Goodbye, OHS

Today, I made my third and final trip to the Oregon Historical Society to dig through archived photos and menus from old P-town diners dating all the way back to the 30's. I gathered some great materials, and got to look at more pictures historic Portland than I could've ever imagined. I highly highly highly recommend the research library at the OHS for anyone who is doing a research project or is just curious about the past. I know it sounds nerdy, but its super enriching--from articles, to menus, to photos, to portraits to maps. Plus it's really fun to snoop in on all of the interesting things the other researchers are looking into. And only $5 for a student? What a steal!

E-interview with Slappy Cakes!

Today I heard back from Ashley Berry over at Slappy Cakes via e-mail. Here's what she had to say in response to my questions:

1) Can you tell me a little bit more about your backyard garden? How much of your food comes from there? Is the garden model advantageous financially?
Our garden is an attempt to reduce the "food miles" associated with our restaurant. We will eventually catch rainwater and make our own soil also. How much we can harvest depends on the season, but we always have herbs going. The garden will eventually be profitable, but we have a lot to learn by trial until that happens. If you would like to see the garden just ask the next time you are in!

2) Slappy Cakes is still less than a year old, what was the hardest part of starting a new restaurant?
The hardest part of starting a project like this is grasping the actual size of it, it always takes much more work, money, and time than originally anticipated (but especially money).

3) How much of your food do you try to source locally?
We try to get all of our produce locally, but this also depends on the season. Our meats are always local.

4) What type of person would you say comprises your clientele base? Did you have a “target audience” in mind, so to speak, when you opened the restaurant?
Slappy Cakes was intended to be for anybody wanting a fun and unique dining experience, and we see every type of person eating here. Our target audience is anybody who loves fun breakfast!

My worst fear, confronted

I was so relieved today to see a post on Amateur Gourmet that addressed an issue that I've come face-to-face with on the daily during my project: taking pictures of your food. I love what he has to say. For those who won't read the entire blog, check out some excerpts I grabbed:

"It forces you to pause and consider what's in front of you. Animals devour food indiscriminately; as humans, we have the capacity to appreciate our food in a way that they don't. Not just aesthetically (though that's important) but also spiritually; if we're eating a rabbit, perhaps it's worthwhile to pause and consider the fact that a rabbit died so that we can eat dinner.

Taking pictures of your food also allows you to create an archive of experience that transports you, instantly, back to a specific place in time.

Finally, taking pictures of your food opens up a dialogue between you and the people serving you. Some restauranteurs will ask you bluntly "are you a food blogger?"; other times they'll ask "Do you mind if I ask what you're taking pictures for?" Either way, you end up engaging the people who make and serve food for a living on a subject for which you share an equal passion. Many a great conversation has started for me that way and it's all because I was taking pictures of what I was eating."

And now, a quote from La Rochefoucauld: "to eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art."

Toast: Two Interviews

review here

INTERVIEW WITH OWNER, JOHN



INTERVIEW WITH HEAD CHEF

Interview with John Taboada, Owner of Navarre

John Taboada in front of his restaurant, Navarre

After Mark and I had breakfast this morning at Toast, I met up with John Taboada at his restaurant Navarre on NE 28th Ave. When I walked into Navarre the CLOSED sign was hanging and all of the chairs were stacked on the tables. A chef was in the kitchen chopping vegetables, and three other staff were floating about prepping for dinner. John walked in a few minutes later, a little flustered. When he came in it seemed everyone had a question for him. One woman asked him about entering the details of a featured beer onto the computer, another asked him how to prepare some item of food she’d never dealt with. He seemed very popular. Finally John answered all of them and we were able sit down at a table outside on busy 28th ave together for a few minutes to talk.

John is a very, very cool guy who I have tons of respect for. I’ve attached the audio file (its about twenty minutes), you should listen in to the interview, John has some very interesting things to say. He’s so unpretentious (to the point of irreverence, which I love) and down to earth it was amazing. I sound SO annoying throughout the whole thing and say “yeah” or “right” every other second, but if you can look beyond that you should download the audio file.



It doesn't seem like the player is working. Try these links to download it and then open it up in iTunes:

Download the audio clip:
HERE (Media Fire):
http://www.mediafire.com/?mqmmtwngigo
or
HERE (File Factory):
Download 20100527 151036 2.mp3 from FileFactory.com

A quiet interior of Navarre before the dinner rush

Reading List

Two books to add to the food-related reading list. Shout out to my homegirl Nance L for her recommendation of MFK Fisher.

The draw of this book, for me, is its synthesis of literature and food. It's essentially an anthology or compilation of meditations (both sincere and satirical) on food from a range of literary sources--from Winnie the Pooh to D.H. Laurence to John Keats to Virginia Woolf. Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and seminal writer beginning in the 1930's all the way through the 90's until her death in 1992. She dealt mostly with food in her writing. What I like about her is her charming style and her approach to food from so many different angles--especially through a cultural and historical lens.

Cricket Cafe

Slappy Cakes

PRE FLIP

POST FLIP

The Vigil

On Saturday night, Eddie and I held a 3.5 hour vigil at The Original 24-Hour Hot Cake House on Powell blvd. We arrived at 11:30pm and stayed until around 3AM. I'm currently in the process of compiling a short documentary about our experiences there (this will probably be shown during my presentation), but I have to work out the audio because the background noise is completely overbearing in all of the footage.

Until the film is produced, here are a few photos.

A major inspiration of the undertaking was this This American Life episode, where Ira Glass and his team decide to spend a full 24-hours in a 24-hour diner in Chicago, The Golden Apple, interviewing every single patron in the joint. Unfortunately, due to lack of courage and resources, Eddie and I could only aspire to do it as big-scale as they did.

Regardless, the episode is really great, so if you have a second, it's worth your time. Some incredibly rich stories and characters. LISTEN HERE.
(Thanks to Nancy D. for recommending I listen to it!)

Sanborn's

“I don’t know what it was, we just had this, this amazing...energy...at the Seattle show” a big man with wild salt and pepper-colored curls exploding in every direction from his had.
“See, I'm just not on the same page here” a woman with short hair and a floral jacket objects. “During the Seattle set, I was feelin' this magical energy way up here,” she motions with her hands, setting a bar above her head, “but then all the sudden, you started making a speech, and we just...lost it,” dropping her hand dramatically to the table, rattling silverware and cups.
A band with five animated, 30-something year-olds joins us early-on in our meal at Sanborn’s. In the quiet, mostly empty space, their passionate conversation carries throughout the restaurant, making it hard not to listen in on. I imagine they play poppy, punk-type music. I try to match each of them up with an instrument. I pin the tan guy in a fedora as the bassist, but can’t quite nail down the rest.
In its eighth year of business, Sanborn’s is perched understatedly on the corner of Milwaukee and Kelly Street, just down the block from the historical Aladdin Theater. The dark purple tavern-y exterior is misleading—insight is bright and quaint. The interior features a white tiled floor and white table clothes. It felt a bit too sterile for me. Music seems prominent throughout the space—from the “seat yourself” sign scrawled over music scores, to the piano featuring a few albums set out on top of it. Ironically, besides soft chattering at tables, the place is nearly silent. The kitchen is out of sight, each time our waitress reports to the kitchen she disappears behind a corner. This was the first place I’d visited where the kitchen was nowhere to be found.
But while the atmosphere isn’t remarkable, the food certainly is. I order the blueberry waffle (made with Oregon blueberries), which came cooked perfectly, dusted with powdered sugar, and with warm blueberry compote for syrup. Keenan orders Bee’s special, a basic egg-bacon-pancake set-up, while Colin orders the apple German pancake. The warm caramelized apples in the custard-y, cinnamon-y pancake is something special. If I were to return I would order the waffle or the pancake again.
Or maybe I’d muster the courage to order their infamous “Bam Cake”- an apple German pancake stuffed with bacon, served with maple syrup. German pancakes have gotta be their specialty, they sure make a damn good ones.

Fat Albert's

A clever sandwich board outside of Fat Albert’s reads “a waist is a terrible thing to mind.” In a sense, the sign sums up the personality of Fat Albert’s Breakfast Café on Milwaukee Street in Sellwood. Friendly, quirky, settling into its SE niche. The joint has been around for nine years, before being inhabited by Albert’s the space was filled by a barbershop.

When I ask why the name Fat Albert’s, our waitress chuckles, shrugs her shoulders, and squints one eye in an effort to recall.
“Hm, I don’t remember where that came from. It’s fun though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s great…” my dad and I agree. It sounded like she’d been around from the start.

The space is long and narrow, cement floors and ceilings revealing the overhead piping render the atmosphere airy, light, and open. Our waitress ushers us to a wooden table painted bright turquoise. Under the specials board by the door a toddler with curly cherub locks wheels a yellow truck from a toy basket around on the floor. A young family, a few couples, and individual “regulars” fill the joint. In fact, regulars abound during the time I’m there. One man gets up periodically and refills his own coffee cup, another pays at the counter, chatting with the waitress while shoving the last crusts of wheat toast into his mouth.
As our waitress hands us to our yellow menus, I glimpse a chef in the back rhythmically breaking dozens of eggs into a large container. The many yokes, packed tightly together, picked up the yellow of the menu, and matched its offerings too. Fat Albert’s menu is egg-centric, featuring omelets like “The Garbage Grinder” and “The Salad Eater.” But the menu is balanced, egg dishes complemented by classics like biscuits and gravy, breakfast burrito, pancakes, the works. I choose “The Old Fashioned”—a sort of sampler plate with eggs, sausage, “browns,” and a biscuit. My dad goes with the Salad Eater veggie omelet. At the bottom of the menu I notice a plea: “on busy days, no campers please!” I guess it’s a busy place on the weekends.Fat Albert’s takes pride in the provenance of its food. A note at the top of the menu calls attention to their use of real butter, fresh roasted signature blend by Schondecken coffee roasters, bread from Grand Central Bakery, and biscuits baked fresh each morning.
Our food arrives—my eggs are cooked perfectly, coupled with the meat and potatoes the plate forms an ideal savory breakfast. But what really seals the deal is the homemade biscuit. It’s light and fluffy, smothered with butter and raspberry jam. Dad sings Salad Eater praises too.

By the time we’re done eating it’s around 12 o’clock. Our waitress swings by to top-off my coffee then retreats to the back of the restaurant to nosh on her own plate of food. I figure noon is a slow time for business. Nothing’s changed on Milawaukee street as we emerge, satiated and content. Grey clouds shroud the sun, drizzle keeps the pavement slick. The only sunshine in sight is the smiling sun painted on the sign above the door of Fat Albert’s as we depart.

Slide Integrity: A Retrospective Tale

Day: Thursday. Time: 6:07am. Place: NW Glisan St.

“Slider?” My reply: a blank, sleepy stare. Come on Zanny, you’ve been to Blanchet plenty of times, you should know this. Think, think. The little workers in my brain scramble about frantically, opening and slamming metaphoric file cabinets, leafing through folders for the one labeled “slider.”
“Uhh…what?” I replied, pulling my face into my “help me” frown.
“You’re our slider for this morning” Rick informed me, pointing a thick finger towards hooks of black aprons.
Bundled in coats to ward off that familiar ripped-from-bed-early-in-the-morn cold, I waddled over to grab an apron, awkwardly lunging to keep out of the dishwashers’ steamy domain.
“Places! Five minutes,” Rick shouted to all of us, and all individuals slid purposefully to their post. Just before grabbing a fistful of forks and propped open the door, Rick looked straight at me, held up two hands, and began to slowly wiggle all ten fingers. Again? Oh no. What could this possibly mean? Ten seconds till he opens the door? A special method of welcoming volunteers? Is he…commenting on my phalanges?
“Gloves,” he mouthed slowly to me, exaggerating each shape of his mouth, as if speaking to someone who was hearing impaired. Nice one. 0 for 2. Off to a good start, champ.
After my two drowsy miscommunications with Rick, I clicked right into place. I felt like a tiny gear in the huge chugging machine that is Blanchet House. It pretty much went like this from 6:30am until the end of breakfast: I’m handed a sectioned plate with two steaming pancakes on it, I grab a piece of bread and a banana, put them on the plate, then slide the plate down on a huge metal counter so that the servers can deliver them to the tables as new eaters shuffle in. All this…to the blaring sound of metal music like Evanescence streaming out of an orange boom box. The jarring music threw off the strikingly warm and friendly atmosphere inside the room despite the early hour and morning drizzle spitting down on the concrete outside. But I got it down to a rhythm: grab, bread, banana, slide.
I quickly became acquainted with the guy handing me the pancake plates, although I never learned his name. He was watching as I picked up one banana to discover a very dubious substance stuck to the peel. I squinted my eyes, flipped the banana over, and placed it on the plate. I didn’t know he saw, but he started laughing heartily at my reaction and sneaky solution to the mystery powder. From then on he openly made jokes to me, mostly at the expense of his co-workers (he was permanent staff there). Then I was a target too.
“Hey, what happened to that slide?” he teased. He was right, I had totally let myself go. He then explained the principal of Slide Integrity, or sliding even when you don’t have to, one of the core ideals of Blanchet House. “Accuracy, consistency, integrity,” he outlined.
Another man who had small mutton chops and broad shoulders, the self-proclaimed “jokester” there, playfully pulled the box of bananas I was leaning on and when I turned, feigned oblivion.
I spoke to a few of the people who had come in for the meal—an elderly man asked me for another cup so he could drink coffee and water simultaneously, a younger guy sardonically explained his daily struggle to get a job at either Fred Meyer and the Dollar Tree (“let’s see if I’m good enough for ‘em today, wish me luck”), and a man with a Walt Whitman-esque beard boasted the sound quality of his walkman and lamented the Eagles cancellation of their 1995 tour. Others—a man in a button-up and sports jacket carrying a cell phone, and a woman in her twenties wearing a floral skirt and jeans jacket, made me acutely aware of my innate tendency to forge assumptions based on others’ appearance. You really never know someone’s situation.
The jokester chef started ladling oatmeal, and offering seconds (without getting in line again) as things wound down. I watched an older man's tired eyes light up when he was brought a second plate, heaped with steaming oatmeal. When Rick called “we’re now closed, but we hope to see you back at 11:30 for lunch” I couldn’t decide who had been more gracious towards me, the smiley work force at Blanchet house, or the people coming in for their first meal of the day.
I don’t mean to spit hackneyed expressions, or sound too cliché, but my morning yesterday helping serve b-fast at Blanchet was a major wake-up call (literally and figuratively). I’m enjoying researching diners, but it’s easy to forget that the demographic that eats at diners is a limited one that excludes multitudes. Those are the people who can afford to spend both time and money to go out and purchase their first meal of the day.
It’s too easy to forget that many don’t wake up in the morning and decide what or where to eat for breakfast, but rather must figure out how to eat anything at all.

fun fact!
I recently received a Facebook message from Dave Gunderson, the Capital Campaign Chair of the Blanchet House, who found and posted my story on the Blanchet House Facebook Fan Page.
Check it out HERE.

Bertie Lou's

The front of the laminated menu declares that Bertie Lou’s has been serving “Portland’s favorite mediocre breakfast since 1943.” Mediocre? Talk about selling yourself short. There’s a reason they’re in their 67th year of business. The space is tiny, with one section featuring an open griddle and a handful of barstools and the other, a cozy room with hardwood floors holding no more than six tables. The warm, intimate space is a perfect refuge on a grey Portland morning.

In general, it’s tough for a restaurant to create a “down home” feel without it seeming contrived or tacky to its customers. But at Bertie’s the homey feel feels nothing but genuine. I can’t imagine how many regulars they have after over half a century of existence. On the window sill next to our table sits a giant coffee mug-shaped bowl brimming with post cards from all around the world addressed to Bertie Lou’s from loyal customers on exotic travels. I pick up a glitter-crusted one shaped in the letters NY, but feel too nosey reading the greeting. The four walls are plastered with a farrago of random images—vintage ads, old photos of what appears to be Portland, and a painting of a giant moose hovers omnipotently above Eddie’s head. The exterior of the building is bright orangey-yellow, lighting up the entire block. Inside, the back dining space one wall is painted pale yellow, the other sky blue. A few faux chandeliers and mirrors add an endearing elegance to the already charming nook.The clientele base is mostly 20-something hipsters seeking reasonably priced food. But there are exceptions—a woman and her mother eat together at the table next to us, the mother protesting comically as her daughter foists too large of a portion of her omelet onto her plate. A group of three SE old-timers inhabit stools that show wear of many seats before that, forming imprints of loyalty. They glare comically as I take their photo. A man with a white puffy beard grapples with the morning paper as his order is taken to the cook.

Poring over the menu, I remember one of the guys I worked on the farm with had raved to me about the croissant French toast at Bertie’s when I’d told him I was thinking about going. I had to take his suggestion, and ordered that and a cup of coffee.
“And do you want that with fresh fruit?” The waitress asked, catching me by surprise.
“Uh, no…that’s okay” I reply. Wait, how could I pass that up?
“Wait, actually” I called back, “can I have the fresh fruit?”

Eddie, my partner in crime, ordered a Belgian waffle that came with bacon and eggs too.

My croissant French toast arrived quickly—topped with fresh blueberries, strawberries, and bananas. The toast was steaming and melted in my mouth, and with the extra touch of the fruit it was really something special. Eddie’s waffle was tasty though not quite the godsend my French toast was. Midway through our meal, a man sitting close to us (perhaps under the impression I was a journalist since I was taking pictures), proclaims to his friends “this is my favorite breakfast place in all of Portland.” He speaks at a deliberately high volume, and checks to make sure I heard him. Then he says something I can’t hear about them usually playing oldies music.

But I’m with that guy. I’ve been to a handful of SE diners now (a week later), but Bertie Lou’s is a gem. If you are seeking one special spot in SE, head to Bertie’s.

With a total capacity for no more than 30 people, the place is packed on weekends. But on a quiet Wednesday morning, Bertie Lou’s is the perfect breakfast spot.

Zell's