PDX or NYC: Eat Well Wine Enthusiast
When I woke up this morning to the sound of a commuter train loudly passing beneath the fourth-floor window of my friend’s New York Apartment, I was reminded I wasn’t in Portland anymore. Nope, I’m couch surfing. The Portland Indie Wine Festival is in New York City this week, staging a dinner with our friend, Chef Adam Sappington at the prestigious James Beard House. At Adam’s restaurant, The Country Cat Dinner House and Bar, you’ll find some of the best edible representations of swine, fowl, poultry or cattle ever found in Portland (or anywhere). His Wednesday dinner at the Beard House will showcase his best work, like molasses hickory-smoked duck leg, Carlton Farms Whole Hog on a bed of South Carolina grits with stewed Moyer plums, and warm chocolate chip cookies with butterscotch pudding. Here’s the full menu. To accompany Adam’s fare, Indie winemakers, John Grochau of Grochau Cellars and Patrick Reuter from Dominio IX will be pouring their excellent wines. As the national press keeps reminding us, to live in Portland Oregon in 2008 is quite a delicious thing. And to visit Portland for the fourth annual Indie Wine Festival on May 3rd and 4th is to experience nearly 20 of our favorite PDX eateries in one place, along with unique and rare wines from Oregon’s top boutique producers. So live it up dear reader: Book your flight, expand your mental definition of the color green by experiencing Portland in the spring time, enjoy small plates from stalwart institutions of Portland gastronomy like Wildwood and Pazzo, and savor the fantastic fare by newbie restaurants like Ten 01, Broder, Biwa and Clyde Common. Whether you live in Portland or not, you’ll be glad you came. In the meantime, you have two days to get to New York for Adam’s dinner. What’s your excuse?
Here’s to a fantastic list of local restaurants!
It’s not even April, and we’re raising our glasses already! Earlier today, we announced the list of local restaurants that will be preparing dishes for the Indie Wine Festival. This year’s list is especially eclectic — think Biwa, Clyde Common, Gilt Club, Country Cat, Broder — so there’s a good chance you could be pairing yakitori skewers, house-made beef jerky, or lingonberry meatballs with your Indie wine.
Just reading this list is making me hungry…
Alma Chocolate
Biwa
Broder
Caffe Vita
Celilo Restaurant and Bar
Country Cat Dinnerhouse and Bar
Clyde Common
Gilt Club
Lauro Kitchen
Pazzo Ristorante
phresh organic catering
Red Star
Simpatica Catering
Tastebud Farms
Ten 01
Touché
Typhoon!
Whole Foods
Wildwood
Cheers!
You be the judge
Sunday, March 9th was spent schlepping 173 wines to Urban Wineworks, tagging each bottle with a 3 digit random number, organizing the flights, placing the wines in brown bags so judges, on-site winemakers (3 Indie winemakers are invited each year to the judging to observe to show how the judging is conducted), media and volunteers were only exposed to the wine item number instead of labels. It was quite a day. But, the next morning, as freshly-baked croissants from Ken’s welcomed the 12 outstanding judges, staff and volunteers, the day started and continued without a glitch! Profound philasophical conversations , the sound of spitting, strained silence and tempered conflicts erupted for 6 hours as the judges worked their palates off to determine the best of the best for this year’s festival. The winnning wines have been selected. And we’re now in the process of collecting participation agreements from winemakers. Once the admin stuff is done, we’ll announce those who have made the cut — April 1st on our site. And to all the winemakers who expressed interest in participating and submitted entries, we want to send a big thank you! The wines this year were outstanding. Lisa Donoughe 
The Portland Indie Wine Festival Hits the Road With Country Cat
