Chefs Week PDX doesn’t quite reach the citywide level of hysteria that Feast Portland engenders—there’s no multi-city block taste offs, no lines 20 deep for a taster plate of reheated brisket from Austin.
Chefs Week is a more insular affair, high-end meals capped with after parties and restaurant take-overs that allow a touch of access for the everyday eater. There’s pros and cons to both: Feast is larger, but I’m always of the firm opinion that food festivals aren’t the best way to really say you’ve had a famous chef’s cooking (although I still dream of some Feast bites, like Adam Sappington’s beef ribs at last year’s Smoked event).
So, if you’ve got $150 or so to burn and want to really get a solid taste of what a visiting chef is about, a Chefs Week Dinner is the way to go. It’s a matter of a) having that money and b) realizing that not every course will be a knockout.
A photographer and I were invited to attend Saturday’s Hearth dinner at Renata, a seven-course meal from seven different chefs cooked in the SE Portland restaurant’s gorgeous wood oven. (Check out a slideshow of the meal below!)
Overall, it was a fantastic event—we sat across the table from Lee Medoff, head spirits guy from Bull Run Distillery, which provided the booze for the cocktails at Chefs Week. (Sticker shock for even those of us who were comped: your meal doesn’t come with drink/wine pairings; that’s gonna be extra.)
The first course was perhaps the best: two hearth roasted carrots with medjool dates, cumin, Aleppo pepper and brown butter from Jason Stratton of Mamnoon in Seattle. The carrots and dates were sweet, but the pepper and cumin kept it rich and interesting. It’s enough to sell me on a visit next time I’m up there.
The rest of the courses were for the most part visually-appealing tributes to each chef’s ability, with varying degrees of tastiness. Joel Watanabe’s (Bao Bei, Vancouver, BC) salmon poached in charcoal olive oil with radish, coconut chutney and a vermillion green cilantro emulsion was butter soft and complex. But a later dish of roasted turbot and Dungeness crab from Justin Wills of Restaurant Beck in Depoe Bay involved a white corn polenta that had congealed into the shape and texture of a congealed Frisbee during plating. Pass.
Katy Millard of Coquine, the only lady chef on the roster, was relegated to the dessert course, but she knocked it out of the park with a pumpkin and white chocolate pudding with a bitter chocolate sorbet and a pumpkin seed brittle. I don’t even like white chocolate, but I downed this like I was in a Cathy cartoon. (Stoked to have received a Coquine chocolate chip and almond cookie for the road too!).
If I had lots of money to spend on this sort of thing, Chefs Week is a no-brainer way to spice up early February. That’s who organizers are trying to court, mostly. And Chefs Week has a great array of meals, from the West Coast Modern event (queue the foam!), an unofficial Asian-influenced kickoff at Langbaan (I would have loved to hit that) and the rustic Hearth. As someone who has to pick and choose my fine dining experiences, I’d still say that one of these is worth a splurge—just make sure you get into the dinner that best suits your palate.
[slideshow-1]
