Ever since rumors started floating about Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson opening a restaurant and bar near his SE Division flagship coffee shop, all involved parties — including chef (and Olympic Provisions alum) Jason Barwikowski and bartender Even Zimmerman — have kept details on the DL.
So we're going to do a platter of ham, maybe with a really simple accompaniment of sweet-cream butter and bread. We might make pickles for it. But we're probably going to have three or four hams at a time by different producers; you can obviously buy one ham platter or you can buy a sampler platter.
The raw bar will be the first thing you see when you walk in the bar. There's going to be a shucking station — Pacific oysters, Pacific clams, raw on the half shell, fluke crudo, chilled seafood. We were talking — when we were up at Wood Stone, we tried grilling some oysters in the oven, and they're so fickle and so time-sensitive that I don't think we're going to do that. But then I started to think, What if we were to wrap a half-dozen oysters in a bunch of seaweed and put that in the oven and steam it? But [expect] Dungeness crab legs, chilled octopus, marinated seafood salad, Bay shrimp, utilizing Oregon bounty of shellfish. Who knows, maybe there will be sea urchin. But the impetus for that was there aren't many places where you can get seafood like that here... the inspiration is [NYC's] Balthazar, the Dutch.
Cannot wait of this to open. It will be on SE Division.
