14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
IF YOU GO
An EVOO evening is a class, dinner, show rolled into one
Review and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MOUTHOFTHECOLUMBIA
W
hile you’ll certainly leave
satiated, perhaps even elat-
ed, EVOO is not exactly a
restaurant.
Because restaurants don’t send
you home with their recipes. And
they don’t ask you to introduce your-
self to the group, or offer to take you
on a guided trip to Italy.
And, certainly, restaurants don’t
feature so many rounds of applause.
EVOO’s full name — EVOO
Cannon Beach Cooking School —
alludes to their unique position but
tells only half the story.
An evening at EVOO (short
for Extra Virgin Olive Oil) is a
multi-faceted experience — some-
thing like a class, show and dinner
rolled into one.
EVOO feels like a response to
the popularity of cooking shows, one
that gives the audience not only a
front-row seat but a taste to boot.
For these privileges you’ll pay a
pretty penny.
Dinner shows at EVOO, which
require reservations, cost around
$150 per person, before tip. You’re
paying as much for the performance
as for multiple courses and wine
pairings. (Throughout, EVOO pitch-
es products used in the show like
pans, seasonings and a house-made
sea salt that costs $35 a jar.)
Meals are prepared and served
around a large island counter below
a stainless steel hood ringed with
spotlights. Mirrors are perched and
angled so diners can keep tabs on
what’s cooking on the central stove.
Owners and principals, the hus-
band and wife team of Bob Neroni
and Lenore Emery, are the show’s
stars, but they couldn’t do it alone.
A team including prep cooks, bakers
and servers works diligently and
unobtrusively.
Neroni’s cuisine stems from his
Italian-Jewish heritage — whole
food cooking with plenty of oils,
Bob Neroni, right, and Lenore Emery
herbs, garlic and wine, plus a sense
that dining brings people together.
Neroni’s culinary philosophies are
proffered in a series of mantras, or
“Bob-isms.” Among them: “wine
is food,” “texture, texture, texture,”
“good alone, better together,” and
“foods that grow together go togeth-
er.”
This last aphorism alludes to
seasonality and locavorism, which
EVOO practices to a point. While
they use some regionally grown
veggies and herbs, including those
grown in their own garden, EVOO
sources from outside the Northwest
when it suits them. Were they in-
stead to limit their sourcing radius,
meals would end up being wilder
but occasionally more challenging
for less adventurous eaters.
Nonetheless, EVOO has set up a
number of hoops — education, per-
formance, taste — to jump through.
It’s a delicate dance — imagine
sharing worthwhile information to
household cooks of varying profi-
ciencies, while cracking jokes and
landing food that dazzles. As such,
your enjoyment of EVOO depends
as much on your hunger for infor-
mation and embrace of spectacle as
it does on your taste for the food.
After more than a decade of re-
fining their edu-tainment, Bob and
Grilled NY strip steak with rutabaga
mash and frisee and balsamic cip-
polini onion
Scallops with saffron tomato ceci
puree and micro greens
Lenore walk these tightropes with
confidence.
Dinner show menus change
monthly. The show I attended in
March was titled “Small Plates, Big
Wines.” The plates weren’t all that
small. And despite the discussion,
I’m not sure I could tell you exactly
what exemplifies a “big wine,”
besides what was offered in the
evening’s program: “‘big’ wines are
consumed more in winter when we
tend to eat richer foods,” and they
are “fuller” (higher in sugar and
alcohol).
In keeping with the menu-
as-program motif, courses were
presented as acts.
Act One, featuring pan-seared
red Idaho trout with crispy skin,
crème fraiche with trout roe and a
Waldorf-like apple salad with fresh
radish, exemplified the Bob-ism of
“good alone, better together.” Com-
bining the three elements together
on a crostini made for the best bite.
Creamy, salty, sweet and crunchy,
everything played exceedingly well
together. Fresh and light, Act One’s
was a dish worthy and indicative
of spring. It also inspired me, when
cooking fish, to experiment more
with neutral oils like grapeseed,
rather than the olive oil I’ve been
using, which brings its own inflec-
tion.
Act Two paired a saffron tomato
ceci puree with seared scallops. The
sauce, from a base of cherry toma-
toes and chickpeas (aka “ceci”), had
a lively natural sweetness, dialed up
by extra roasting of the tomatoes,
which diminishes acidity.
Act Three included a deep, thick,
EVOO Cannon Beach
Cooking School
188 S. Hemlock St.
Cannon Beach, Ore., 97110
Phone: 503-436-8555
Hours: Dinner shows gen-
erally run Thursday through
Saturday, but schedules vary
and reservations are required.
For more see evoo.biz/
show-schedule
meaty, explosively garlic-y romesco
sauce, a radicchio and endive salad
and a duck breast punched up with
spicy harissa oil. It taught me that
when the fat is done rendering, the
duck breast will no longer look
shiny, but exhibit a matte finish like
that of a dollar bill.
Act Four, a grilled NY strip
steak with buttery rutabaga mash,
frisée and tangy, balsamic glazed
cippolini onions, was the most
straightforward, least exciting dish
of the evening. While nicely crusted
and medium rare, the steak stopped
well short of spectacular.
Act Five, however, ended the
show on a high note. A dessert of
sour cream chocolate cake with
toasted meringue and little scoops
of Tia Maria chocolate ice cream
and strawberry sorbet, drizzled
with basil oil, was irresistible. The
strawberry sorbet, infused with
champagne, had a bubbly efferves-
cence, bright against the creamy,
rich chocolates.
As the dessert plates were set be-
fore us, Bob and Lenore took their
final bow, and after a final round of
applause the showgoers reclined,
sipped espresso and shared stories.
A entrancing mix of exhausted
and exhilarated, my date and I left
buzzing, partly from the wine but
just as much the sensory bom-
bardment; sight, smell, taste and
touch had been deeply engaged. Of
course, any fine, multi-course meal
will do that. EVOO adds a torrent of
teaching. Together, it’s an engaging
culinary experience you won’t find
anywhere else on the coast — an
experience that’s as intent on stoking
your brain as much as your belly. CW