14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Fine art meets
fine food at
Spring Unveiling
Review and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MOUTHOFTHECOLUMBIA
A
s far as the dictionary is
concerned, “keta” refers to
a type of salmon.
But it’s more than that.
Before we get too far down the
rabbit hole, let’s back up a minute.
We’re traversing the intersec-
tion of fine art and food this week
on account of Spring Unveiling,
Cannon Beach’s annual arts
festival held earlier this month.
The event has berthed a culinary
offshoot: Chef’s Table. It pairs
restaurants and galleries. Restau-
rants find a piece of artwork to use
as inspiration for a special dish.
So when Bistro owner Jack Ste-
phenson was paired with Bronze
Coast Gallery he was drawn to
“Keta,” a mixed-media work by
Mark Gatewood.
Because of the name, Stephen-
son figured he’d do something with
salmon. But he went deeper.
Like the best art (and food),
Stephenson employed creative
license. Online he found a second,
unofficial definition for the word
“keta.”
It comes from “The Dictionary
of Obscure Sorrows,” an online art
project by John Koenig, who calls
his dictionary a “compendium of
made-up words” where “each orig-
inal definition aims to fill a hole in
the language, to give a name to an
emotion we all feel but don’t have
a word for.”
In Koening’s dictionary, “keta”
is a “memory that leaps back into
your mind from the distant past.”
And with this second, sentimental
definition, Stephenson’s memory
lit up. He remembered foods en-
joyed while growing up on the East
Coast. Among them: lump crab.
So Stephenson ordered the
costly Atlantic ocean crustacean
— which Northeasterners will
tell you is sweeter and superior to
Dungeness — and featured it in his
Spring Unveiling special: a Salmon
Oscar. In essence, he added some
“keta” (memory) to his “keta”
(salmon).
But rather than sprinkle his
salmon steak with raw lump crab,
Stephenson made a crab cake
crown whose delicate crust and
velvety Béarnaise sauce had me
moaning “Oh God!” to no one in
particular.
Altogether heavenly, the Salm-
on Oscar ($45) maintained an es-
sential, whole-food simplicity that
could perceivably take you back
home. The asparagus and sour-
cream-and-chives-laden baked
potato certainly helped in that
regard. Indeed, it wasn’t impossi-
ble to imagine as something you
might have at a family dinner —
that is, if your family dinners were
prepared not only with flawless
technique, but also meaning and
sparkling intention to boot.
At the heart of Stephenson’s
“Keta,” I think, is exactly what
the foodie component of Spring
Unveiling aspires to do: get those
creative juices running in the
kitchen.
Compared to 2016, when I last
dipped into Spring Unveiling’s
Chef’s Table component, restau-
rants this year felt more engaged.
In 2016, I encountered numerous
servers who weren’t even aware
of the specials or the event. While
I imagine many diners still passed
through unaware, 2018’s market-
A pepperoni pizza braut from Cannon Beach Smokehouse
The Bistro’s “keta” — salmon, crab
cake with asparagus, Béarnaise
sauce and baked potato
ing was better, the specials better
lit, the concepts embraced.
While a solid majority of Can-
non Beach restaurants participate
in the event, they do with varying
intensities. Sometimes an artwork
provides a restaurant with a color
palette for a new dish. Some-
times, as in Stephenson’s case,
art inspires deep reflection and
development of a dish. Sometimes
a painting of a crab equates to crab
legs in a bowl.
This year’s offerings ran the
gamut from coffees and cocktails
to multi-coursed feasts. Among the
most full-blown additions I sadly
missed out on: prix fixe menus
at Newman’s 988 (featuring an
escargot appetizer), the Stephanie
Inn and EVOO (where Bob Neroni
donned a James Beard-styled cos-
tume for a themed evening).
But there was plenty to re-
joice in for eaters in search of
less involved, time-consuming or
expensive experiences.
Based on a piece of a bearded
sailor on the nighttime sea, the
burgeoning Cannon Beach Smoke-
house devised a dish to fuel him:
an irresistible marinara and Italian
sausage hero ($14) with pepperoni,
grilled peppers, onions and the
creamy kiss of smoked mozzarella.
Of all the dishes I’ve had at the
Smokehouse — most of which
were absolute winners — the pizza
brat towers above them. It deserves
a permanent spot on the menu.
Based on the carving of a turtle,
Sweet Basil’s chef John Sowa, too,
dipped into memory, stirring up a
mock turtle soup of New Orleans
origins. (Sowa cut his culinary
teeth in the Big Easy.) In place of
turtle meat — which Sowa says
is like a stringier red meat — he
substituted a mixture of ground
sirloin and veal.
Sowa went with the replace-
ment for two reasons: First,
outside New Orleans, the idea of
eating turtle makes a lot of people
squeamish; second, turtle meat is
expensive to ship. The sirloin and
veal were joined in a rich, buttery,
developing, tangy roux. It was a
peacefully entrancing dish that
has me determined to try the real
thing. (Oh how I long to visit New
Orleans.)
In wondering about the soup,
Sowa told me he’d had two bowls
of it that afternoon. He was clearly
excited, energized by doing some-
thing different.
A passage on the Sweet Basil’s
menu spoke to such inspiration:
“I try to offer specials when some
idea pops into my head,” Sowa
wrote. “I might wake up at 3 a.m.
and remember a recipe from 1985
or in part from reading or seeing
something that just triggers an
idea then put it on the evening’s
offering.”
“When I do that,” Sowa con-
tinued, “my suggestion is … you
really should order it.”
They don’t call them the
“culinary arts” for nothing. CW