Honeymoon: Thursday Breakfast

Thursday May 2, Newberg OR

Thursday morning when we came down to breakfast, the table was set with a different collection of herbs. Today it was blooming rosemary and blooming sage from the flowerbeds outside.


Breakfast Herbs

Grilled Pineapple

Rhubarb Muffins

I mentioned in yesterday's breakfast post that Kristin set the table with several of her homemade jams and jellies and today was no exception. When she was going through the list of jellies to accompany her rhubarb muffins made with rhubarb from her back yard, she saw me double take when she said Queen Anne's Lace flower jelly. Say what?

Queen Anne's Lace is a common weed; in fact, there's a 5-acre field of it behind our house. Who knew you could make jelly from the flowers? It's a wild carrot and the leaves and blooms have a distinctly herbaceous carrot top-like scent. I expected the jelly to be grey-green and herbal, yet I was looking at a light peach-colored jelly with a slight quince flavor profile. It was neat to experience this transformation from green and white herb to blushing pink jelly, but I didn't find it sufficiently flavorful for me to want to run out and make a batch. A novelty, yes; a staple, no.

Delicious Eggs Baked with Asparagus; Potatoes

After this delightful breakfast, we headed south towards Salem to visit the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, but that's a tale for another post.

Honeymoon: Recipe, Newberg OR

Wednesday May 1, Newberg OR

Though I swore we wouldn't go to Recipe because I emailed them about a tasting some weeks ago and received nary a response, we ended up walking in anyway because nearly everybody we met urged us to reconsider. We didn't have any firm plans for dinner Wednesday evening and even though I was up for doing something light, Ann really wanted to go to Recipe, so we did.

And after we were seated and asked if they could do an impromptu tasting, it became clear that Sherry Simmons from Willakenzie had already called and let them know my displeasure about not having my email returned. When she and we were discussing places to eat, Recipe was the first place she recommended and I explained to her why I wasn't considering eating there. Apparently she picked up the phone and let them know about it. It turns out that Recipe chef Paul Bachand was the chef for Willakenzie in the past and there seems to be still a pretty tight connection: Willakenzie's wines are well represented on Recipe's list. I'm not sure how we all connected the dots, but the dots were connected.

Paul's business partner and sommelier Dustin Wyant came to the table and apologized for the miscommunication which was quickly accepted and we moved on with life. In chatting with him, I found out that he's also a UVa grad. That just goes to show that there is more than one of us in the foodservice world. Anyway, we put ourselves in his hands when faced with the vast list of local Pinots and asked him to pick something good for us. He chose a 2001 Willakenzie, a bottling of the 114 clone. How nice is it to have some older, ready to drink vintages on a wine list?


Delicious and Ready to Drink

Once we had the wine on the table, the dishes started appearing. Photos first; comments at the end.


Golden and Chioggia Beet Salad with Goat Cheese Crema and Banyuls Reduction

Gnocchi with Truffle Butter, Dungeness Crab Gratin, Grana Padano Broth

King Salmon, Buttered Savoy Cabbage, Orzo, Avgolemono, Walnut Aillade

Pork Tenderloin Wrapped in Bacon, White Beans, Fennel Butter, Pear-Hazelnut Jam

Leg of Lamb, Yogurt Spaetzle, Braised Radish, Lamb Jus

Rhubarb

Everything was very good. The gnocchi were perfectly executed; light and expertly cooked. Primo. The salmon was desperate for some salt. Aillade is a synonym for aïoli that I have not encountered before. The bacon around the pork tenderloin was incredibly smoky and the pork was cooked perfectly. The pear-hazelnut jam was too sweet for me and too sweet for the dish which didn't have any acidity to play against the sweetness of the jam. Yeah, and that's about it. Nicely executed dishes, but with the exception of the incredible gnocchi, nothing got me excited. It was a good dinner and well crafted, but didn't excite us in the way that dinner at Thistle did.

We spent a few minutes talking shop with Paul after dinner and discussing where to eat the following evening. Ann was torn between Jory at the Allison Inn or The Painted Lady, both in Newberg. Paul was adamant that we would like The Painted Lady better and called to book us a table the following evening. We thanked him for a nice evening and drove back up to our beds on top of Chehalem Ridge.

Honeymoon: Wednesday Breakfast

Wednesday May 1, Newberg OR

I'm not a breakfast guy ordinarily: the last thing I want to do when I get up in the morning is put food in my face. You might be one of those that wakes up ravenous and is a bear to face before food, but that doesn't work for me. I'm good with a cup of coffee until 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning and then we can talk about breakfast.

But I was on vacation, at a bed and breakfast (Chehalem Ridge B&B), one whose cook had been to culinary school, and breakfast was another opportunity for rare alone time with my wife, something the restaurant business affords us not. So gladly and cheerfully did I approach the breakfast table at 9am each morning, which was bearable enough since I had already been up for a couple of hours and already had plenty of coffee to get me going.

This morning, after our late night at Thistle in McMinnville the night before, I was up at 6:30, showered, shaved, and downstairs for coffee at 8:15. Ann came downstairs just before breakfast was served. It was very pleasant sitting on the sofa in the family room looking out over the valley, lazing around until breakfast. Kristin arrived around 8:30 and greeted me as she came in the door from the short walk over: she and her husband Curt live next door in quite the fabulous house. After hearing Kristin bumping around in the kitchen for about a half an hour, she invited us in to breakfast. That's still a very weird thing for me: I'm supposed to be the one in the kitchen!

Different Jellies and Jams Each Morning

The table was set each morning with different jams and jellies and different herbs and flowers in the vase that was like a series of test tubes in a rack. The house is surrounded by flower, herb, and vegetable gardens. I really didn't walk around too much outside, but I saw lots of herbs, blueberries, rhubarb, and artichokes along with garden beds ready to plant.

Rhubarb Crumble with Hazelnut Granola Topping

During breakfast, we got to chat with Kristin in more depth and found out that she went to culinary school and is no stranger to restaurants. Early in her career she moved from the hot line to the pastry side and it shows in the delights that she made for us. I appreciate the fact that nearly everything on each plate, she made. The hazelnut granola on the rhubarb crumble was a great topping whose crunch offset the soft crumble. This is a great trick that we use at the restaurant. And I really appreciate that the rhubarb came from the back yard and that its acidity was deftly balanced with sweetness.

Chai-Spiced Scones

Southwestern Eggs Benedict

The rest of our breakfast consisted of chai-spiced scones and Southwestern Eggs Benedict: black bean cake, avocado, poached egg, pico de gallo, and cheese. The eggs were beautifully poached. There is something really awesome about a good poached egg and these were a great start to our first day of wine tasting in the Willamette Valley.

Honeymoon: Thistle Restaurant, McMinnville OR

Before we left Virginia, Ann had booked us for the Chef's Whim tasting at Thistle in downtown McMinnville. Chef Eric Bechard, sadly, has done a lot of damage to his reputation locally and many, many of the locals were warning us off the place because of Eric's allegedly hotheaded, confrontational nature. Being a chef myself, I wasn't deterred and I am glad we went: this food is very similar to what I make and so I felt right at home.

We never got to experience Eric because he is off in Portland at his newest restaurant The Kingdom of Roosevelt, so his understudy Kyle was in the tiny open kitchen, but I can say that Eric's partner Emily is quite the charming hostess, sommelier, and orchestrator of the tiny dining room that might seat 24. And of all the many wonderful meals we ate in Oregon, this was the one that pleased us the most and the one that is most on par with the food we produce at One Block West.


Cognac Crusta Cocktail

Our reservation was for 7:00 and we arrived at 6:30 to sample the much lauded drink mixing prowess of bartender Patrick. Emily immediately showed us to the bar which is a side room just off to the right of the entrance. Ann's first drink was a Cognac Crusta, a classic cocktail and progenitor of the Sidecar made from Cognac, Cointreau, lemon juice, simple syrup, and Fee's old fashioned bitters poured into an old coupe rimmed with orange and sugar. For me, he mixed a Brooklyn, which is similar to a Manhattan and made from rye, vermouth, Luxardo maraschino, and Amer Picon.

The two things that I noticed were that there were no mixers on his bar, just piles of lemons, limes, and oranges. And second, I noted that that Patrick always uses a jigger for his drinks, so "if you come back in a year, you get the exact same cocktail." In between his running back and forth to the dining room to serve tables, we got to chatting about cocktails and talking about St. Germain in particular, which prompted him to make a mixture of lime juice, gin, simple syrup, St. Germaine, sparkling wine, and a shot of Fee Brothers celery bitters for Ann's second cocktail, which tasted a lot like grapefruit juice. My second cocktail was made from Dewar's and something with a clove flavor, possibly Becherovka.


Brooklyn Cocktail

Because we booked a tasting menu, we didn't need to order off the nightly menu which is written on a large chalkboard in the dining room. Depending on where you're seated you might not be able to see the chalkboard and might have to get up from your seat to go look at it, something that has caused the restaurant endless grief on TripAdvisor and Yelp. I'm just going to say this once: you people need to relax and get over yourselves or just start going to chain restaurants where everything is predictable. So you have to remove your precious behind from a chair to go look at the menu. BFD! Grow up.

We didn't order wine either, leaving ourselves in Emily's capable hands and she made great use of their extensive half-bottle selection to provide wines for our dinner. I didn't have the energy to wade through what looked like a deep, well thought out, and most reasonably priced wine list, though I could knock it for being a bit heavy on French wines where it could have been a touch heavier on local wines to go with the cuisine. But frankly, I was on vacation and didn't really want to think about the choice of wines. Besides, although I know my own list, I have no clue about other restaurants' lists and though I can make educated guesses about wines, I always ask for help in making my selections, when help is available.

For our first course, Emily brought us glasses of Blanquette de Limoux, a delightful sparkling wine from the southwest of France, typically made from the Mauzac grape. This was paired with a plate of delightful Kumamoto oysters with mignonette. I love these small oysters with the intricate shells, oysters of Japanese origin which were introduced to American Pacific waters in the last century.

Kumamoto Oysters, a Rare Treat for East Coasters

Click to See the Awesome Detail on This Shell

After clearing the oysters, Emily brought a half bottle of Domaine Huet Vouvray Sec "Clos du Bourg" 2010 that we drank with our next two courses. First up, a course of two salads: mustard greens and chard with radishes and a yogurt dressing and an arugula salad with candied hazelnuts with preserved lemon and herb vinaigrette.

Arugula, Candied Walnuts, Preserved Lemon Vinaigrette

Mustard, Chard, Radishes and Yogurt Dressing

One of the two standout dishes of the night was the plate of tiny radishes, split in half, and tossed in warm butter, then sprinkled with sea salt. This is a dish a chef can love. It just says "Spring is here!" in a perfect way and it takes a confident chef to let the ingredients do the talking, which is why I like this restaurant so much. It's about the ingredients more than it is about the chef, just like my restaurant is. Some people don't get that and I am sure that Thistle could take a lot of heat for this dish from customers claiming that they didn't do anything, that anyone could make this dish. Those people just don't get it and never will.

Radishes, Butter, Salt: Sublime

It was about now that Emily brought a half bottle of Chehalem Pinot Noir 2007 Reserve to the table for the next two cold courses, pork rillettes and steak tartare. The rillettes were great and as good as the ones that we serve at the restaurant. The steak tartare Ann loved better than the one we do at the restaurant. I prefer more texture in the meat, she prefers less: this was very soft. In any case, it is splitting hairs. This tartare was great.

Nice to Get an Older Vintage

Delicious Rillettes, as Good as my Own

Splendid Steak Tartare

Then it was on to two warm courses: a saffron yellow omelette filled with spinach, goat cheese, and what looked to be rapini tips, followed by a bowl of stinging nettle gnocchi. The omelette was workmanlike but not particularly memorable. On the other hand, the gnocchi were fantastic, the best dish of a stellar line up and the single best dish of our entire trip.

Omelette Stuffed with Rapini, Goat Cheese, and Spinach

Stinging Nettle Gnocchi: Best Dish of the Trip

And finally on to the hot meat courses, the first of which was pan-roasted ling cod steak on a sauté of morels, asparagus, and fiddleheads, well seasoned with super crispy skin that I stole without Ann seeing. This fish was in sharp contrast to that which we had the evening before at the Irish Table. The vegetable sauté is one that we do frequently in the spring and is a classic with fish.



Delicious and Perfectly Cooked Ling Cod

You can see from the photo of the fish that the sun is setting fast and we're just about out of light for photos, so this will be the end of the photos, even though we had two more dishes in our dinner. It was at this point on one of her forays to the ladies room that Ann picked up Tony, a 75-year old bar rat who joined us at Ann's invitation (Emily rolled her eyes at me) and regaled us with tales of his Navy days. I might have preferred to have been on a solo date with my wife, but what is a guy to do? Anns are going to be Anns. Speaking of restrooms, just to the right of the bar is a door labeled "Yes!" and when Ann asked Patrick if they had a restroom, he pointed and theatrically trilled "Yes!"

Patrick's Prop

After the fish plate was cleared away, Emily brought us each a glass of Chinon to go with the beef, our next course. I just loved her wine choices of underappreciated French appellations that most Americans don't know, wines on which I cut my proverbial wine drinking teeth. We were served a combo plate of medium rare beef hanger steak with a big chunk of spare rib as well. The hanger in particular had super flavor.

Our dessert was a lemon panna cotta with rhubarb compote, which I have gleefully stolen for my own restaurant now that rhubarb is coming out of our ears. Because it was served in an 8-ounce canning jar, they didn't have to use as much gelatin as for a panna cotta that has to stand on its own after being unmolded, so the texture was very light and silky, softer than crème brûlée.

The whole experience was relaxed, fun, and refreshingly non-pretentious. The best way for me to sum up this meal is that it was in the top five restaurant meals I have ever had and that the food could have passed for my own at my restaurant. I would be a regular at Thistle if I were in McMinnville and not cooking for a living!