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Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Lewis and Clark’s food journal inspires Depot dinner
Review and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
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n their trip to the Pacific,
members of Lewis and
Clark’s Corps of Discovery
took copious notes, documenting
everything from what they saw to
what they ate. From those exhaus-
tive journals, writer Mary Gunder-
son assembled “The Food Journal
of Lewis and Clark.”
“We know when the explorers
ate the last of their butter and when
they first tasted buffalo,” Gunder-
son writes.
Setting out from St. Louis in
1804, the expedition packed tons
of dry goods, including flour, salt,
coffee, pork, sugar, beans, lard and
so on. While these rations enabled
survival in leaner times, animal
proteins provided essential energy
for the grueling trek.
“We eat an emensity of meat,”
Clark wrote on July 13, 1805, “it
requires 4 deer, or an elk and a deer,
or one buffaloe to supply us plenti-
fully 24 hours.”
When meat was plentiful, expe-
dition members were said to devour
up to nine pounds a day — that’s
nine pounds per man. And while
transforming one’s body into such
a high-intensity calorie furnace is
almost unimaginable, the source of
those meats is at least slightly tem-
pering. Indeed, the Corps weren’t
pounding pounds of fatty pig and
cow, but rather loads of lean, pro-
tein-rich game like venison, elk and
buffalo.
Lest we describe their diet as
some foodie cornucopia, it was
repetitive and, at times, grim.
Excluding Clark, members of the
expedition ate dog when other
meats were unavailable.
Hardships aside, “The Food
Journal of Lewis and Clark” fasci-
nated The Depot Restaurant owners
Michael Lalewicz and Nancy Gor-
she. The couple began playing with
similar ingredients.
O
Pheasant breast stuffed with elk sausage, wrapped with bacon on sweet
corn and leek succotash, topped with red wine gastrique
Cranberry and pear bread pudding
with red current glaze
Earlier this month, The De-
pot, in Seaview, hosted its annual
Lewis & Clark Wild Game Dinner
($89). While hardly a note-for-note
representation of what the Corps
ate — as Gorshe said, Lalewicz
“gourmet-ed it up” — the dinner
was a marvelous, meaty celebration
highlighting game rarely found in
regional restaurants.
Based on what purveyors can
deliver, the Game Dinner’s menu
changes each year. Sourcing, say,
pheasant for 50-plus is no walk in
the park.
Even in its 14th year, the event
remains a joyful, creative outlet for
chef Lalewicz to work outside the
Depot’s regular confines. It’s also a
return to his roots. He got his start
as a teenager, cooking what friends
hunted around the Detroit area,
Gorshe said. For her part, Gorshe
shared stories of revelry as the
taste-tester in the weeks leading up
to the event.
Each of the evening’s five cours-
es sprung from a passage of expe-
dition notes, connecting, however
tangentially, what Lewis and Clark
ate with what we were about to.
Course No. 1: “The Chief Set
before me a large platter of Onions
which had been Sweeted. I gave
enjoying duck pastrami sandwiches
with the leftovers, and I fought back
envy, dreaming of such depth with
sauerkraut and thousand island on
rye.)
Course No. 3: “Dear Brother, we
met with a great many Showonee
and traded with them for Biar,
Venison, Ducs, Tongues and Beaver
Tales.” —December 18, 1805.
I’ve had venison a handful of
times, each prepared by the hunter
who’d caught it and never by an
exceptional, professional chef. Lale-
wicz did it simply and exquisitely,
with a quick sear of herbed crust,
finished in an exceptionally hot
oven. The deep-hued pink stretched
from edge-to-edge, looking so per-
fectly even as to appear sous-vided.
While leaner than lean ground
beef, the venison medallions were
astonishingly rich, flavorful. They
made me melt. My neighbor, upon
his first bite, laughed out loud with
joy. On the second bite he did it
again. (And while it didn’t need any
punching up, the pistachio pesto,
too, was absolutely vibrant and
extraordinary.)
Indeed, the venison was, simply,
one of the best bites I’ve had all
year.
Course No. 4: “I prosue’d a
part of those onions to my party
and we eate of them, in the State
the root is very Sweet and the tops
tender.” —Clark, April 18, 1906.
An opening salvo of herbed
focaccia and onion marmalade, the
first course was a calibration of
sorts: That oily, onion-y essence,
however sweetened, invoked
bygone times. As with each course,
it was paired with a glass of wine
from the Columbia Gorge’s Ascen-
dente Winery.
Course No. 2: “I have eaten of
duck in several parts of the Union
and I think those of the Columbia
equally as delicious.” —Lewis,
March 9, 1806.
And while duck breast is a staple
of the Depot’s marvelous regular
menu, chef Lalewicz wasn’t content
with the status quo. Rather, he spent
three weeks curing and smoking
duck pastrami, which was served
in a salad of field greens, Dijon
mustard vinaigrette, crunchy roast-
ed parsnips, candied hazelnuts and
exceedingly fresh goat cheese.
To the usual pastrami pickling
spices, Lalewicz added paprika
(a Depot seasoning favorite). The
fatty, supple slices were deep and
smoky, a singular sensation. (Lale-
wicz later mentioned he would be
gang of elk through bogs, in maney
places I sunk into the mud and
water up to my hips without finding
any bottom on the trale of those
elk.” —Clark, December 8, 1805.
The ensuing course found elk
and then some. A pheasant breast
stuffed with potently seasoned elk
sausage, wrapped with bacon, driz-
zled with red wine gastrique, was
a meaty melange, one that could
make turducken feel inadequate.
While a hair absurd, you didn’t
feel like a total jerk devouring the
layers, salty, sweet and tender,
wrapped with a fatty ribbon. And,
thanks again to the leanness — and
to the creamy corn and leek succo-
tash — you could actually eat it all.
Course No. 5: “...we found a
large quantity of Graze the Buff. or
Rabite Berryes of which we eat free-
ly, they are a small red berry, Sower
& good to taste. we have seen them
pleanty in this Country.” —Lewis,
August 15 1805.
It seems the Depot envisioned
these many courses holistically,
with an eye not only on the through
line but the aftereffect. Besides the
slivers of focaccia that began the
evening, the meal was essentially
carb-free. That strategy curbed
bloating or feeling stuffed.
With dessert — a bread pudding
with cranberry, pear and red current
glaze — carbs were reintroduced,
and were all the more comforting
for it. Warm, pillowy and sweet,
dessert was something to cuddle up
in. It put dreamland in reach, amid
exhales of relaxation, satiation and
gratitude.
Yet, even after dessert and all
those meats — duck, elk, pheasant,
pig and venison — I wasn’t sleepy.
I was, rather, energized, my engine
revving on high-octane, low-fat
game.
And while — after a transport-
ive, reverent and spellbinding
five-course meal — it can in no
way be called an “expedition,” I
did, beneath clear, starry skies,
enjoy my own little walk to the
Pacific. CW