Saturday, April 10, 2010

Leaving Portland

Central Point, Oregon, April 10, 2010—


THE USUAL DRILL leaving Portland today: coffee and a croissant at Ken's Artisan Bakery; a stop at the Pearl Bakery to pick up gibassiers for tomorrow's breakfast; a quick stop at Powell's City of Books in case we'd forgotten something there.

Then a two-hour drive south to Brownsville to meet Bhishma for lunch at the Corner Cafe, whose salad greens are fresh and organic, from neighboring farms, and always make a good lunch.



We'd booked a cheap motel here in Central Point, thirty miles north of the California border, just a couple of miles from Medford, where last summer we found a decent dinner restaurant in the old train station. Tonight I had a Martini, a cup of Manhattan clam chowder, and then the eight-ounce New York steak, nicely grilled, with good French fries, a garlicky grilled tomato, and a mess of al dente zucchini, peppers, and carrots on the side.

Tempranillo


  • Corner Cafe, 431 N Main Street, Brownsville, Oregon; tel. 541-466-5553
  • Porters, 147 North Front Street, Medford, Oregon; tel. 541-857-1910
  • 2 comments:

    Curtis Faville said...

    Three weeks ago I had the best steak of my life at Corso in Berkeley.

    Nothing else on the plate. You'd think maybe the Italians wouldn't understand steak. Don't think that for a second.

    I rarely eat it anymore, so when I do have it I hope for a top-notch experience. This was the first great one I'd had in, oh, thirty years. Most beef you get in restaurants these days is gristly or bland. I'm not sure why. I had a pretty fair one at Black Angus three years ago, but it had probably been marinated in some way I wouldn't have wanted to know much about. Still....

    Charles Shere said...

    The Italians know as much about grilling steaks as anyone. Bistecca fiorentina is one of the Hundred Plates. I guess I haven't written about it in a long time -- there's an account of a memorable one here. I'll have to cook one one of these days when the weather clears up; I pruned the grapevines recently, and there's nice green vine-cuttings to add to the fire.