. I’ve compared it to this: when I was a musician I couldn’t play covers. It just wasn’t my thing. I was a bass player and got asked to join every band because nobody was a bass player. I showed up at this guy’s practice studio and they’re playing Rolling Stones, and I’m thinking, ‘This is the most boring thing I’ve ever done in my life.’ I never went back. The fun of it was sitting down with my friends and making new songs.

What’s the capacity?

It’s 62 people including bar. Bar seats 15. The bar is the dominant feature. It’s a really neat space.

What are your hours going to be?

We’re going to start out 4pm-12am. We’ll do a happy hour 4-6pm, then dinner service 6-10pm, then late-night happy hour. I think we’ll do well with the industry crowd – unless they’re all lying to me. So I want to have that option of being open later. We’ll be open six days a week. Closed Sunday.

We have quite a few events. Tim’s started doing these spirit dinners, where he picks a spirit and picks a chef, and he’s wanting to develop it into a Plate and Pitchfork kind of thing. So we’ll be doing some of those on Sundays.

I have an idea of a brunch I want to do, like 11am-5pm late brunch. I have all these brunch drink ideas. I’d play easy-listening all day and you could just sit there with your Bloody Mary all day and read the paper.

Do you ever try and guess what kind of drink someone will order? I’ve heard some bartenders can do that.

Yeah, there are obvious ones. There’s the cosmopolitan crowd. Whenever a James Bond movie comes out there’s the Vesper crowd. But I’ve been pretty lucky. It was like this at Park Kitchen and at the Clyde, people drank what we offered them. They ordered off the list. I’ve always been amazed by it – and happy with it too. Like Kelley at Ten 01, I think when the Sex and the City movie came out he made 100 cosmopolitans in one night. But that never really happened to me.

I know you’re fans of Apizza Scholls, Victory, Paley’s, Park Kitchen, the Clyde, all of your past places…

I love the Victory.

What are your other spots?

I do love the bar at Ten 01. I think Kelley is definitely one of the best bartenders in the city. Bar Avignon, I love Bar Avignon. It’s weird, for living in North Portland, I end up on that part of Division. I love Victory so much. Pok Pok, Victory and Bar Avignon; that’s a great way to spend a night.

You’ve been here for a while; how do you think the drink culture here has changed?

It’s changed quite a bit, but at the same time I think it stalled out for a while. When I was at Wildwood, there was a big interest in classic drinks. That’s where I learned. There was the swing-dancing thing that was happening and then there was a backlash. It started with the microbrews and the PBR thing; there was no real development. That went on for a long time. Lucy Brennan was doing her thing – which was great… we were doing good things at Paley’s. El Gaucho’s always been good, but there really wasn’t any set scene; it was just set in restaurants. People weren’t going out for cocktails, it was always just, Oh, I’m in a restaurant; oh, that’s a good drink. Even when I went to Park Kitchen, people were coming there for the food. For a long time it was like I was on an island. Until the end, when Kelley Swenson from Ten 01 started coming in and we started to build this community – I didn’t know any other bartenders, but I got to know him, and he’s amazing. And then Lance (Mayhew) sent me a MySpace message saying how we should get a drink, and we did. He’s been a great friend ever since. A great community has developed among bartenders in town. The dining public has definitely caught on and they’re interested.

What do you say to the skeptics who say it’s too risky to open a business right now?

This question comes up a lot. It’s something I have no control over. And like I said, I signed my lease in Oct. 2007. All I can do is just plod forward. Hard times are going to come. When I was at Paley’s after 9/11 the bottom fell out of the economy and there were things that they did. Utilizing the restaurant for events… at the time it was the pharmaceutical companies… and you make your way through it. There’s always going to be recessions. Obviously this one’s bad, but hopefully, I’ll be around for the next one.

[Beaker and Flask will be at 720 SE Sandy Blvd in Portland Oregon. I'll let you know as soon as they have an opening date]

[Catherine Cole’s writing has appeared in The Portland Mercury, VenusZine and PortlandPicks.com. She’s also been a copywriter for various businesses, and has a blog at: ccole.info/aflyonthewall.]

This original post is by Catherine Cole, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Ten 01 Chef Jack Yoss (middle) with Pastry Chef Jeff McCarthy (right) and Sous Chef Mike Perez (left)

A Conversation with Ten 01′s Chef Jack Yoss and Owner Adam Berger.

Ten 01 was my pick for Restaurant of the Year for 2008. –Food Dude

Timing–like many things in life–is everything. The timing of this interview happened less than a day after Portland Food and Drink named Ten 01, Restaurant of the Year. The two important forces of Ten 01, Jack Yoss and Adam Berger, were pleased with the announcement and graciously spent some time talking about how they’ve gotten so good at what they do, not to mention what may be ahead for the restaurant, the chef, and the owner.

So how did you guys meet? Adam, did you go to LA?

Adam: No, I called a recruiter in San Francisco. Jack’s name came up really fast. We got in touch and hit if off immediately. We had an hour and a half conversation the first time we talked. We’ve had a lot of similar experiences.

Jack: He’s worked in Alaska; I’ve worked in Alaska. I was getting ready to be a guest chef in Italy; he’s worked as a chef in Italy too. We got along really well from the start.

You get a lot of the credit for turning this place around. Talk a little bit about your approach.

Jack: I walked into it really positively. It’s a beautiful restaurant. I met and talked with Adam quite a bit; he had a lot of faith in me coming out here. The restaurant as a whole had a really good support staff. Erica’s done a fantastic job; Kelly’s been here since day one. People, even through the bad times, stayed on. There weren’t people jumping ship. Every single person here believed in this restaurant. When you have people who have so much pride in where they work, it’s pretty easy to go in somewhere.

Adam: Jack, besides his pedigree, and his professionalism, his work ethic is out of control. His style fit what we wanted to do here – something new. His strength, which is what got us here today, is consistency. Everything that comes out of that kitchen is exactly the same. And if it’s not, it doesn’t cross that window.

Do you taste everything?

Jack: Pretty much – well, not every single plate that goes out, I’d weigh 600 pounds, but, I mean, I go up and down the line and taste all the vinaigrettes. You have to adjust vinaigrettes every day, little bit of salt, little bit of acid, little bit more oil, especially wine sauces – every day it’ll lose a little more acidity.

When did you start cooking for money?

Jack: Cooking for money… I was about 15 years old. I started washing dishes at a crappy hotel casino in Henderson, Nevada; it’s kind of like the armpit of Vegas. I was 15, it was a union property; I was making like eight bucks an hour; I thought it was like all the money in the world. It was an egg house. Every day for my hour-union-break, instead of taking it, I’d go on the line. I’d pester the cooks… learn how to flip eggs. They started me out flipping toast in a sauté pan. I’d learn how to use my left wrist; I was using my right. If you’re right-handed, sauté with your left – it’s what you have to do in a kitchen. You pick things up with your right hand.

So they taught me how to flip toast… over and over and over again. Then I got to start tossing rice… in a sauté pan, to see if I could keep it all in there. Then they’d let me start flippin’ eggs. Not the most glamorous story of how to become a cook, but the next time a position came open, I was 16, and they gave it to me. I did that for a little over a year. I was 17 and already in the union, so I went down to the strip at Caesars Palace and applied for a job. I was definitely the least qualified one in there. It was for their high-end steak house, so there’s like 12 different kinds of fish – grilled, and 12 different kinds of meat, ostrich and squab and quail, fish and meat that I’d never heard about. So I applied there with a room of about 40 cooks, and my name’s ‘Yoss’ so my name was the last one to get called, and they actually forgot about me. Everyone got called and I was sittin’ in there, for, like, hours. Finally I went to the executive chef’s office at the hotel, and we hit it off really well. He’s like, ‘Oh, you’re persistent. You’ve been waiting out there for two hours?’ We got along really well so he hired me. So I walked in there, saw the menu and was like, ‘Crap. What’s a scallop?! What’s caviar? What’s foie gras? What is this stuff?’ It was a huge learning experience.

A couple months into that the executive chef came through and fired our chef, then walked out. We’re like, ‘Crap. What just happened?’ It was me, two other guys, and her. I followed the executive chef out and was like, ‘Chef, you know, she does, you know, quite a bit of stuff for us… Are you gonna authorize the overtime or, what are we gonna do?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah. You know how to do it. Get it done.’ All of a sudden we’re working 12-14 hour (in a) union, so we’re makin’ really good money as an hourly cook.

One of my first mistakes was when I started having to do my own meat and fish ordering. I hadn’t done so much fish breaking down, because she had done a lot of it, so I went through the sheets, and ordered – what was it – rouget. Rougets are really small fish… I didn’t really see the sizing or anything, so I ordered 40 pounds of rouget. Rougets are about four ounces each (!)

Oh my… that’s a lot of rouget

Jack: It took me days.

(Laughs)

Jack: I came in and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God; what’d I order?!’ So that was a lot of fun. I worked there for about four years… went through all the stations. Then I went to Chinois, and opened Chinois, which is a Wolf Gang Puck restaurant. That was really exciting for me because I went in there and didn’t know anything… black soy vinegar… Schezwan peppercorns… everything in there was new to me again.

Did you ever meet him?

Jack: Yeah, I was the chef at one of his restaurants and worked for him for eight years. He’s a really nice guy. Smart business man.

So how did you get to LA?

Jack: When I had a week vacation I said, ‘I wanna go to Postrio’ (in San Francisco). So I took my week vacation and went to San Francisco and staged there for 12-hour shifts and fell in love with the food and the city. It was very serious. The young cooks there are head-down focused. There’s no bullshit going on. There’s no laughing or joking. So I came back from my vacation and gave my notice.

Showed up in San Francisco a couple months later and started at Daytime Pantry. I did a couple months at every station and was made sous chef after about a year and a half. Then I was there for about four years and this job in Alaska came up and I kind of wanted to travel, and do what I’m gonna do now. Then I was out there for about a month… then they called me from Postrio and asked me to be the chef of cuisine. I was 26 at that point and I’m like, ‘I can’t turn this down.’ And from there I went to LA.

And you were there for how long?

Jack: Two years.

What about bad kitchen stories… any serious injuries?

Jack: A bad one would be when a guy – when I was at Caesars Palace – came by and knocked over boiling honey over my entire arm. So boiling honey landed on me, rolled down and took all my skin with it. That was pretty rough.

Whoa. That’s a good one.

Jack: Yeah, it was a good one. I cried tears for about an hour. I ran to a bathroom and just got on my knees and stuck my hand under the cold water. Skin was just rolling off my hand. Then I went to the hospital and they pulled it, cut it, scrapped it and scrubbed it.

The general question that I have to ask… why do it? Why cook?

Jack: For me… in my own thought… I think most of the world out there is very unhappy with their jobs. There are a lot of people who sit behind a desk eight hours a day with not a lot of creative freedom… There’s a culture working in a kitchen. It’s a lot of fun. Everyone ends up being like a brother because you’re with them more than you are with your family. My dad got into it; he was always the cook. He was always making chicken ‘n’ dumplings, chili in the old school Crock Pots; he’d always have that thing going with something. That got me interested in cooking. Cooking’s fun ya know. It’s fun.

And why be a restaurateur?

Adam: Because it’s fun. It’s probably some of the hardest work you can do. It satisfies everything. It’s creative; it’s different every day; it’s organic just like the food; you’re nourishing people. You’re teaching constantly. You work with really interesting people from all walks of life. And that’s just the kitchen. The front of the house is a whole other story.

About the hard part… how do you watch the bottom line? How do you keep costs low without compromising on quality?

Jack: It’s all about knowing your purveyors – constantly checking prices on who’s selling what. Out here it’s a little limited in purveyors. In Los Angeles, there’s 20 people going to sell you out here what two people are. So it’s not as much freedom, but the products out here are all amazing. Especially during the summertime. What the farmers bring here is better than you’re gonna get anywhere. I don’t care how much money you have in Los Angeles, you will not get the product that you do here for half the price of what you’re getting out there. So that’s a big one.

Comparing here with your time in LA, what do you miss about running a kitchen in a huge hotel? What are some differences between the two?

Jack: Well, here my hand gets to be in every single thing, which is what I like. There’s not much I miss in the differences between running the two kitchens. Here, it’s smaller, it’s tighter. The amount of numbers we do in here would be equivalent to the numbers we were doing in our fine dining restaurant, but we were doing two other restaurants, ran 24-hour room service, banquets from 300 to 1000 people. You get to be a little limited on every single thing you can touch and see… you can’t evaluate every single thing that comes out of your kitchen. What’s great about here is, the kitchen’s so small, if I’m standing almost anywhere in the kitchen, you can see everything around you. That goes back to consistency, being able to do and see that. My eyes are trained, from past restaurants, on a much bigger scope, so coming in here I can almost see what’s going on behind me.

What’s a common mistake you see chefs make?

Jack: Don’t be in a hurry to be a chef so quick. I think that kids these days are way too in a hurry to be a chef. I saw you have culinary school on there (my list of questions); I didn’t go to culinary school. I actually got a scholarship through Caesars Palace to go, and at that point I had been cooking for a few years. I went to two classes and the second one was eight hours talking about chicken stock. I’m like, ‘Ya, okay; I know how to make chicken stock.’ I’m sure I could have gotten a lot out of going to school, but the path I was on was going to get me where I wanted to go a lot quicker. The schools these days really put into you that you’re gonna come out and you’re gonna be a chef. You’re being trained to be a chef; your skills are in demand all over the world; they have clips of Emeril or Wolfgang, and everyone comes out thinking they’re going to be a celebrity chef. In San Francisco I had a huge extern program. The kids would come through and say, ‘I’m ready to be your sous chef.’ And I’m like, ‘Ok. Where have you cooked? “The Carême Room,” which was the school dining at CCA.’ They were very confident. And they don’t get that from themselves. They get that from school.

Do you have experience with that?

Adam: Yes. If I could ever get to them before they reach Jack, I would just tell them to go away, because I know he wouldn’t have anything positive to say.

Jack: It’s over $30,000. They don’t realize that when they get out of school they’ll be making maybe $10 an hour peeling vegetables. My advice to them would be: take your time. Pick your restaurants wisely. Go work for free for a week or two. You know, I’m getting ready to do that where I’m at in my career. Don’t be afraid to put in extra hours off the clock. If you’re scheduled at 3pm, don’t come in at 3 o’clock.

What are some of your favorite things to eat? Who cooks at home?

Jack: My wife’s a very good home cook. She has some of my favorite meals. One of ‘em is a bacon, shallot, Gruyere, double-stuffed potato with all this sour cream. Taco night is one of my favorite things. Cook a lot of Asian food at home.

Adam: Very typical of a chef. It’s almost like the higher up and sophisticated the cuisine is, it’s these really great home meals…

Jack: Simple and quick. Quick is key. I don’t like to have five pans going and mixing bowls and stuff when I have my day off.

What are your favorite spots in town?

Jack: I have a few favorite spots. Toro Bravo, Pigeon, Sel Gris. Those are my definite top favorite spots.

Adam: Tabla (smiles).

(Laughs) That’s predictable.

Adam: I like the bar at Ten 01, the dining room at Ten 01… Pok Pok. I don’t go out that much.

Is going out ever hard, or work in a way?

(both shake their heads)

So what’s happening? Where’s this trip coming from? Are you coming back? What’s the plan?

Jack: The first couple months is going to be Phuket. I’ve been lining up different stages and a couple guest-chef things while I’m out there. The most important part of this trip for me is to see food from the source. We plan on going to Italy and visiting the Parmesan plant where they make all the Parmesan and seeing a thousand wheels of Parmesan lined up and tasting it right there. Tasting prosciutto right there. Seeing where the cuisine comes from is really important to me.

How long are you going to be gone?

Jack: As far as the timeline goes, I want it to be two years. We just got married in June and went to Malaysia for our honeymoon and we’re like, ‘Wow. We need to do this more. We need to travel while we’re still young.’ Her clock’s ticking as she reminds me often, in a couple years we wanna have kids, so that’s the plan. A couple years – come back broke (he pats Adam’s back). It’s the perfect time in our lives too. She was the bar manager at Postrio, that’s how we met, then she went to W Hotel with me, then she came here. We’ve always worked and lived together. She’s as excited, if not more, as me, about taking cooking classes in Thailand. We’re gonna have a Web site and videos of her cooking on a wok.

What are you gonna miss about Portland?

Adam: The weather.

C’mon. No.

Jack: No, I am definitely not going to miss the weather. Portland’s a special place for young chefs to be right now. Portland’s gone through the stages over the years. The Wildwood, the Higgins, The Heathman. Then it kind of stopped. Then you have Park Kitchen, Tabla, Blue Hour… There’s definitely generations of chefs out here. You can pretty easily pinpoint those generations. All those restaurants are pretty much still open, which is definitely a testament to the Portland food scene. I’ll miss the people out here. When I first came out here there were people talking smack on the blogs. ‘Oh, give him six months.’ But the guests of Ten 01 really embraced me coming into the kitchen here and so did the local chefs. Gabriel Rucker has been a very big fan of here as well as I’m a great fan of his restaurant. He’s sent a lot of customers here. He’d be full and we’d get a phone call from his cell, ‘Hey, I’m sending in a four top your way; we’re full.’ And he’d always talk about it in his small open kitchen. And Daniel Mondok of Sel Gris — same kind of thing. Troy from Lovely Hula Hands comes in all the time. His staff actually comes in once a week. The Portland chefs really embraced the change. We hang out together and party together. We go to each other’s restaurants, and that’s a lot of fun. You don’t find that in LA. You don’t really find that in San Francisco. Maybe with the really old guard in San Francisco. Like the old French chefs, they’ll sit and hang together, but they’re boring. Who wants to hang with them? There’s a huge feeling of restaurant community out here.

Adam: It’s exactly how he said. All the guys that Jack mentioned, these guys are chef chefs. More so than in the past. Marco and Scott, Leather and I, we all have families, it’s just a little bit different. These guys are hard-core. They’re bringing something that’s new to Portland.

Well I want to know whenever you guys get the next one worked out

Adam: We’re really aggressively looking. I got 300 resumes in 72 hours from all over the United States. It’s gonna take a lot to find someone as good as Jack. It’s actually a really good time because there’s a lot of good people looking for work. We have a sense of urgency, but we’re also going to take our time. Jack has his crew so dialed.

Jack: They care about what they do. They were very excited about the whole, Restaurant of the Year thing too. So many people here put a lot of effort into it.

Adam: It’s well deserved for Jack and for the staff. I think Ten 01 is definitely on top of its game. It’s definitely bittersweet to be named Restaurant of the Year upon leaving. But I think a lot of things in life are about timing. We’ve done it and there’s no way in hell we’re going to let it slip.

[Catherine Cole’s writing has appeared in The Portland Mercury, VenusZine and PortlandPicks.com. She’s also been a copywriter for various businesses, and has a blog at: ccole.info/aflyonthewall.]

This original post is by Catherine Cole, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Ken Gordon of Kenny and Zuke's Deli

Perhaps Ken Gordon’s t-shirt said it best: “By Reading This You Have Given Me Brief Control of Your Mind.” Ken is half of Kenny & Zukes — one of Portland’s most beloved Jewish delis, and he hasn’t gotten to the point of moving 800 pounds of pastrami in a weekend by letting his kitchens get out of line.

“I mean really, in the food business, the restaurant business, it’s all about control,” Ken says during our recent interview. He shared his thoughts on the Portland food scene, being Jewish, and yes – his control issues.

I know you’re from the East Coast, but not sure where:

New York City, Queens. Your next response is, ‘Do you know…’ Someone did that once and I did actually know them.

So do you have a ton of history with delis?

Yah, that was our go-to meal when we went out. We probably went to, or brought in bagels and lox or whatever, once or twice a week. It was just something I took for granted. So yeah, I have that history, but I never thought, ‘Oh, I’d like to work in one, or making pastrami,’ or anything like that. It was kind of in my blood I think.

You’re Jewish?

Uh huh. Yeah. The Jewish Review called me a ‘cultural Jew.’ Actually she called Nick and I cultural Jews and Nick’s not even Jewish. I actually wrote them back a really nasty letter saying, ‘Look. One of the few things I really like about Judaism is that it doesn’t really distinguish.’ Cultural Jews? What does that mean — does that mean I’m not as good as you because I’m not religious? It’s something I find really objectionable and really insulting and I’ll correct somebody. So yeah, I’m Jewish.

Do you ever get to Kornblatts?

(chuckles) My wife and I moved here with my three-month-old daughter, who’s now 17, so 17 years ago. One of the first places we went to was Kornblatts. We said, ‘Ok, Where’s the deli in town? There’s gotta be some place.’ Someone directed us to Kornblatts and we went in there to get some take out. I’ve come as close as I’ve ever come to vaulting a counter and saying, ‘Go out of my way, I’m going to do this myself.’ First of all they took some rather sub-standard corned beef or pastrami, I’m not sure what it was, took it out cold, sliced it paper thin — you could see through it — piled it on a piece of rye bread, and then microwaved it. And I’m going, ‘No, no, no.’ We were just off the boat from New York, so I was like, ‘This is really bad.’ Then they had a side of lox and they preceded to try and slice us some. It was like Paul Bunyan trying to cut down a tree — they’re hacking at this thing. That was my first experience and I think I’ve been by there once since. I don’t remember it. That’s kind of why we started this.

So how’s business?

August was our busiest month yet. It slowed a little bit after Labor Day but not by much and catering has taken up a lot of that slack.

A lot going to The Ace?

Not that much. Mostly to small companies. Yesterday we delivered to Legacy Emanuel Hospital. Wieden + Kennedy ordered something yesterday… so things like that.

All the talk about food costs – has that come into your bottom line?

We’re paying more for flour for sure, but it’s actually come down a little bit. Yeah, it’s hard out there. Our food costs aren’t as good as we’d like them to be, but we won’t compromise on the product. I think people view us as kind of the high end of what we do. We’re not expensive for a restaurant — especially a downtown restaurant-but I think people go, ‘Oh, this much for a sandwich? That’s a lot.’ We’re giving them something for their money, and we won’t compromise on that. There’s sort of a ceiling on how far we can go on a sandwich in terms of price. If our beef or brisket goes up in price we can’t really adjust so easily without seeming like we’re gouging people, which we don’t want to do. We’re giving up a few points on food costs for our ethics I guess.

Do you miss Ken’s Place?

Yeah, I do. I had myself and four people there. And here I have myself and 60.

You really have that many people working here?

It’s a lot. Well, we’re open seven days, breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have a counter. We’re making all our breads, our bagels our desserts, and catering and all that stuff… I used to do everything myself over there. I didn’t have a dishwasher, or a manager or a host. It’s completely different. It’s like a different industry. I don’t cook that much here. We started the family dinners so I’d have something to do, so I’d have a creative outlet and they’re selling out; they’re doing great. But it’s more management, less hands-on. I get in there for quality control. But really I’m not cooking that much. At Ken’s Place I was touching every dish. There are things going on that I don’t have anything to do with. I come here in the morning and there’s stuff that’s been moved! There’s even some people I don’t know. There’s a host on Friday evenings that I’ve never even met yet. And he doesn’t know who I am! And I have Nick, a working partner, which I’ve never had before. I miss the cooking, I miss the intimate contact I have with the customers.

About six months ago I ran into Naomi Pomeroy from Beast. She’s sitting with her friend and her child, and I said, ‘Oh, how are things going? Is this your first time in?’ And she said, ‘No, I’m in about three times a week since you opened.’ That being said, the upsides here are a lot greater. I’ve been in this business for 32 years; I’ve always made a living, but I’ve never put away a whole lot. This is the first place that’s really, really commercially viable. We just talked to Carlton Farms, who brines our beef for us now, we smoke it – and we’re still going to do that for the meat here, but they’re going to start smoking it to our recipe and we’re going to start selling our meat up in Seattle and Eugene, and New Seasons hopefully. And we don’t have to do anything. We basically get a royalty check from the meat company once a week.

And they do the distribution?

I might have to go on a book tour and do some demos and things like that, but other than that, we never even see it. As long as it’s up to our standards, we’re fine with that. We’re also looking to do a spin-off business that’s complementary to what we do here – so we’re looking at some locations now.

Again, it’s so different than the intimate little restaurant I’ve always done. It’s more of a small-big business. We wanna keep it local, we wanna keep control over the quality. We don’t want to franchise it, or go outta state or whatever, because then we loose that control. I mean really, the food business, the restaurant business, it’s all about control. The one thing I think that goes wrong with restaurants or food businesses is that somebody comes in and tastes it or buys the product and the next time they buy the product or taste it, it’s different — and they’re like, ‘This isn’t as good as last time.’ That’s how you loose customers.

If we can build a team that can operate several things going on but they’re all close together or coming out of one central kitchen, then that’d be great.

Danny Meyer in New York with Union Square Café, and all those places that he runs — he broke this rule because he opened a café at MOMA — but until a couple years ago he did several other restaurants and he insisted that they all be within a five minute walk of Union Square Café – so that he could visit each one during one lunch time. He has that kind of control and he knows things are gonna be to his standards.

I think when businesses grow – that’s where they go wrong. They have one here, then they have one up in Seattle. Yah, you can do a restaurant in New York and Tokyo, but they’re coming in for Tom Keller’s name.

Let’s talk about Nick

(laughs) Let’s talk about Food Dude.

So how’d you meet Nick?

Did you know Low BBQ?

Yah

So Rodney was running it out at A Pizza Scholls and he put it up for sale. He was going to close it because it wasn’t working out there on Monday nights. So I liked the barbeque and we started to get to know each other and talking about it – and I said, ‘Well, why don’t I buy it and move it to Ken’s Place on Tuesday nights?’ I talked to my neighbor in the back and he was going to let me rent part of his driveway for his barbeque.

So we did that. And concurrent with that, I met Nick. He was a friend of Rodney’s… I was eating barbeque at A Pizza Scholls on a Monday night and Nick came up and introduced himself. So right before I was actually going to start production (on the Tuesday-Night Low BBQ), Nick called me up and said, ‘Oh, I’m going to Austin — which is like the barbecue capital of Texas — with a friend. Wanna join us?’ So I said, ‘Sure!’ And we went on a barbecue-eating trip. And we got to know each other. When I started Low Bbq we were jammed, and it was real popular, and I started writing on his Portlandfood.org and we got to know each other more.

I’m as left wing as you can get without throwing Molotov cocktails, and Nick — while being a middle-of-the-road socialist — was pretty libertarian in his views of the government. So we have these kind of clashes about that kind of stuff, but about food we agree about everything, or we find a good compromise. So then about two years ago, there started to be a thread on Portland Food about pastrami and deli. And everybody was going, ‘Oh, you can’t buy good pastrami… and you can’t get good deli…’ and somebody eventually came around to, ‘Well, it’s basically barbecue. It’s a smoked meat, and Ken’s doing the best barbecue in town; why doesn’t he do it.’ So then Nick came to me and said, ‘Let’s try doing some pastrami.’

So we started brining some stuff and trying a bunch of different recipes, and started selling the stuff. We had the capacity to do about 100 pounds at a time, and so we said, ‘Well, what do we do with it?’ So we rented a booth at the Sunday Hillsdale Farmers’ Market. And we made some pickles, and chopped liver, and some rye bread, and got some sodas ‘n stuff. They open at 10 o’clock. At 10 o’clock at The Hillsdale Farmers’ Market people are kinda mingling around, waiting for stuff to open… well, at 10 o’clock, we had a line of 18-20 people, waving 20 dollar bills. Literally we were sold out by 10:30am. People are walking around with one-pound pastrami sandwiches, eating them, at 10 o’clock in the morning. It was crazy. Insane. So then after about two, three months of that, we went, ‘Okay, we’re tapped out. What do we want to do with it now?’ So then we said, ‘Let’s do a Saturday deli brunch, and build a menu around pastrami,’ (at Ken’s Place), and we did. And same results. Just jammed… jammed. After about four months of that we went, ‘Ok, what do we do with this now?’ It was just too much. It was actually about six months. So then we decided to look for a space and do a deli.

I thought at first that I’d operate Ken’s Place and open here; it became pretty evident that I was going to have to sell the restaurant, which I did. I sold it to Sel Gris, and I got more money than I thought I’d get for it, which was great.

Let’s talk more food. What is the most popular?

Rubens. We’ve sold 100 Rubens in a day. Nick and I went over to Clyde Common for lunch, and Nate came over and we’re just sitting around; we’re real friendly. Nate’s a great guy. And God, it’s just… they’ve been open a year, and we’d been open about 11 months at that point, and we’re just looking around going like, ‘It’s like we’ve been open three years. Everything’s wearing out!’ The walls… it’s astounding the amount of people!

We got a lot of shit for it. People online… people on Citysearch, but who pays attention to any of that? But on Portland Food and Drink. A lot of good and bad. Better stuff on Portland Food. Early on people saying, ‘Oh, they’re out of pastrami, and the service is overwhelmed.’ We never had a chance; we did a little training, but we never had a chance. We were just constantly playing catch up. Now we have systems in place, people are better trained. Now we do 600 people in a day and it just doesn’t seem that busy.

If you could talk to your customers…?

Oh, I hear from my customers.

What would you tell them?

To shut up (smiles). No, it’s interesting. Ok, somebody goes into A Pizza Scholls — fabulous pizza. I mean, that’s as good as it gets. But you know, they get people who don’t like that style, oh, it’s a little too charred for them, they want more than two toppings, but really… it’s just, ‘Your crust is too charred.’ Here, we have a fairly big menu; we make everything. Everybody has a frame of reference for delis. Everybody was either in a city with good delis, of which there are many. Everybody has had pastrami, or rye bread, or pickles, or whatever it is, and it’s something everybody has an opinion on. Or they taste something we make and it’s not like their grandmother made it. Oh, when was the last time you had your grandmother’s blintzes? ‘Oh, it was when I was four.’ Oh, so you remember that real well, don’t you? I don’t know what it is, but everyone feels free to express it. I get people walking up to me on the street three times a day; and it’s not outside here, it’s like on 82nd. ‘Oh I love your deli. Oh I wish you’d take the seeds out of your rye bread.’ It’s like I’m in a Woody Allen movie or something. In a way it’s really fun and I enjoy it, and in some ways, it’s like, ‘You know what? It’s only fucking lunch, guys.’

What about your thoughts on the food scene at large?

It’s blowing everyone away. Portland can hold its own with any small city in the country. Every city has its shortcomings. Even New York. Try and get a good taco in New York. Doesn’t happen, and if it does it’s for $6, not $1.25 from a truck here. But for the most part, New York’s got everything anytime and whatever, it’s a metropolitan area of 16 million people. Portland shouldn’t be compared to New York, San Francisco, Chicago, LA. But Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, I think Portland blows them all away. The last few years has just been astounding.

The last few weeks we’ve been going to Tanuki. The best Japanese food I’ve ever had. It’s only got 14 seats. But the food that Janis is putting out is absolutely amazing. We go to Toro Bravo more than anywhere. For the money, and for what you’re getting there, I’d put Toro Bravo with any restaurant in the country. I think they’re doing an amazing job. Simpatica, and Beast and Pok Pok and A Pizza Scholls, and Le Pigeon — amazing food for amazing value. You go to New York and yah, you can find those places around, but it’s three times the price and you can’t get in for two weeks. We go to Toro Bravo, and we go early and we get right in. We’ve been there 20 times and have had a terrific meal every time. How many cities do you think have delis like ours?

I don’t want to be immodest. We’ve gotten criticisms like, ‘Oh, your pastrami isn’t like Katz,’ but you know what? I think it’s as good, but even if you disagree, you go to Katz and the pastrami’s good, the corned beef is good, the pickles are so-so, the knishes are something you’ve stepped in, the hot dogs are overcooked on the grill, the stuffed cabbage? Disgusting. So it’s like, all these delis do some things well, and everything else is on the menu because people expect it to be on the menu. I think everything on our menu is pretty good. There’s not a lot of delis you can say that about. I think we can hold our own with any deli in the country. There’s some serious good food going on in this town, and this isn’t a huge city. I think we’re better than Seattle. You go to most cities our size and you visit a friend there and you say, ‘Ok, where’s special to go eat?’ and they go, ‘Well there’s this one place…’ There’s 20 or 30 places that I can go to and know I’ll get blown away. That’s pretty cool.

Advice for chefs starting out?

Be a sponge. Screw school. Take the money and go to Europe and work for free with the best people you can find. You’ve gotta brave it out; these guys, they’ve got 30 years of experience and they’re not idiots, they know what they’re doing. You may be wanting to do it differently, but they’ve got something to teach you.

It’s a tough business. There’s a lot of people in it. There’s assholes, there’s the most amazing people you’ve ever met, and people who’ll literally give you their shirt off their back, and pretentious fucking assholes who can’t cook worth a damn and everything in between.

[Kenny & Zuke's Deli is at 1038 SW Stark St, Portland, OR. 97205. See KennyandZukes.com for more information. ]

Catherine Cole’s writing has appeared in The Portland Mercury and PortlandPicks.com. She’s also been a copywriter for various businesses, and has a blog at: ccole.info/aflyonthewall.

This original post is by Catherine Cole, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Erica Landon of Ten 01

Not only is Erica Landon, Ten 01′s award winning sommelier, extremely well educated about the wines she recommends, but she continues to make the restaurant’s wine program one of the best in the state. She’s also quite nice. In a male dominated field with a reputation for snobbery, Landon gracefully keeps her own council. “When I went to take my quarter master sommelier exam I was one of two women in the room out of forty people,” she says. Landon says she was intimidated “sometimes,” but goes on to explain, “I have an idea about how I feel about wine and I want to make it as accessible and as friendly and as passionate as possible. I think that there’s a new wave of that idealism in the industry and it’s being shared by a lot of younger sommeliers. They want to make it fun for people because wine can be such an exhausting and an overwhelming subject.”

Landon is a step away from achieving the highest rank as a master sommelier. She’s certainly qualified, but she maintains a fresh friendly approach. “People take a look at my wine list and they’re like, ‘oh my god,’ so I try to make it as unintimidating as possible. I don’t know if that’s a woman thing or not, but I feel like it’s my approach and I seem to feel it more and more out there.” Landon sees the light hearted approach to wine as a win-win situation. “When people become enamored with wine it helps everybody in the industry,” she says. “It’s all about what you like.”

She’s excited about Rosé at the moment. “It’s refreshing and crisp and it has a little bit of a body so it goes well with food. And Oregon has a plethora of pinot noir rosés that are dry. A lot of people have the impression that rosés are sweet, and there are world class really dry crisp rosés that are just like having a really amazing white wine with a little bit different flavor. And, if you think about the food that’s available right now, you have all this beautiful fresh produce. There’s nothing better than sitting in the sun with fresh vegetables and a glass of rosé.” That said, she claims, “My favorite grape hands down is pinot noir.”

I was fortunate enough to take a class from Landon in January when she discussed cabernets from around the world. She’s engaging, and extremely informative. Later that night, she boarded a red eye to New York where the Ten 01 crew had been invited to host a dinner at the James Beard House. I was impressed with her composure when I found out that later that night she would have to oversee the logistics of transporting enough food for a meal to serve 80. “We took two vans full of food and wine to the airport. We had nine cases of wine and we had to maneuver it through Manhattan to the hotel room. We had stuff on ice in the room, and then we had to maneuver it to the James Beard house. We were so glad it all made it.” Of the dinner, she says, “It was such an honor to walk into this place where some of the most amazing chefs in the world have worked.”

At the tender age of 31 something tells me pouring wine at the James Beard House won’t be the pinnacle of Landon’s career. As she studies for the master sommelier exam, she’s also preparing for a trip to Las Vegas where she will get certified to teach for the International Sommelier Guild. “Wine is the kind of thing where the more you learn about it the more you realize that you need to search more. There’s always more to learn because wine is a living thing and every year there are more vintages from different regions around the world. And, there are new regions and new producers all over the world constantly so you have to keep up on that constantly – constant education,” she says.

With a librarian for a mother, one might surmise that Landon knows a thing or two about the more research intensive aspects of learning, but she attributes much of her accrued knowledge to her Portland peers, particularly Jeff Groh, the sommelier at the Heathman. “We have this very sassy competitive friendship.” In addition to Scott Calvert of Lucier and Andrew Fortgang of Le Pigeon, Landon and Groh just finished up their now annual dueling sommeliers dinner series in which a different local chef, over a five dinner series, devises a menu intentionally difficult to pair with wine.” And on August 15^th, the winner was… Erica Landon.

When I call Jeff Groh for comment he says, “Well, she’s alright,” with a chuckle. He explains that part of the purpose of the competition is to roast your fellow competitors. “I won last year,” explains Groh, “so I was ratting her a lot going into it this year.” The August issue of Portland Monthly named Landon Portland’s Best Sommelier. In response, Groh sent out a fake press release complaining that Portland Monthly had chosen her as a preemptive move leading up to the dueling sommelier grand finale. On the day of the grand finale, arriving before the guests, Landon found the Portland Monthly photo of her at every place setting with a sharpie pen – so she could sign the photos following the competition. “I removed them before the guests arrived,” laughs Groh.

So Erica Landon is on a roll, but it isn’t the first time, and likely not the last. Though incredibly gracious and kind, I think she may have been born to win. “I competed in roller speed skating for years and years,” she says. “Were you good?” I asked. “Yeah, I got into nationals.”

Elizabeth Lopeman recently earned an M.A. in writing from Portland State. She writes book reviews and regular articles for Eugene Magazine and has contributed to various other local and regional publications. She’s also been known to write cd liner notes, web content, press releases, and of course her passion — fiction. You can read more about her at ElizabethLopeman.com

This original post is by Elizabeth Lopeman, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

• PortlandOregonWine.com
• Monteaux Restaurant
• Cork Wineshop
• Ristretto Roasters
• NorthwestFoodandWineGuide.com
• Anne Amie Vineyards
• Storyteller Wine Company
• Tapalaya Restaurant
• Coppia Restaurant
• Boedecker Cellars

Toro Bravo's John Gorham

“My grandfather was a big foodie. He owned a crab shack in Baltimore and I would go stay for like a month of my summers with him. He was a bachelor who always had a new girlfriend so he was always wining and dining,” reminisces Toro Bravo’s John Gorham. Though he fondly remembers summers in Baltimore, Gorham says his near obsession with food started way before that. “I remember even before kindergarten saying I wanted to be a chef. I remember playing restaurant, and I would cook all my friends food. I knew I was going to do it, and if I went to a restaurant I would order something funky just to try it. I never, never have turned food down.”

Gorham doesn’t look as though he’s never, never turned food down, but he is robust and has a large frame. You can almost imagine his strapping stature as the product of his determined enthusiasm. Sitting at the bar in Toro Bravo at nine thirty in the morning, Gorham’s blue gray eyes shine clear and bright as he enlightens me about how he’s come to be the proprietor of one of Portland’s favorite restaurants – Willamette Week’s restaurant of the year in 2007.

“I grew up in a restaurant culture at a young age,” he says. “My step-father’s job was to remodel Kroger’s grocery stores and we’d always be moving closer to the stores. By the time I was out of school I went to twenty two different schools. We ate out a lot because a lot of times we never set up, and we acted like tourists if we were only going to be there for a few months.” With food as a constant, at seventeen, Gorham enrolled at the American Culinary Federation in Williamsburg, Virginia. At a pivotal moment in his career, just before finishing the program, Gorham was turned down for a job on the basis that he didn’t have enough charcuterie experience. “So I was like – alright – so that’s what I have to do – next thing. So anytime I could find someone who could teach me charcuterie, I went to work for them.”

After acquiring the necessary skills to cure meats, Gorham came to Portland as a co-owner of Viande Meats in N.W. 21^st Avenue’s City Market, the makers of creative sausages and pâtes. “I loved doing charcuterie, but I needed an outlet to cook, so on Sunday nights we did Simpatica. We were doing it as an experiment. The idea was, let’s push ourselves as cooks and chefs.” On different nights, Gorham would focus on different regional cuisines. “I started doing tapas dinners and the first one I did people flipped out, and everyone was like this town needs this, and on like the fourth one the food critic from USA Today came in.

It was really random. He walked in the back door and looked really confused. We thought he was just some wandering guy looking for dinner, so we sat him down. He said he had a really magical time as far as the table went that night, but then he rated us the number one meal in the world for 2006.”

Though presumably a momentous occasion, Gorham’s passion is clearly with the food, and he discusses the USA Today honor as if it was just another day in the life – a midwife for the next opportunity to cook. “I was like, alright, we’ve got to do the restaurant.” So he and his wife, Courtney, bought plane tickets to Europe. They spent time in Germany with Courtney’s family and then jetted off to Spain while their three year old daughter got to stay with her grandmother and great grandmother in Germany.

“From everything I’d studied and everything I knew, I wanted to look at Barcelona. Everything that is going on there is so eclectic and out there, and it made sense to look at those restaurants and take what I wanted to learn from them.” The most notable restaurant on Gorham’s trip to Barcelona – maybe beside a place called Puerto Rico that serves chicken, French fries and baguettes – was Cal Pep. “It’s a Michelin one star restaurant, but it’s crazy in there,” says Gorham. “People line up for an hour before for the first seating. They open up the doors and instead of kicking people out, all of a sudden you’re sitting at the bar and there are people packed in behind you waiting to get your seat from the second you sit down. And the waiter is like ‘red wine or white wine?’ No choice really. And then he asks, ‘what do you like to eat?’ Seafood, meat and veggies, and then they just start bringing food,” explains Gorham. “They say, ‘tell us when to stop.’ It’s a lot like here. There’s a confidence to the way the mechanics are working, but the place is totally crazy, and the food is non-traditional but very traditional at the same time.”

Some of the more eclectic, less traditional dishes on Toro Bravo’s menu are inspired by what’s fresh and in season. “I like to think about it like, how would a Spaniard think if they grew up and lived here and embraced our farmers and our wine makers and what’s going on here.” Toro Bravo orders fresh meat and produce from local farms and ranches in the area. Gorham prides himself on those relationships. “Viridian Farms is really Spanish based in what they like to grow. We work with a lot of farms, but they’re a really big focal point of what we’re doing.” Toro Bravo gets padrón peppers, which are popular as fried snacks in Spain, from Viridian Farms. When I ask who influences whom – the farmer or the chef, Gorham says, “I think it works both ways. They were already playing with padróns, but after they saw what I could sell last year they quadrupled their crop.”

The other major Toro Bravo flavor factor is, of course, Gorham’s personal sensibility as a chef. “I am who I am. I cook how I cook. I study and read. I make myself grow as a chef every year. That’s my goal in life. But I still have a style and I think my style will always come out in what I’m doing.” He also attributes a large part of the restaurant’s success to his staff. “I have a phenomenal crew. My crew hasn’t left me since day one, so we just get tighter and tighter.” Gorham encourages his chefs to educate themselves about Spanish food and to really grasp the aesthetic of the cuisine. “You need to go read, I tell them. Go open a book and learn to think about it in a Spanish way.” Last winter, Gorham sent one of his chefs to Barcelona to experience the food culture first hand. He says, “I think traveling is one of the best things a chef could do.”

As Gorham gives me the royal tour and shows me around the open kitchen with a large stove and a decidedly small prep area, he explains, “I’m a cooking chef, I always will be. I could never have a really big restaurant where I couldn’t cook.” He proudly shows me to a custom made grill and oven. “When we first opened we had an under counter dish machine and there was no way we could keep up with it.

And we didn’t have a walk-in. We just had a double door fridge.” The restaurant is clean and new, but when he leads me down the steps to the basement with antiquated brick walls the character ratchets up. “We added the walk-in down here like the sixth week we were here because we were just dying,” he says. He opens it up for me to see the fastidiously organized and spotless shelves beautifully displaying a large selection of cheeses and racks of curing meats. “I think we buy more cheeses than probably anyone in town.” Shockingly, the freezer at Toro Bravo is tiny, a fact that appears to amuse us both. “Our anchovies and octopus come in frozen from Spain, but there’s really not a whole lot going on in here – some Limoncello,” he says.

Gorham says he thinks about what he will do at Toro Bravo “constantly – seven days a week.” He changes the menu daily and is continuously on top of what produce is coming in and busy adjusting traditional dishes.He imagines in the future he’ll do other projects, but he says, “I love this restaurant. For now I’m pretty happy. Extremely happy. We have a good time. That’s what’s important. The whole idea of a restaurant was to throw a party every night.”

Elizabeth Lopeman recently earned an M.A. in writing from Portland State. She writes book reviews and regular articles for Eugene Magazine and has contributed to various other local and regional publications. She’s also been known to write cd liner notes, web content, press releases, and of course her passion — fiction.You can read more about her at ElizabethLopeman.com

This original post is by Elizabeth Lopeman, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

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Gold and Chocolate Hart, by Elizabeth Lopeman

Sarah Hart makes religious icons you can sink your teeth into.

Sarah Hart of Alma chocolates

“My dad was a Presbyterian minister and he was a civil rights activist and really conscious of the unrest over Vietnam, so social justice was in my DNA,” explains Sarah Hart, the Alma Chocolate visionary. Even so, her religious icon inspired confections land on the slightly more playful side of earnest religious conviction. And, it’s not initially clear how social justice connects to the delicious and stunningly beautiful chocolates. Stepping into her delightful shop on northeast 28th Street, it’s hard to think about anything besides which luscious chocolate in which to indulge.

But as I listen, I realize Sarah wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t have some kind of beneficent effect. So how is she helping the world as we check our hips? “Well,” she explains, “It’s a new time in how we think about fair-trade and organic. A lot of chocolate is being grown organically because the farmers can’t afford to buy the pesticides but they also can’t afford the certification process in order to be represented as fair trade. So I’m thinking a lot about how to find out and how do you educate yourself about that. You can’t take those things at face value, necessarily,” she says.

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Hart credits her father for her inherited social conscience. After all, he offered up his church as an auxiliary meeting place for classes following the Kent State shootings in 1970. But Hart discovered her own style of working for social justice. As soon as she was out of the house she went to Keene, California and worked with Cesar Chavez for the rights of farm workers. And so, the connection comes full circle. By supporting farmers with fair wages for their hard work in cocoa growing regions of the world, Alma chocolate is able to contribute to a healthier way of life for them, and delivers delectable treats to us in the form of gilded Buddhas, devils, and crosses.

When Hart found her way to Portland via Eugene and Ann Arbor, Michigan she worked various jobs, from waitressing at Papa Hayden’s to grant writing for Americorps, but the idea of a chocolate shop wouldn’t leave her alone. “Well the first idea that started the business was from the root word of chocolate which is theo broma. It means food of the gods or god food. And chocolate has such a rich history. It was once used as currency – and when people talk about chocolate they use the same language they use about religion. There’s this whole sin and redemption way of talking about chocolate – like ‘it was decadent’ – or ‘I was really bad’ – or, ‘I was in ecstasy.’ There’s all this really heightened language, so that’s what was swirling in my head when I thought it would be really fun to make chocolates like religious icons. And then we gilded them because that makes them more like statuary or reliquary and also because gold has a similar sort of history.”

Religious icons

Hart initially tried to make the molds herself, but she says, “I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to make them as well myself as I could think of them in my head.” So she contacted an old friend from college who is a sculptor and he crafted them according to her vision. All of the first recipes came from Hart herself, but now she says, “I have people working for me, and they’re really talented and good, and they want to make stuff too, and so it doesn’t all come from me anymore.” In addition to crosses, Buddhas, and devils, the bar chocolate comes in the forms of flaming hearts, sacred crowns, the virgin Mary, anatomically correct hearts, and swallows, just to name a few, and are all covered in the thinnest layer of edible 24 karat gold.

Chocolates sold by the piece or by the box are made with fresh cream, real vanilla and come in flavors like ginger, rosemary, lavender and rosewater. Yum!

Chocolates

Upon first meeting, you probably wouldn’t peg Hart for a chocolatier. She’s tall and thin with a kind and beautiful face. It’s her warm and generous nature that convinces you her creations must be paradisiacal. She attributes her creative side to her mother. “If my mother was a young woman today she would probably be an artist or something like that, but she had five kids, so she channeled her creativity into cooking. She is an excellent cook. We had an herb garden before people were really doing that, and she was really into foraging. She would go out into the woods and dig up roots to make dye and crazy stuff like that. So, I always loved to cook as a kid.”

In a divine conjunction of interests, Sarah gets to be creative and socially conscious, we get to eat the wonderful chocolate, and cocoa farmers get paid a fair wage. What could be better? “Have you tried Spella coffee?” she asks. Now Alma chocolate has an espresso machine and they’re working with Andrea Spella, who serves espresso from his cart at the corner of 9^th and Alder, downtown. He roasts his own beans offsite and has been training the staff at Alma, so now his heavenly coffee can be enjoyed with sinfully creamy Alma chocolate. And if that’s not enough, Alma will start carrying a brownie and a cookie from Neuvrei bakery.

Chocolate is a sweet devil

“So, why the name Alma?” I ask. “That was my grandmother’s name,” says Hart breaking into a bright smile. “I became obsessed with the name, Alma, because it means so many things in so many languages. In Spanish it means soul. In Latin it has more of a ‘to nurture’ kind of connotation, and in Hungarian it means apple,” she says. “I like that one because it fits with the idea of temptation.”

• Phone: (503) 517-0262
• Address: 140 NE 28th Ave, Portland, OR 97232
• Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sunday, 12:00 to 5:00 p.m.
• Website: AlmaChocolate.com

Elizabeth Lopeman recently earned an M.A. in writing from Portland State. She writes book reviews and regular articles for Eugene Magazine and has contributed to various other local and regional publications. She’s also been known to write cd liner notes, web content, press releases, and of course her passion — fiction. You can read more about her at ElizabethLopeman.com

This original post is by Elizabeth Lopeman, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.