Archives for December 2014

This time of year always brings the focus on spending quality time with your loved ones. This puts me in a cooking mood, but I understand that sometimes you want to be able to enjoy a family style dinner without having to do all that prep and cleanup, and certainly not for every get together. And besides, shouldn’t quality time not just be during the holidays?

Raven and Rose certainly thinks so, which is why they have been offering their Sunday Roast Supper every Sunday before, during, and after the holidays on Sundays. So you don’t have to necessarily wait for those big holiday buffets to enjoy some amazing roast for dinner at all – you can have it any week!

If you haven’t been before, the restaurant of Raven and Rose, as well as their upstairs bar area called The Rookery upstairs, is literally housed in a 132 year old historic house – well a Carriage House. It’s grand and homey if you possibly are someone who grew up on an estate, or like me we can at least can pretend to be that kind of titled family for the length of dinner.

I recently was able to enjoy a Sunday Roast, although we did not get to order specific sides because my dinner was part of a special Brewers Series dinner with Goose Island. Each dinner is different so you probably won’t have the same dinner I have, but here’s a look at some possibilities…

I started off with a Welcome Beer of Goose Island IPA, which is an English style IPA so is well balanced unlike most west coast IPAs I see on menus here that the IBU is just off the charts and unappealing to me. This was enjoyed with some sweet and spiced nuts and bread and butter service. I suggest you also start your dinner with a welcome beer, wine or cocktail too. Raven and Rose has a great menu of some pretty good beers and ciders, numbering almost 40 something I think including the draft beer and bottles and the ciders and fruit ales. F has had a lot of beers, but always finds something interesting to order here. You might also consider a cocktail, especially if you can call one that uses some of Raven and Rose’s exclusively bottled for them single barrel spirits and they have their own single barrel brandy as well! They also have a large wine list that has a lot of focus on wineries locally here in Oregon and some in Washington state.

I also had an excellent salad, that evening was an Escarole Salad with Cashel Irish blue, pomegranate, prosciutto and shallot vinaigrette.

They usually have three juicy and tasty roasts to choose from for your table to share family style, so you might want to come three times to try them all. The roast options include Wood-fired Carlton Farms pork shoulder, Columbia River king salmon and Painted Hills prime rib of beef*, all served with Yorkshire pudding with gravy.

Of course, just because you get one of these roasts doesn’t mean each one is always prepared exactly the same way. The versions I had included a Cocoa-Dusted Beef Tri-Tip…

and an Irish Whiskey and Apricot Glazed Columbia River King Salmon. The pairing of that salmon with the Class of ’88 beer from Goose Island was incredible.

And then, the sides! You can order all the sides you wish to your heart’s content from a list of various Farmers’ Market Sides. The sides can change up every week depending on what is fresh and best in the market – there are multiple times I have seen the staff at Raven and Rose at the Portland Farmers Market at PSU on Saturday with their wagons, loading up on the produce from the farmers. As much as I love the delicious meats, I also am sooo in love with having a whole bunch of sides as well, and bringing a group to share in it all family style means a reason to order more sides right?

The sides I tried included the Oyster Mushrooms with frisee and pickled shallot, Roasted Brussels Sprouts with pancetta and orange, and Colcannon with potato, caramelized onions and kale.

All of these were paired with a beer flight of four beers that included Class of ’88 (a Belgian-style ale brewed in collaboration with Deschutes Brewery with whole flower Mt Hood hops. The beer was transferred to Muscat casks and aged with Michigan riesling grape juice and Oregon pinot noir grape must), Matilda (flavors of dried fruit and clove aromas with a spicy yeast flavor and dry finish), Madame Ros (a brown ale aged in French oak cabernet sauvignon barrels with Michigan cherries and heavily inoculated with brettanomyces) and the famous Bourbon County Stout (aged in bourbon barrels of cousre)

Having a plate that looks like this on a Sunday night and it doesn’t have to be Thanksgiving or Christmas makes me happy.

Wait, then there was my dessert, a Bourbon County Barleywine paired with Black Sticky Gingerbread with quince sorbet, ginger tuile, poached quince, and warm sweet cream poured atop tableside…

The Sunday Roast menu starts at 4pm every Sunday and is family style, priced at $35 a person.

Also keep an eye out for their Brewers’ Series… this dinner with Goose Island was just one of the series. For instance, they have done a Roast dinner before with Breakside, and also The Commons!

Have you ever been to a family style roast dinner at Raven and Rose?