DECEMBER 27, 2018 // 7
CLOSE TO HOME
FEASTING ON VENETIAN FOOD
AND ORIENTAL ART IN EUGENE
By DAVID CAMPICHE
FOR COAST WEEKEND
T
he road from Portland to Eu-
gene is straight and steady. The
drive was mostly uneventful,
other than outlet malls and large
conglomerates of industrial buildings,
and, larger yet, traffic clutches, mean-
dering to and fro like herds of ancient
bison.
But here, Mother Earth holds a
secret: Rich soils driven by wind and
flood laid a fertile terrain, eons ago.
The first set of Rocky Mountains was
whisked away at a rate of about ten
one-thousandths of an inch per year.
That’s dust. That’s longevity. That’s the
soil of the Willamette Valley.
When you leave the freeway, farms
and orchards and vineyards speak of
rich productivity. One can imagine
the Conestoga wagons loaded with
pioneers, immigrants really, seeking
security. They found it in clumps of rich
black earth.
Our destination was Eugene, where
our friend Maurizio Parparo owns and
operates a small hotel and restaurant,
called the Excelsior Inn and Ristorante.
It sits but two blocks from the gateway
to the University of Oregon. Obviously
this, too, is fertile ground.
Little ever seems to go wrong in
Maurizio’s intimate space. We joined
40 others in a four-course feast featur-
ing the foods and wines of the Veneto
region in Northeastern Italy, the region
famous for the diamond in the crown
outpost, Venice.
We feasted on platters of appetizers:
delicate prosciutto, savory soft Taleggio
cheese, bruschetta with wild mush-
rooms and focaccia with caramelized
onion. And then moved on to a first
course (primo): braised cabbage with
pancetta and paté, all the greens from
Maurizio’s five-acre garden. The main
course (il secondo) featured a lamb
shank savored in a mushroom broth,
Lobster ravioli at the Excelsior.
feeling sated and drowsy enough to
miss Stephen Colbert at midnight.
Breakfast was a continuation of the
night before. The special was a soft
scramble with garden kale, country ba-
con, golden sautéed onions and Kasseri
cheese. Spuds were fried perfectly and
the fruit bright and ripe in the mouth.
Toast was sautéed in olive oil and
butter. Laurie, my wife and partner,
pledged to hold off any further calories
until dinner. I wasn’t so sure.
Art museum
DAVID CAMPICHE PHOTOS
A Japenese 19th-century woodblock print.
slow cooked (sous vide) and then laid
on a bed of creamy polenta. Tiramisu
(dolce) served in an untraditional
presentation finished us off, other than
generous tastings of the region’s wines
with a particularly splendid Amarone,
one of the kings of the reds.
Italians pride themselves on fresh
and ripe vegetables. And cheeses and
dried meats. And cappuccino and
gelato. It was all here in spades. We
stumbled to a perfectly appointed room
The University of Oregon offers a
lovely campus, one overrunning with
eager young students. The autumn
leaves had fallen into limp colorful
piles. Oregon rain began to fall with
natural predictability, but above the
stone walls, the world flushed mother of
pearl in its winter’s dance.
The university brags a fine art
museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum
of Art, that features the Murray Warner
Collection of Oriental Art, 3,700 mas-
terworks collected by Gertrude Bass
Warner in the 1920s.
Build it and they will come. Gertrude
offered her collection to the univer-
sity under the condition they build a
museum to house it. They did. It opened
in 1933 and stands today as a premium
collection of fine art, including Ameri-
can, European, and both permanent and
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