Grace and Hammer

Even though as a retired chef I cook at home a lot, a lot more than most people, I do love to go out. I love to go out for the same reasons everyone else does. Sometimes I don't want to decide what to cook or don't want to wash dishes after dinner. Sometimes the refrigerator is bare and I don't want to create a miracle meal out of the seemingly bare pantry. Sometimes I just want somebody to wait on me for a change. And sometimes (and my wife is going to say that because I listed this last, that it is lowest priority) I just want to focus on Ann and not on dinner. (I just want to tell my wife that the last item in a list is the one that people remember most).

Going out, though, is often terribly disappointing. Bend is a veritable sea of restaurants and we have tried a lot of them, really trying to find ones that resonate with us. And it is tough going. The list of restaurants that have let us down is immense while the list of ones that are reliable is almost non-existent. For whatever reason, the myriad of restaurants that want to play in the fine dining space cannot get their act together and the food quality is average at best.

Accordingly, to fill the fine dining void, we have tried to support the few ethnic food carts and restaurants in lily white Central Oregon, but our palates are terribly jaded. We come from Washington DC, one of the country's most underrated great food cities, where you will find excellent ethnic food of every persuasion catering to all the world's embassies. At the end of the day, we have to eat the food on offer here in Central Oregon, and that is pretty much standard American fare, such as smashburgers or pizza..

Even with our aim set well below fine dining, it is notable when we find a place that delivers consistently good food. Let's take pizza for example. You can find great pizza in this area, but you have to look hard and you have to be open to driving. Bend proper is not necessarily the best place to find great pizza. While Chasin' Pizza in town has decent pies, our best success heretofore was at Boone Dog in Sisters. We've heard good things about Pisano's in Tumalo, but we don't trust the rumor mill; we have yet to try it. In a stroke of good fortune this weekend, we had cause to go to Redmond where we encountered excellent pizza at Grace and Hammer.

Setting the scene for those not familiar with Redmond, roughly 20 miles north of Bend and notable as the location of our airport, Grace and Hammer is in downtown just a handful blocks west of the main drag through town, US 97. There on 7th Street at Cascade Avenue sits a wood frame clapboard-sided church with a short tower on the southwest corner. Stairs lead up to the gothic-framed entry doors in this tower. If it were not for the constant stream of comers and goers up these stairs, you might not even notice that this is not a church, but a full-on temple of pizza.

The roughly-three story tower serves as an entry vestibule to the large open two-story nave to the right. Tables are situated at the near end of the nave, overlooked by a 4-part gothic window topped with round fan of stained glass, while the pizza oven sits at the opposite end of the nave behind a bar on the left side of the building. Like every other church-turned-restaurant I have ever visited, Grace and Hammer evokes the "this is such a cool space!" reaction in me.

Despite the cool factor, churches are designed so that everyone can hear the service and so they are very loud spaces in which to house restaurants. Moreover, the 800-degree wood-fired pizza oven in the corner cranks up the heat in the place. These are just facts of life; the pizza is worth all the noise and heat.

Joining the fairly lengthy line, we ordered our pies and beers at the cash register and then took seats at the adjacent bar where Adam Valentine, so-called Preacher of Pizza, presided. The place was hopping already at 5pm when we arrived and we asked Adam how many pies they would make that evening. He said, "Could be a 100, could be 350." They made at least 100 pies while we were sitting there and were well on their way to the 350 mark when we left.

The crowd was no doubt partially in response to a segment on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives." While this show has featured some gems, it has also lauded some places of dubious quality. In fact, a slot on Triple-D very likely might cause us to skip a restaurant. But we had heard good things about Grace and Hammer from more reliable sources than Guy Fieri.

It was a good thing that we arrived as early as we did before our show in Redmond. After waiting on line to order, our pies took a good 35-40 minutes to come out of the oven. The crew was hustling incredibly quickly to produce a deluge of pies, including our two. Despite running around like a mad man, Adam was mixing cocktails and pulling beers between errands, all the while keeping up a running dialog with us. Among other things, we learned from him that he uses King Arthur's Sir Galahad flour, which is notable for being the flour that I use as well as being a little off-trend in an industry that tends to use Caputo 00 flour.

As for our order, Ann and I, we are pizza purists and so we are not going to be persuaded at all by all your fancy toppings. For us, it is all about the crust. We want a great crust with just enough really good toppings so that the pizza stays light and the flavor of the crust shines through. Accordingly, we ordered two basic pies from the laundry list of specialty pies, the Purist, which is a margherita by any other name, and the Alabaster, a simple white pie.

Dining Area in the Former Nave

Pizzas Waiting to be Fired;
Notice the Holy Pizza Shirt

Small but Nicely Curated List of Draft Beers;
There's Also a Cooler of Cans

Alabaster, Cheese and Basil

Purist, a Margherita with Cherry Tomatoes

Somebody Loves Her Pie

So how was the pie? Briefly, this is the best pizza we have had in Oregon, even surpassing our heretofore go-to favorite, Capo in McMinnville. This is surely the highest praise that we can give pizza for the pies at Capo are rock solid and made by pizzaiolos trained in Naples. The crust at Grace and Hammer is damn near perfect and the toppings are just right; the pies are light, non-greasy, and the toppings accentuate the crust rather than smother it. The scant San Marzano tomato sauce on the red pie was delightful, light and conveying the essence of tomato flavor for which San Marzanos are renowned.

We had a show at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds abutting the airport on the south side of town, about five minutes from downtown. Good thing we arrived around 5:00, because we were 6:15 getting in the truck to head to the fairgrounds for the 6:30 showing of the Paranormal Cirque. We are huge fans of Cirque du Soleil and so we thought this small traveling show from a small company that we've never heard of might be fun.

Paranormal Cirque at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds

I'm Amazed This Picture Even Turned Out in the Dark 

So, the show. Cirque du Soleil it was not, but I didn't really expect it to be, this far away from a major metropolitan area. A couple of the acts were decent; many were not. The humor was juvenile, but it appealed to the majority of the audience. About 15 minutes of the 90-minute show was good stuff; the rest was forgettable. I wouldn't spend the money to see anything by this company again, but it was a great excuse for us to drive to Redmond and discover Grace and Hammer, our current vote for best pizza in the area.