The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current, July 26, 2018, Page 14, Image 23

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    14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
New Shelburne
Dining Room owners
prize kitchen’s legacy
Story and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MOUTHOFTHECOLUMBIA
T
he grandfather clock is gone.
For years it stood in the
corner of the Shelburne’s
Dining Room, chiming a few min-
utes before every hour, marking
time’s passage over sumptuous,
lingering meals.
The metallic clang, one you
might hear multiple times over an
evening, was a reminder that time
spent, unhurried, in the presence of
fine food and plenty of wine, while
surrounded by art and history and
spurred by compelling conversa-
tion, was time well spent.
The clock was removed during
the Shelburne’s recent renovation.
In short, the Shelburne’s longtime
owners/operators David Cam-
piche and Laurie Anderson, who
purchased the historic property
in 1977, sold earlier this year to
Tiffany and Brady Turner, whose
portfolio includes the nearby Adrift
Hotel and adjoining restaurant,
the Pickled Fish. (For more on the
transition, the Brady’s connection
to the Shelburne and more, see last
week’s column.)
With the clock went a lot little
things — paintings, pottery, all
manner of artifacts. Like the
rest of the hotel, the Shelburne’s
revamped dining room is a tad
sleeker, less cluttered, perhaps
better dusted than it used to be. But
the essence of its previous charm
— along with an integral, longtime
server — remains. It’s a magical
space.
As compared to the refurnished
lobby and pub, the dining room
feels the least disturbed. (The
revamped Inglenook, however, is a
tacky misstep, something akin to a
man cave.)
An old benediction remains,
however, etched into the dining
room rafters: “eat, drink and be
merry, of tomorrow take no heed.”
Something about the room
inspires it, and that history remains
compelling.
Certainly it’s not lost on Brad
Dodson, the Shelburne’s new
executive chef. Dodson, who also
oversees the Pickled Fish, said
he very much hoped to retain the
time-winding, fine-dining expe-
rience for which the Shelburne
is known. (Presumably, then,
Dodson is aware of the kitchen’s
rich legacy, where renowned chefs
like Nanci Main and Jimella Lucas
made legendary gourmand James
Beard swoon.)
So when the Shelburne Din-
ing Room re-opened in mid-July,
Dodson came out swinging with a
12-course tasting menu. Twelve.
That’s more than twice as many as
any other prix fixe meal I’ve found
in the whole Columbia-Pacific
region.
Not content with that degree
of distinction or difficulty, Dod-
son — along with sous chef Casey
Venus — offered the tasting menu
alongside the Shelburne’s brand
new dinner menu. If that wasn’t
enough, the tasting menu was
offered throughout the night.
Different tables were beginning
their journeys as others were hours
deep.
Ambition meet execution.
Rubber, road. All this on opening
weekend, no less.
If there was a thread through
the 12 courses ($75/$105 with
wine pairings, and really you gotta
get the wine pairings), it was a
preference for regional, seasonal
ingredients. Among them: oysters,
cranberries and a rainbow of edible
LEFT: Nasturtium sorbet with bee pollen. MIDDLE: Seasonal berries, Skamokawa goat cheese, honey brittle.
RIGHT: Beef carpaccio, cured duck egg, pickled sea beans, sourdough croutons, nasturtium, borage.
flowers from the Shelburne’s own
garden.
But the thread was a thin one.
This wasn’t a meal intent on telling
a story. It was, rather, a reason to
ground diners in the Shelburne’s
historic digs, for them to revel,
ruminate and imbibe for hours —
just like folks have done here for
nearly 120 years.
On the tongue, it was a refined
and gleeful exploration. Some
dishes made you think. Some
changed shapes. Some made you
swoon.
Techniques, both classic and
modern, ran the gamut, as did in-
fluences from France (an envelop-
ing, unfurling and velvety chicken
liver mousse) to Latin America (a
spicy escabèche served alongside
a riotously crunchy, fried and
smoked smelt), to New Orleans
(boiled crawfish) and beyond (a
salmon skin airy and crisp like a
cracker).
The presentations were often
as artful as they were exciting.
The Beef Carpaccio offered a
paper-thin slice of raw beef as
pinkish-purple canvas to a Jackson
Pollack-like dusting of delicate
blue, red and fiery orange edible
flowers, all bound by the yellow
shavings of rich, salty, almost
cheese-like cured duck egg yolk.
As an earthy, icy palate cleans-
er, the Nasturtium Sorbet got a
minimal measure of sweetness
from clumpy bee pollen. The
dusting of pollen mimicked the
paint job of the bowl — a ceramic
thrown by David Campiche, no
less. The savoriness of the sorbet,
combined with clumpy, dry pollen
certainly threw me for a loop.
The meal’s only misstep was
a course of the Fried Oysters and
mashed potatoes. Essentially a
“chicken-fried oyster,” it was
comfort food that by comparison
seemed exceedingly dull.
Among the most exquisite
bites was the supple ocean kiss
of Dungeness crab, topped with
beads of salty, black sturgeon cav-
iar in a savory, criminally creamy
sea urchin roe custard.
In this dish the wine pair-
ing — a soft, big-bodied 2017
Viogner from California —
completed the circle. In the
dozen wines seemed a bit of
everything from leathery ports,
buttery and full-bodied reds to
dry, unsentimental bubbles and
sweet, pillowy whites. The wines
delivered new angles with which
to approach each course. Some-
times they re-contextualized it
altogether.
During dessert — a Hazelnut
Rockie Road Semifreddo — chef
Dodson appeared to say hel-
lo. (He did this with all tables
having the tasting menu.) He said
just about everything you’d want
to hear from a chef taking over
one of the Columbia-Pacific’s
most hallowed kitchens.
Then came the bombshell:
Dodson would be leaving at the
end of the month. By the time
you read this, he’s probably
gone. (If you act fast, though,
you might snag one of his final
tasting menus. Call ahead.)
He’s leaving to join the team
at the Willows Inn, a renown
restaurant counted among the
world’s 50 best, where reserva-
tions are difficult to come by
and tasting menus begin at $225.
Dodson will join a team led by
chef Blaine Wetzel, who studied
under perhaps the world’s most
celebrated chef, Rene Redzepi of
Noma. Dodson said he’s intent on
learning as much as he possibly
can. He’s really going for it.
Good on him.
A new executive for the
Shelburne (and Pickled Fish) had
not been named as of press time,
but Dodson figured it would be
sous chef Venus, with whom he
collaborated on the tasting menu.
So if change at the Shelburne
was big (ownership), it’s now
going to be a little less big (a new
executive chef).
Indeed, just when you think
the next regional star is ready to
make his mark he’s called up to
the big leagues. (Remind me to
see where Dodson’s at in a de-
cade or so — the sky’s the limit.)
And, so, here we are … kind
of back where we started. We’ll
have to wait and see what be-
comes of the Shelburne Dining
Room after a new chef is named
and settled in.
But I think one thing is clear:
In the Turners the Shelburne has
found owners and stewards for
the next generation. At least in
the promotion of Dodson, they
appeared to prize the kitchen’s
legacy alongside the property’s
mesmerizing potential.
And, despite the removal of
the grandfather clock, I managed
to find a new, if less auspicious,
indicator to mark the passage
of time during a long, enchant-
ing dinner: the candles. When I
arrived they were stately and tall.
Two hours, 45 minutes and 12
courses later, they had melted to
mere stubs. CW