Nora's Table

Following on the heels of our most welcome review in the Oregonian’s A&E on Friday, July 9, comes a piece about us in the July 30 edition of “The Week” national magazine. Quoting from the Big O’s review, Nora’s Table is mentioned, along with Whiskey Soda Lounge and Tabla Mediterranean Bistro as “Top Restaurants in Portland, Ore.”  We came down to the restaurant the next day expecting to see a big hole where 110 Fifth St., Hood River, Oregon, had been the day before. But we’re still here! This morning we fielded a call from a diner wondering if we had a Portland location, too. Nope. We love the Hood, and we are happy to say, the Hood loves us.

Rules!? Well, yes, we have a few

We want to keep dishing up that food that won us an A- from the Oregonian, and you want us to as well, right? Well, that has a few complications for us, but we hope they don’t cause you any distress. One recent diner, when gently informed by her server that we’re not making dish substitutions, said, “Rules! I just want to come here and have dinner!” We feel your pain, sorta, but we’d like you to feel ours a bit, and here’s why we’re staying away from menu substitutions, split plates, and encouraging you to order “tapas style.”

First, Nathan and his crew work very hard to bring you an extremely wide-ranging menu each night, with anywhere from 20 to 30 items to choose from. Each one is carefully crafted and prepared just when it’s ordered, and that’s what makes your taste buds go, “Zowie!”  If one dish doesn’t exactly suit you, we understand, and that’s why you can choose from another 20 or so. We are also cooking as fast as we can, and it really slows us down to completely re-design a dish (i.e.: this sauce with that fish and that there rice from that other dish….) and we’re pretty sure the kitchen gods will frown on that combination anyway. So, no.

We are ever more than willing to help you choose dishes that are gluten free or vegetarian, and if possible, we can withhold things from a dish that you might be allergic too. Although, if you are allergic to say, melon, it’s best if you don’t order the melon salad, even if you are strangely drawn to it.

For the most part, our summer “no reservations” policy is going very well, and has substantially reduced wait times for everyone. Even last Saturday night, most diners got tables right away. The longest wait was about 20 minutes. But we do feel really bad when you call and say, “It’s my anniversary … plllleeeaase can I have a reserved table?” We are trying to be fair and consistent. So, no.  Come October, darlings, we will take reservations again, and even bring back the Five Course Chef’s Tasting Menu for $30. So you’ve got THAT going for you. Which is nice.

Also, we must add, after we saw a very long face from a really good guy with a wife and four hungry kids at home on a Saturday night: we don’t do takeout this summer. We are so sorry. It’s just not fair to the people waiting in the dining room. Put on a clean t-shirt and come down! It’s air conditioned!

And finally: what about this tapas thing? This is really the coolest way to eat, and when you try it, if you haven’t yet, you will like it. If you are with a group, and ordering lots of small plates, our kitchen would prefer that you ask for them tapas or family style, and as we cook them, we’ll send them out. A nice stream of really luscious food, coming one dish after the other, nice and hot (or nice and cold, as the case may be). Share. It’s a basic human skill we know you learned in kindergarten.

So, see, not so bad, right? We’re just trying to keep the best food in the Gorge coming to you as quickly as we can, and ensuring that each plate that leaves the kitchen is as perfect as the one before it. That’s our commitment to you. We want to keep our A-, and all our raving fans.

So what’s to rave about this week?

Heirloom tomatoes are finally starting to arrive and we’re putting them to good use:

• BLT: on crostini, with our own cured pork belly, heirloom tomatoes, bacon aioli and Zion Farm arugula.
• A small plate of Oregon coho salmon on a lovely slice of tomato, topped with pistachio pesto
• Whole pan-fried Idaho trout with fresh tomato sauce and our own pancetta

With those gorgeous, fresh Walla Walla sweet onions, we’re making baji-style onion rings for our rib eye steaks.

Got some fresh whole squid in this week, and we’re sautéing them, and nestling them into a nice bed of pappas bravas … potatoes tossed in mulatto and cascabel chili sauce … and toping them with lime cilantro aioli.

Nathan’s also braising lamb for his great hand-made pappardelle pasta.

And finally, Andrew created an amazing (are you ready for this?) braised beet and cherry conserve, for our thick-cut bone-in pork chops from Mountain Shadow. The color and flavor is rich and earthy, with a touch of sweetness, and is perfect with the chop and a bottle of Marchesi’s newly released Primitivo. Yikes.

Nora’s and the moon popped up at Stonehenge

On Monday night, with a full moon on the horizon, Nora’s hosted a “pop-up dinner” at the beautiful replica of England’s Stonehenge, on the Washington shore of the Columbia. Stonehenge is owned by our friends at Maryhill Museum, and more Gorge residents should just GO … visit the museum, and then just sit a spell at Stonehenge, watching as the Gorge scenery changes dramatically in the falling light (or sunrise, for that matter.) For a sense of what it was like,  check out the video:

Peter Cushman of Viento winery brought Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, and Nora’s cooked up road food: Vietnamese bahn mi sandwiches, New York steak sandwiches, grilled veggies, pilau rice, and for dessert: beignets and chocolate sauce!

Where will we pop up next? Who knows. The outlaws are at work figuring that out right now. Got any suggestions?

Dine in the vines with us

It’s just a week away … our pilgrimage to cook dinner for you in the middle of lovely Wy’East vineyard. You can still buy a ticket by e-mailing Keely Reed at keely@wyeastvineyards.com or calling the tasting room at 541-386-1277. Tickets are $65, or if you’re a wine club member, $58.

Wy’east will be pouring six great wines, and we’ll be cooking up dishes to match:

Pinot Gris: Marinated prawns and calamari, olives and pearl onions, heirloom tomatoes, romesco crostini

Chardonnay: Roasted eggplant soup, mint and ginger crème fraiche

Reserve Pinot Noir: Grilled duck breast, pinot noir glaze, grilled figs, fennel & preserved lemon salad

Cab Sav: Beef bourguinon, buttered pappardelle

Cloud Cap: Chocolate cherry bombe

We are pretty darn happy to share a review of Nora’s Table that will appear in the Oregonian’s A&E section tomorrow, Friday, July 9. We got a little sneak preview today in the on-line edition, and got all holy-jumpin’-up-and-down-Martha-excited when we read it. Our favorite part? When reviewer David Sarasohn writes that we have “turned the gorge from a geological statement into a cuisine.”

We despaired of every being reviewed, way out here, especially since our local newspaper doesn’t want to take on that somewhat risky business of reviewing restaurants. So we’ve depended on diner reviews in places like TripAdvisor. And even though we’ve been the #1 Hood River pick there for over a year, we still longed for that validation stroke from Portland.

So with no further ado, go read it: http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/index.ssf/2010/07/restaurant_review_nora.html

And after you digest that….

So here’s what our fabulous crew, all tingly and excited from reading our review, will be slipping onto your plates this weekend:

• Seared pork belly swimming in a pool of hazelnut and Amarillo chili mole, with fresh Washington apricot and sweet red pepper salsa
• Roasted corn samosas, sweet tomato chutney
• Mt. Shadow pork loin chop, cheddar and fresh corn polenta, bbq onions, sauté of Zion Farm spinach
• Oregon Chinook salmon, fresh mole verde, peruano beans, spinach radish salad
• Manilla clams and wild prawns in coconut fenugreek saffron tomato curry with grilled naan
• Fresh strawberry crumble with crème fraice ice cream

Kitchen math

Our incomparable dishwasher, Ricardo, introduced us to a friend who will wash dishes for us later this month when Ricardo runs a hamburger stand at the county fair. Happens that his friend is also named Ricardo, or as we call him “Ricky Dos”. And then, last week, a buddy of Nathan’s named Andrew arrived to help us cook on busy nights, and instantly earned the nickname “Drew Two” to differentiate him from our sous chef, Andrew Wightman.

Ricardo Uno summed it up best, with lots of respect: “Two Ricardos, two Andrews, but only one Nathan.”

So busy, nobody goes there anymore?

Good ‘ol Yogi Berra uttered those famous words about a previously-loved hang out. And we are hoping you DON’T think that about us, especially with the dandy review and all.

Truth is, our somewhat new “no reservations” policy is increasing your chances of snagging a table, since we’re not holding them open and empty, waiting for those reservations. So just show up. And if there’s a wait, we’ll send you off to one of our now SIX downtown wine tasting rooms to rev your engine and quaff the local stuff, and we’ll call you when your table is ready. (So what are the six wine tasting rooms? Quenett, Naked, The Pines, Cerulean, Stoltz, Springhouse. We’ll give you a list.) The restaurant looks tiny, but that’s a bit deceiving: we have 50 seats inside, and another 16 outside.

Figs, oh dears, where are you?

We called the owner of our faithful local fig tree the other day, Chris Strader of Hood River Jewelry, only to learn that April frosts have rendered his tree unfruitful this year. Same with a call to Pasquale Barone. So we’re sending a shout-out to our fig-loving fans: if you have a tree, or know of a tree, we would love some figs. Nathan is anxious to stuff them with goat cheese and mint, wrap them in Speck and grill them, and wouldn’t you love that?

It’s coming. Can you hear the tomatoes going “boing!”?

When the door opens at Nora’s these days, it’s just as likely to be Caroline or Seth, Meredith, Chris, Nick, Gary, or Bryan with a basket, a bag, a bus tub or some other conveyance, filled to the top with lettuce, peas, mushrooms or spinach.  And before long, it’ll be squash, spring onions, arugula, and maybe, just maybe, someday, if Kathy’s dream comes true, someone will bring us lovage. And Andrew will get fresh, local epizote. And Nathan will run his fingers through baskets of fresh berries and cherry tomatoes. It’s here; it’s almost here.

And this Thursday, the farmer’s market opens at 4:00! Woohoo! We’re also loving the asparagus from the Yakima Valley, and the snap peas from Toppenish, which our friends at Hood River Fruit and Produce go up and get to bring home to us.  EverSummer has been bringing us luscious heads of lettuce from their hydroponic operation, and next week, our old friends from Zion Farms start lettuce delivery, to be followed soon with the biggest spinach leaves you have ever seen.

And this week, here’s what’s on our plates:

• Mountain Shadow lamb ribs in pinot noir barbecue sauce
• A nice little salad of fennel, radish, olive and red onion, Spanish boquerones, tarragon oil and crème fraiche, on EverSummer greens
• Oregon spot prawns sautéed in butter and wine with saffron potato aioli with spot pawn roe
• Mt. Shadow pork loin chop on sambhar chana dahl, curried sausage, squash, peas with apple chutney
• Zucchini and caramelized onions, Tilston Point blue cheese and hazelnuts
• Duck breast with oranges, green olives and fresh snap peas
• Dessert, you say? Oh yeah: for First Friday, it’s maple bacon ice cream on French toast. And if that’s not enough, there’ll be carrot cake with rum raisin ice cream, chocolate mousse napoleons, and profiteroles.

Mentions, here and there

Check out the June issue of Oregon Wine Press in which Kathy shares a recipe and some love for her chefs, Mountain Shadow Natural Meats and Marchesi Vineyard Pinot Grigio.

Couple of bloggers were passing out “bests” too. River City Food and Wine in Richmond, Virginia wrote about a recent trip to Nora’s while out west, “The best trout (from Idaho) we’ve ever tasted.”

And this from freelance travel writer David Molyneaux eating at Nora’s on a recent Northwest swing, “That was my best plate of Salmon in Oregon.”

How’s that hope-y for a table-y thing working out for you?

OK, we’re three days into our radically reduced summer reservation policy, and you haven’t had a heart attack yet, for which we are very thankful.

Just as a reminder: for the summer, as of June 1, we will no longer be taking reservations, except for parties of 6 or more. We’re also limiting large party reservations from between 5:00 and 6:00, or after 8:00. We have nothing against large parties, says Kathy, whose parents had 20 siblings between them. We are just trying to make more seating available all night long, which will happen because we’re not holding tables open and empty while we wait for reservations. You walk in, you see a table, it’s yours! And if there isn’t one available, we will keep a nice, neat waiting list, and call you on your cell when a table becomes available. Go for a stroll downtown if you have to wait, and have a glass of wine in one of our downtown wine tasting rooms.  This First Friday, June 4, there’s even a new one to visit: Cerulean opens its tasting room just across the breezeway from Doppio.

Did you miss us?

We have been on a bit of a writing hiatus while we flew around to family weddings in Alabama and served up a big dinner for the annual wine auction at Maryhill Museum. And so here are some things you should know:

• Windshield wipers come in really handy all the time in Alabama, where the humidity is so high that you must use them … even when it isn’t raining and it’s 90 degrees outside. Just remember that, if you’re thinking of moving to the “sun belt.” Because it actually should be called the “sauna belt.”
• Summer weddings in Alabama are all over by May 15. No human can actually put on a tux or a 40 pound wedding dress, let alone walk around in one, on any date after that, until November 15.
• In some parts of the country, fried pickles are considered gourmet dishes. True story.
• Don’t ever believe Tim Copeland from Maryhill Museum if he tells you the big tent will be on the northeast side of the museum, because it will be on the southwest side. Thankfully, it’s hard to hide a big tent.  Inside joke. Seriously Tim, we love your museum, and we love feeding you and listening to that auctioneer. Wow. Congratulations on a great event.
• Back at the farm (that would be Nora’s Table) Nathan, Andrew and Rainbow have been blowing the lid off everyone’s expectations, once again, about how good food can be. Yes, it is better than you ever thought.
• And finally, just to set the record straight, even though we love pork, and are passionate about the local pork from Mountain Shadow Natural Meats, and the little red wattle piggies growing up right here in our valley, we have never gotten into punching matches about it.  You may have read about the fisticuffs that broke out in Portland at last week’s Cochon 555 event. As Nathan says, only in Portland would chefs and foodies get into a knock-down-drag-out in front of a strip club about the unholy, imported pork that won the show. Bless you, Portland.

We have our reservations about reservations

Restaurants have a love/hate relationship with reservations. We want to provide the service, and help you plan your evening. However, when we are really busy, reservations make it very difficult for us to serve all the people who come in the door. Why? Well, because we’re holding tables for people who will be in soon, so the table sits vacant, while people wait at the door for open seats.

So, after much discussion and thought, we are putting some constraints on our “any reservation, any time” policy for summer only.  Come June 1 (we’re giving you fair warning!) we will only take reservations for parties of six or more, and we will only reserve for those parties between 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm, or after 8:00 pm. And for the remainder of the summer, we will not be taking reservations on any First Friday.

We actually think this will give you a better chance overall of getting a table with us, since we won’t be holding tables open and empty, just waiting.

And of course, when the crush of summer is over, we’ll be more than happy to take any reservation, any time.

Please call and talk to us if you have questions about this.

What to come in for this week

So while you can still snag a reservation for two at 7:00, here’s what you might want to eat this week:

• Nothing’s better than a nice hand-made crispy-brown sausage, hot from the pan. This week, ours is pork, duck and veal sweetbreads sausage with mash potatoes, Madeira caramelized onions and mustard oxtail sauce.
• The lower Columbia River springer salmon is still glorious, and you can eat it two ways: our small plate comes decked out on chipotle and tomatillo sauce, sautéed spinach and green onions. Or choose our main course on pepperade with grilled asparagus and fennel frites.
• Nathan has been having a blast with his cured pork dishes, and one of our favorites right now is the bocadillo, a tasty Spanish sandwich on our grilled bread with seared pork belly, pepperade and al pimentino cheese.
• If you are a fan of our curries, you’ll love the Keralan sweet and sour pork curry with grilled naan.
• Forget everything you’ve ever experienced eating dusty-dry pork chops. We’re brining a thick bone-in chop from Mountain Shadow and serving it with roasted potatoes, red wine braised red onions, grilled asparagus and port apple jam. Take that, Cochon 555.
• For you veg heads out there, we’re serving up a feast: Vegetarian dry curry with potatoes, snap peas, asparagus, carrots and fennel with grilled naan bread
• In case you need a reason to eat dessert first, Rainbow has your sweet jones covered: warm chocolate tart with raspberry sorbet; amaretto panna cotta, apricot coulis and almond Florentine; warm lemon pudding cakes with cassis. Yikes.

It’s the farm life for Nathan and Jennifer

Not too long ago, our chef de cuisine Nathan and his lovely wife Jennifer, one of our fantastic servers, moved a ways out of town. They are living on a small farm, where the farm’s owner has graciously offered them the opportunity to husband some plants and animals, and generally commune with nature.

Did we mention that this story involves goats? Nowhere in the Bible did God ever say that the lion will lie down with the goat in peace. Ain’t gonna happen, and God and the lions know that. Goats are, shall we say, a bit rebellious, not to mention occasionally downright demonic.

So recently, the farmer asked Jennifer to move the goats back into their pen. This was the point at which Jennifer should have held up the garlic and shouted, “Get thee behind me Satan!” But no, in her helpful way, she said, “Sure!”

When it came time to move the goats, they were all pretty willing to head for the barn. All except for one. Try as she might, Jennifer chased that goat from one end of the farm to the other, to no avail.  Breathless and trying to calm down, she went in the house for a drink of water, and racked her brain about what to do next. And the only thing she could think was, “Jen, be smarter than the goat.” Turns out demonic goats can be tempted into the pen with a little grain, but only if they think they are pulling something over on you, and stealing the grain.

Crisis averted. And we think Jen has latched onto an important bit of wisdom. If you’ve got a problem, just be smarter than the goat. Try that next time, and let us know how it works for you, when we see you around Nora’s Table.

One of the best things about hanging out in our kitchen is getting to dip your spoon into all the delicious stuff we cook each day.

Just yesterday, Rainbow (our newlywed and pastry chef) called Kathy back into “the hole” to taste a warm fudgy chocolate pudding cake that had just come out of the oven. That was the groan heard ‘round the kitchen. (By the way, that cake is on the menu this weekend. Yikes.)

Then, there was Nathan offering tastes of an amazing tomato shallot jam that’s resting on our scallops. And Andrew dishing up a spoonful of amarillo mole that’s napping our Mountain Shadow pork loin.

So we got to thinking about how much a foodie would love to come sit in “the hole,” which is a prep and storage area back behind our cook line, and just get fed tidbits and yummys and wine and josh with us for an hour or so. During service, when the lucky foodie may have to duck to avoid the melee.

And then we got to thinking how we should make said foodie PAY for such an experience, for a good cause, of course.  And since we love the Waterfront Park, you can be the foodie in the hole who help us raise money for a picnic table, which will be named (how cool is this?)  “The Patrons of Nora’s Table.” The picnic table costs $2,500, and it may take us a while to raise that much, but we’ll start the bidding at $50 for a night in the hole. So let’s hear it for the foodies who offer  up at least $50 towards  the picnic table, and get  fed, if not in style, at least the way we eat in the kitchen: with a big spoon, out of the pot.  Just reply, and claim your night.

We got the cheeks; can the rest of the fish be far behind?

You know it’s spring when … fresh Alaskan halibut is available. What better way to celebrate March 20, the official first day of spring, (or better yet, March 19, the LAST day of winter) than with halibut.

Alas, those early fish come at a price, and it’s not one we think you’d be willing to pay for a serving of fillet.  Lucky for you, for some reason, the lowly halibut cheek is much cheaper, and we think, delicious. For those of you who haven’t had cheek before, we hasten to explain it’s from the facial area of the fish, not the rear end. It’s just this nice, little oval jewel which pan-sautés beautifully, and takes to sauces like, well, a fish to water.  And as soon as the price of fillet comes out of the stratosphere, we’ll sell you some.

In the meantime, get those cheeks while ye may. We’re serving them with fresh grilled artichoke hearts on polenta with Swiss chard, peperade and fennel frites.

After its smash opening weekend appearance and rave reviews, the water buffalo burger is back for an encore performance.  We are so in love with this burger, and it’s easy to see why: Nathan grinds it fresh; Rainbow makes Nathan’s special buns; we serve it with our own pickled onions and zucchini; it gets dressed in hand-made bacon aioli and Tillamook cheddar;  and finally, it’s served next to fresh-cut Belgian fries.

We’re delivering our Mountain Shadow pork loin in the aforementioned amarillo mole with peruano beans and roasted poblano slaw.

We’ve got a fresh tamale filled with house-made longaniza pork sausage, and served on a tomatillo poblano cream sauce.

The oxtail croquettes are back too, in a mushroom bordelaise.

Joining that gooey fudge cake on the dessert menu? A carrot cake spiked with amarillo chili. Really.

Two weeks to go for free tacos

Better open your calendar and schedule yourself in to Nora’s Table for the next two Wednesday nights, because come April 1, our 2-for-1 taco night goes away for spring and summer. Why not run it year round? It’s our little way to say thanks to you local guys and dolls who support us through the fall and winter. And besides, you shouldn’t eat that many tacos, anyhow.  Not when there are so many other great things on the menu, that is.

And with that, we’ll see you around Nora’s Table.

When it comes to dining out, the Oregon coast can be a giant wasteland of frozen clam strips. So when Stu and Kathy spent last Sunday and Monday in Newport, they didn’t have high hopes for a great meal.

They had, instead, a strategy. They thought, let’s take the #1-rated Hood River TripAdvisor restaurant to the #1-rated Newport TripAdvisor restaurant. See if the mojo holds.

Numero Uno in Newport is Noodle Café, down on the “historic bay front” where old bars and souvenir shops vie for space with vacant buildings.  The Original Mo’s, and several Mo’s annexes are here, but we weren’t tempted.  We made for the bright yellow café, with the expected windows on the water.

Lisa and Han, brother and sister originally from Taiwan, arrived in Newport via Atlanta, Georgia about 18 months ago, where their family has another restaurant. They took over an existing Chinese restaurant space, and cleared out the bric-a-brac to create a simple, clean dining room with wooden benches covered with slim throw pillows for sitting. Which is good, because you will want to sit there for a long time.

Noodle Café shares several traits with Nora’s Table. They make almost everything from scratch: their noodles, rice flour wrappers, dumplings and pancakes. And the menu is eclectic (like ours), offering dishes from China, Vietnam, Japan and Korea, and some of their own Asian noodle fusion.  We have wished for the longest time to eat a REAL potsticker dumpling that didn’t come out of a Costco bag. Here, hand-made egg noodle sheets are wrapped around perfectly spiced ground pork or vegetables, and then fried until the edges are crispy and golden brown.  A bowl of Jung Bong arrives, with hand-made noodles in a shimmery spicy-red fish stock with shrimp, squid and scallops, loaded with crisp asparagus, scallions, and baby boc choy.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Because it was a slow night (Monday in March, sleet bouncing off the sand on our beach walk) and because Lisa was working the front of the house, we got to introduce ourselves, #1 to #1, and Lisa decided to convince us they deserve the title. She disappeared into the kitchen. When we ordered the tempura oysters (6 for $8) she brought us out her own special dipping sauce with chilies, cilantro, ginger and garlic. While we waited for noodles, she brought us two of her deep-fried but delicate buns: if a New Orleans beignet married a Chinese steamed bun and had a baby, this would be it. She brought out a plate of her hand-made kimchi. We are now grinning like a couple of idiots. It would be hard to find a noodle shop this good in Portland. And we are in Newport.

As the evening wound down, we shared stories with Lisa about this funny restaurant business. Our favorite from Lisa: a woman guest sits at an outside table in a stiff breeze, and holds her noodles eight inches up in the wind on a chopstick, and asks, “Excuse me, these noodles  aren’t very hot.”

Yeah, that may be true, but those are the best noodles you’re ever gonna have, so slurp them up.

Gifts from our kitchen

Nathan and Andrew can say, “The bosses went to Newport, and all we got was Brutal IPA and Chipotle Ale from Rogue Brewery.” But they’re too busy drinking the beer to say it.  That, and planning your week’s chow.

So here’s what we’ve got:

Nathan has been loving this Swiss chard this winter, and it’s been loving him back. On Tuesday, he created a simple warm salad of julienned  pan-sautéed chard with organic Pink Lady apples, toasted pecans and ricotta salata. We loved it so much, it’ll be on all this week.

With our 12 ounce rib eye, we’ve got a luscious risotto with one of our favorite grains, farro. This old-world  Italian grain tastes a bit like barley, without the gummy factor. Nathan’s preparing it with red wine, chicken stock, mushrooms, butter and Grana cheese, and topping the steak with a parsley and caper salad.

Andrew is busy brining a nice bone-in pork loin from Mountain Shadow. We’re serving it with mole Amarillo and peruano beans.

We’ve got both fresh Washington steelhead and razor clams on the menu. In fact, in one dish, they’re joining forces: a filet of steelhead, pan seared, with a fried razor clam, both nestled on polenta and Swiss chard with a Spanish sauté of sweet red peppers called peperade.

When plastic is better than paper

We’ve been limping along with old technology for a while now: ask for a gift certificate, and you get a flimsy paper one with an envelope. Not entirely elegant. So we are introducing the – tada! – oh so suave Nora’s Table Gift Card. Load them up with any amount of money, and keep them in your desk to give away to new clients, or to help friends celebrate a birthday or anniversary, or use one yourself.  They can also be re-loaded at will, so you’ve always got a little Nora’s Table mad money in your pocket.

Each card comes with a classy card and envelope for giving. And you were wondering what you’d give this year for St. Patrick’s Day.

Kathy is standing in the dining room trying to put the lid back on a coffee brewer that has returned from a catered wedding in an altered state. Doesn’t work, was  taken apart while on site by a person or persons unknown (who on the crew did this?) and now the appropriate screws are missing.  She dives into a little basket full of screws looking for one, and instead, pokes her finger with a sharp thingy. Ouch.

She looks into the kitchen, and there is Nathan making curry, Andrew is trimming artichokes and both of them  telling jokes.

Kathy opens a just-delivered package with our spiffy new plastic gift cards that will replace those paper gift certificates. Now, if she can just resolve the problems that have cropped up in the data base where the paper gift certificates are recorded, she can start selling the new ones. She calls the POS software company (that charges $500 a year for tech support) and asks how to fix the database.

“Well, we’ve got this little ap we create that let’s you clean up corruption in parts of your database, but we don’t support it.”

“You don’t support it?” Kathy asks. “What does that mean?”

“Well, it means that we’ll help you download it, but we won’t help you use it. Could corrupt your whole database.”

“Let me get this straight,” says Kathy, sucking on her cut finger. “You created this thing, you’ll e-mail it to me, but you won’t show me how to use it?”

Exactly. Ouch.

Kathy looks into the kitchen. Nathan and Andrew are straining soup stock and telling jokes.

Kathy heads out to the truck in a steady rain, and unloads new pots and plants. Through the windows, she can see Nathan, his mouth open in a laugh, and Andrew roasting peppers on the grill. She lugs the pots through the rain to the front of the restaurant, starts to drag the old rain-soaked ones out of the way …. and then she feels that familiar pop somewhere between her shoulder blades. Ouch.

Wet,  nursing a sore back, and still sucking on a cut finger, Kathy drips back into the restaurant.

Nathan comes up to the bar, “Here, taste this,” and pushes a spoon in her direction. Her eyes light up.

“Hey, let’s trade jobs for the rest of the day,” she says.

“No way!” says Nathan.

Our dear landlord Mike Kitts, was in the other night, and after his waitress waxed on about our locally-raised lamb, pork and beef, our sustainable seafood choices, how we buy as much from local farmers as we can (even in winter), Mike called Kathy over.

“How come you never tell people about all this?”  To which Kathy replied, “Huh?”

That’s when we discovered Mike wasn’t on the e-mail newsletter list (he is now).  And that, over time, due to the volume of items on the menu, we’ve cut way back on the list of local sources.  And really, into how many menu items can you squeeze  “Mountain Shadow” this and “Dancing Moon Farm” that without creating the Cliff Notes version of War and Peace?

So here’s how we try to live our food values: Our first choice is food raised in the Mt. Hood food shed. That’s food grown in the 100 or so miles within the watershed or influence of our iconic mountain.  Jim Hanna named his Dufur company, Mountain Shadow Natural Meats with this idea in mind, and that’s who supplies most of our beef, lamb and pork. The animals are raised without antibiotics, hormones or grain.

When it comes to seafood, we serve fish from sustainable fisheries, to the best of our knowledge. Anyone who deals seafood will tell you it’s a murky world out there. We once bought crab for months from what was described as a sustainable crab fishery, only to learn that the fisherman had been arrested for poaching tons of crab in Russian waters. Yikes.  For the most part, we trust our supplier, Ocean Beauty, to honestly tell us the source of what we’re buying.  Some of our rules: we won’t buy monk fish, snapper, many tunas, farmed salmon, exotics from Mexico, farmed shrimp, or seafood processed overseas. When In doubt, we check with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you don’t have one of their handy pocket guides, you can get one.

When it comes to fruits and vegetables, we are so blessed to have an amazing growing community right here at home. If you aren’t familiar with the Gorge Grown Food Network, go visit their site, and then join. It’s a mere $25, and will do so much to help promote eating from Gorge dirt. And we have a ways to go. The network’s Gorge food study shows that we only consume 3% of what we eat from local sources. Wow.

This time of year, we won’t serve foods out of season – raspberries or tomatoes in February – yet we still must depend on winter markets to the south for even the basics, such as lettuce.  But even tonight you can enjoy on our menu potatoes from Oregrownian farm in Parkdale, microgreens from White Oak Woodland farm in Goldendale, and mushrooms from Hood River Organic.  By mid-summer, almost all of our produce comes from local suppliers, a venture that takes a tremendous amount of our time. But it’s worth it.

Some other ways we live what we believe: our cooking oil is recycled by Encore Oil; we use environmentally safe cleaning products; our kitchen scraps go to needy chickens; we buy green power. And we make everything, right down to our hamburger buns, bread, sausage, desserts, dressings, sauces, and pasta, right in house.

Now you know, Mikey. Glad you like it.

Now, throw in the creativity!

So, after all that going on and on blather about where our food comes from, here’s where our creative kitchen is taking those raw ingredients this week:

We just got oh-so-tired of beef burgers. So this week, we’re grinding Mountain Shadow lamb leg and making fresh lamb burgers, on Nathan’s buns with herbed feta cheese and lemon mint aioli.

Our seared scallops our showing up at your table on a roasted mushroom and walnut crema with a fresh Italian salsa verde of fennel, parsley, olive, caper and shallots. A crema is a Southern Italian pureed dish composed of nuts (usually walnuts or almonds) and mushrooms. The combination with the rich, buttery scallops is fantastic, and answers that age-old question: what food goes well with Chardonnay? We think this dish is equally delicious with one of the three Pinot Noirs we have on our wine list.

For that pork fix (come on, you know you gotta have it) try our pork belly on curried apples and dates.

We’ve still got Hawaiian tombo tuna in the house. The California artichokes are particularly luscious right now, so we’re serving the tombo with artichoke heart confit, olives, almonds and capers on white bean puree. Or order a small plate of tombo in a delicate escabeche of carrots, onions, garlic and jalapenos.

See you around Nora’s Table

The Calendar Gods were certainly thinking of us romance addicts when they planned February 2010. Because Saturday, February 13, or Valentine’s Eve as we like to call it, is followed by Sunday, February 14, which is followed by….a Monday holiday!

So to honor the trifecta, we are serving a luscious Valentine’s menu BOTH Saturday, February 13 AND Sunday February 14. (Avid Nora’s Table watchers will know we are usually closed on Sundays. So opening this Sunday, it’s what we do for love.)

Then, on Monday, we’ll wake up late and take a day off with everyone else AND we’ll be closed on Tuesday, February 16 as well. Got it? Open Sunday, closed Monday-Tuesday, for this week only.

And what’s to eat, you may ask?

Ah, nothing special.  Just crab and filet mignon and lots of chocolate for dessert. Actually, we’ll be serving our regular menu, with a few added must-have Valentine’s dishes. So here are some things to get hungry for:

• Filet mignon on potato galette with port pan sauce and fois gras butter
• Steamed artichoke with  lemon aioli and black olive and anchovy crackers
• Crab and mussel curry
• Scallops on cucumber noodles with ginger-scented oxtail consommé, scallions and toasted almonds
• Skewer of prawns, pearl onions, chorizo and olives on romesco sauce
• Rib eye with chimichiri and sweet potato frites with lime chili salt
• Smoked arctic char and house-made gnocchi in  cream, lemon and dill
• Fresh-shelled oysters in ocean-scented crème fraiche

And for dessert:

• Chocolate French Silk tart
• Chocolate soufflé
• Chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, tropical fruits and passion fruit coulis
• Cappuccino crème brulee

Call us for reservations, please. Thanks.

The things we missed

The only thing better than a month off in bikini weather is coming back to Hood River.  The past few weeks at home has reminded us of why we live here. And so, a few of the things that make our hearts flip-flop when we float, car bound, past Troutdale, and watch the world open up:

Miss Lucy peering over her glasses to put the perfect combination of flowers and weird green things in black polka-dot and purple paper, and tying it all with a turquoise ribbon.

Mike Kitts bringing us eggs and allowing how, sure, he’ll have a beer.

The girls at the Hood River Liquor Store who are old-world bawdy, and not a bit ashamed of it. Know any dirty jokes?

The look of amazement on Mike Kern’s face as he opens his new business, Snap Fitness, and instantly has hundreds of sign-ups.

How we all rooted for the Saints because, right now, who doesn’t love an underdog? Thanks for the onion dip, Steve.

Nathan bursting with new food ideas. “Oh, man, this is sick!”

Charlie Devereaux sitting on a pile of kitchen towels in Kathy’s office, just shooting the breeze.

Waiting for blue sky.

See you soon around Nora’s Table.

Sidebar:

Check out the new wines

We are celebrating with Franco Marchesi, one of our favorite wine makers, who won double gold for his Sangiovese at the world’s largest wine competitive in San Francisco recently. We’ve got this luscious wine on our list for $29 a bottle. And for Valentine’s as a special treat, we’ll serve it as a glass pour for $8. Also new: Franco’s marvelous Barbera, an absolutely perfect food wine. Try it with Nathan’s house-made chorizo, manchego potato tot and crème fraiche.

Also new this week, in time for drinking with a chocolate Valentine’s dessert: Rich Cushman’s (Viento Winery) Nocturne, a luscious dessert wine made from really weird grapes you will never remember the name of, so don’t try. But try this, at $6 a glass.

Also from one of our favorite wine makers, Andrew Rich, have a bottle of Bruno, a red blend of Columbia Valley Rhone varietals. At $19 a bottle, it’s our best value, and easily drinks like a tone more.