Guest Essay: Spring, That In-Between Season

Sasha Davies is a cheesemonger, restaurateur and co-owner with her husband, Michael Claypool, of Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery. She's also a fine writer, having authored two books on cheese, The Guide to West Coast Cheese and the Cheesemakers Apprentice. Her newsletter for May struck a chord with me, as I hope it will with you.

Liminal: (adj.) Of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

You have all experienced liminal time, the kind where you're somewhere between a Here and a There. This can be very much a matter of logistics, like being on an airplane, or slightly less well defined like the time between making a decision (to move, take a job, have a baby, take a trip, quit a job, commit to/end a relationship) and the first moment where it feels like that decision is manifesting in the world.

Liminal times can be tense (picture yourself straddling a fence) and uncertain—filled with anxiety about what's coming—they can also be times of great release and letting go, or leaning into a spot of blank space.

The liminal nature of May—the month—is something I feel every year here in Portland, and I can see it play out in our kitchen at Cyril's; I sense that the rules of Here (spring) and There (summer) are malleable. This feels somewhat liberating.

Part of this could be because I grew up in California, where May felt much more like the beginning of summer than the midst of spring. When I moved here eight years ago (in April) and didn't see the sun on a regular basis until July 5th, my idea of spring got entirely rearranged. The early warmth and sunshine this year has shattered my ideas about May yet again.

Personally, I find this time of year to be one of the more challenging of the seasonal transitions. While I do find the green shoots and kaleidescope of blossoms utterly delightful, there is a quickening up that I find myself resisting. In subtle ways I cling to the last bits of slowness left over from our winter habits.

There is an overarching theme of freedom we feel about summer, the season we're barreling toward, and yet in the kitchen—and in my life—sometimes I feel there is a certain pressure about it as well, an unspoken demand that one engages in that time of year with a particular vigor. This is precisely the kind of thing that makes me anxious—you know, because what if I'm tired and I feel like staying inside?

At Cyril's we are doing our best to embrace the liminal nature of now both in terms of what is available at the market and what our guests are interested in eating. The menu feels like a bit of a moving target but somehow this pop of early warmth in the weather has meant a larger overlap of the seasons in terms of ingredients. We only just said farewell to sweet potatoes and risotto and have now created our first salad with lettuce in a starring role.

Photos courtesy Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery.

Cyril's Puts Meat on the Side

I was intrigued from the very first line of the e-mail. "We’re updating our menu and literally putting meat where we think it belongs: On the Side."

No wonder the subject of the message was "Courage!"

Which is why I took a few minutes on a recent morning to talk with owner Sasha Davies about her vision for her three-year-old bistro, Cyril's. The first thing she said was that this shift away from featuring meat at the center of every plate was no radical epiphany that descended on her from on high.

"This is the menu I always wanted to have," she said, which is more than evident in the "vision board" (left) that she created with her husband Michael Claypool before they'd even signed a lease on the Cyril's space.

"Meat is really easy," she said. It's got fat, that unctuous, umami-laden essence that oozes from it and makes it the star of every well-composed plate it appears on. And because meat has always had that diva's role on most restaurant plates, she believes it's difficult to convince people that a meal composed of mostly vegetables has the same value, never mind the flavor, of one that's focused on protein.

"One day it dawned on me that meat-oriented meals were about a thousand times easier to make delicious and satisfying than vegetarian ones," she wrote, "and that to be a terrific vegetarian cook actually required more skill and experience than it did to nail any braised pork shoulder recipe.

"Putting meat on the side is us being courageous enough to do what we’ve always wanted to do, which is commit to what we’ve secretly dreamed about becoming: a vegetable-oriented bistro. Call us ‘vegetarian-ish.'"

Deciding to take this leap coincided with a presentation she heard from Mark Canlis, owner with his brother Brian of Canlis restaurant in Seattle. At that talk Davies heard him speak about the broken nature of the industry he is part of, about "essentially [how] the hospitality business was severely limited in their capacity to serve others by their colossal failure to take care of their own," i.e. their workers, their families and their communities.

It struck Davies that "this other-centered (the opposite of self-centered) strategy that Canlis was talking about created a practical space for this deeply held belief I have that when people feel seen and heard they do better, in fact they thrive."

Will this shift in the direction of her restaurant gain acceptance? Or, on the contrary, will it be a tragic mistake, a fear that Canlis also admitted to in his presentation?

"I'm pumped, afraid, excited and uncomfortable," she said. "But if we don't do this, we'll always wonder."

Livin' in the Blurbs: Plowing, Cheeses and Changes at Culinate

There are a few annual events that make me extra happy to live here: Jim Dixon's Olive Oil Garage Sale. The apple tasting at Portland Nursery. The farm ramble at Ayers Creek Farm. And the one that totally brings back my horse-loving eight-year-old self, the Yamhill County Farm Fest and Plowing Competition sponsored by the Oregon Draft Horse and Mule Breeders Association. This year the rock-em, sock-em competition, featuring classic draft breeds like Belgians, Percherons, Haflingers, Shires, Suffolk and Clydesdales, plus teams of doughty mules, is coming up this Saturday, April 12, on what's predicted to be a stunningly gorgeous day. The event includes blacksmithing demonstrations, historic farm equipment, quilts from local quilting clubs and other family-friendly activities. So throw the kids in the buggy and trot them out to the country for a day of country fun. (Be sure to say hi when you see my eight-year-old self patting the horses…)

Details: Yamhill County Farm Fest and Plowing Competition. Sat., April 12, 10 am-4 pm; $5 admission, kids 12 and under free. Yamhill Co. Historical Society and Museum, 11275 SW Durham Ln., McMinnville. 503-434-0490.

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Community Supported Cheese is an idea whose time has come. Fortunately, Sasha Davies is all over it with her monthly Cheese Club at Cyril's. Unlike many buying clubs, where you're stuck with whatever that month's featured product is, Sasha has created a club where participants can opt in depending on how they feel about the selected cheese and whether their budget that month will support the purchase of a pound of cheese. How awesome is that? She does it by (get this!) posting the month's featured cheese to Kickstarter, then letting folks commit or not. Plus if it doesn't get funded, then everyone's off the hook! That's my kind of club.

Details: Community Supported Cheese Club at Cyril's. Thurs., April 10, 6:30 pm (pledge must be made before Thurs., April 10 at 6 pm; future monthly meetings and cheeses will be posted); $10 to taste the cheese of the month; price for the pound (or piece) varies monthly. Check the website. Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery, 815 SE Oak St. 503-206-7862.

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Some sad news came this last month from my friend Kim Carlson at Culinate. After seven years of publishing a nationally recognized online food magazine, she and her husband James Berry will be closing up shop, or at least that part of it that publishes stories and recipes. I've written stories and contributed recipes to Culinate over the years and found their passionate commitment to the cause of good cooking, great ingredients and sustainable sourcing to be thoughtful and inspiring. The good news, if it can be spun that way, is that they are keeping the website's content available for the foreseeable future. The website was only part of their business, and now they are turning their focus to the partnerships they have with cookbook authors and publishers to create mobile apps from cookbooks. These have included Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything series and the app for the incredibly successful Hello, Cupcake! series, recently awarded the iTunes App Store Editor’s Choice and Best App of the year. Now rumor has it they're about to release a huge new cooking app project that will rock the foundation of the cookbook world. Stay tuned!

Quick Hits: Cyril's, NobleONI, Davenport

My comfort zone isn't hard to find. Smart, friendly, low-maintenance people are definitely in that zone and qualify as nearly instant friends, the kind you meet and say, "I like you!" That pretty much fits the description of my kind of restaurant, too, where you walk in for the first time and a staff person smiles and greets you. Where you sit down and instantly feel taken care of, and when the food comes it isn't pretentious or priced beyond reason.

A place I've taken to lately is Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery, where Sasha Davies, renowned cheese maven and author of two books on the subject, opened a cheese shop-cum-café with her partner Michael Claypool, a winemaker. The big square-ish room has a scattering of beautiful wooden tables and chairs, the large windows on the street serve double duty spilling light into the space and providing bar seating, while the cheese counter and kitchen fill one corner.

Involtini di melanzane, a recent "Fixe" entrée.

The lunch menu is a well-curated selection of salads and sandwiches, with a killer macaroni and cheese (top photo) and a special called "The Fixe," a three-course lunch—salad, seasonal main and either dessert or wine—for $15. On the website, Sasha explains that Cyril's was named after her paternal grandfather, admitting that while she didn't know him well, "I simply remember that I liked how it felt to be around him…I am hopeful that [Cyril's] will have that magical quality that makes people simply enjoy being there." I do!

Details: Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery, 815 SE Oak St. 503-206-7862.

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The Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) has been sitting on its hillside in southwest Portland as long as I can remember. Designed by famed local architect John Storrs, known for other Oregon landmark properties like Salishan and the World Forestry Center, and landscape architect Barbara Fealy, the campus has Storrs' signature Northwest Coast-meets-Asian style and is studded with sculptures and artwork on its forested campus.

Find the oni (above)? There he is (left)!

Tucked into the landscape is the college's café, serving students, faculty and the public since it opened in the early 1980s. It was a hidden gem, known for its deliciously simple salads, soups and homemade breads, frequented by a community of cognoscenti. In 2012 the couple who had operated the café for 30 years decided to retire and the college started a search for someone to rejuvenate it. They eventually decided on Leather Storrs, son of the campus architect and owner of his own restaurant in town, Noble Rot.

I visited the newly renamed NobleONI Café as a guest of the college the other day, and its freshened paint and rearranged space reflect the freshening that's happening on the menu. Right now it's open for lunch and brunch in the cozy dining room anchored by a classic Bruce West sculpted fireplace, but as soon as the weather cooperates the favored tables on the patio will open. Look for the signature rustic soups, salads and breads to be joined by housemade meats like porchetta. Rumored are an expansion of brunch, as well as dinner hours and a second patio to let more folks enjoy the warm breezes and the fabled Storrs family hospitality.

Details: NobleONI Café, 8245 SW Barnes Rd. 503-297-5544.

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Long-time readers of Good Stuff NW know that I love Kevin Gibson's cooking, to the point of calling his former place of employment, Evoe at Pastaworks, the best restaurant in Portland. Absolutely market fresh, no one else in town made local and seasonal ingredients sing the way that Gibson could. His light touch, without the need for snazzy foams, whiz-bang gadgets or tricky executions, enhanced the intrinsic flavors locked in prosaic vegetables like delicata squash, artichokes and grapefruit. Not that he didn't debut some exotic, but still local, produce like padron peppers or glacier lettuce—which later took off with chefs around the country—because of his long-standing relationships with some of the areas best specialty farmers.

So I was more than excited when he was finally able to open his own place with a real, though still visually accessible, kitchen with more than a mandoline, a plug-in griddle and an electric oven. A recent early evening at Davenport—named after the town, not the furniture—proved that he's well on his way to repeating, and no doubt besting, the success and accompanying accolades he achieved at Evoe.

The scallops, delicately seared but still pink in the center, were as exquisite as before, this time arranged on a bed of fennel, cucumber and celery slaw with grapefruit sections and dots of pink peppercorns. Salt cod fritters were crispy-crunchy on the outside, creamy smooth on the inside with a Seville orange aioli that required restraint when it came to not licking up the remnant left on the plate. Radicchio salad, wedges of crisp chicory with a drizzle of anchovy dressing under a shower of hard-boiled egg and tiny croutons, was a variation on a Caesar that I would have eaten while Rome burned behind me.

Classic cocktails and the wine list, selected and poured by the unassailable talent of Kurt Heilemann (right), matched the menu selections perfectly. One caveat: the prices here are a bit more than you were used to paying at Evoe, and the tab can add up quickly. My recommendation? Order a couple of plates each with your wine and make plans to return for more soon. It's only gonna get better.

Details: Davenport, 2215 E Burnside St. 503-236-8747.