Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [259]
We like lunch at the Oasis, when we can get a hot beef sandwich made from slices of prime rib. The meat reminded us of the best kind of school lunch—soft and gray with an appetizing institutional-kitchen aroma. It is piled atop slices of velvety white bread that seem able to absorb ten times their weight in gravy. We prefer Oasis French fries to the blah mashed potatoes; the fries are crusty red with good potato flavor. Hash browns, laced with onions, are better yet, especially when juices from a nearby steak seep their way.
Many customers who come from afar to dine at the Oasis make a grand night of the occasion by treating themselves to the most celebratory of all restaurant meals, surf and turf, which is such a house specialty that an entire section of the menu is devoted to its various permutations. Prime rib or sirloin is available with a ten-to twelve-ounce Australian lobster tail or with prawns, scallops, or grilled oysters.
Breakfast at the Oasis is a roll-your-sleeves-up kind of meal, served all day with the exception of pancakes and biscuits, which are available only until 11:00 A.M. The biscuits are extraordinary, a single order consisting of three behemoths and a cascade of thick gravy. This is a meal of caloric content suited to the eater who plans to flex muscles all day.
Otis Café
1259 Salmon River Hwy.
541–994–2813
Otis, OR
BLD | $
The Otis is a tiny roadside diner serving large meals. Located next to the post office, featuring a picnic-table patio as well as counter-and-table seats inside, this modest eat-place has received national acclaim for great pies and lumberjack’s (or more accurately in this case, fisherman’s) breakfasts. Sourdough pancakes have a tang beautifully complemented by lots of melting butter and a spill of syrup. Eggs come with hash browns, the potatoes preferably blanketed with melted cheese, and excellent homemade black molasses bread or a jumbo cinnamon roll.
Our lunch was a two-fisted BLT made with full-flavored slices of beefsteak tomato plus a bonus layer of cheese, and a goopy cheeseburger on a hefty bun with Otis’s homemade mustard. On the side were dreamy fried red potatoes. Pies are gorgeous, especially the West Coast rarity, marionberry. A more intense, supremely aromatic blackberry, the marionberry was made to be baked in a pie. That the crust here is crisp and aristocratic makes it all the more perfect a dessert.
Otto’s Sausage Kitchen
4138 S.E. Woodstock Ave.
503–771–6714
Portland, OR
L | $
A few years ago, we got a note from Diane Chaffin that said, in part: “When we moved into the neighborhood, we did not have to concern ourselves with good schools anymore, we wanted to live near Otto’s. If our realtor had said ‘huh?’ we would have fired him for sure. We give directions to our house: just turn left at Otto’s, but buy some dogs on your way.”
While it is a full-scale meat market and smokehouse with sausages of all kinds to take home and cook, Otto’s is also a fantastic place to eat lunch. When the outdoor grill starts up late in the morning, a smoky sausage aroma perfumes the area for blocks around—an aroma, Diane wrote, that sometimes creates traffic jams along Woodstock Avenue.
Whether you choose an ordinary beef-and-pork hot dog (with snap to its skin that is far from ordinary) or an extra-large sausage made from chicken or pork, you might just find yourself amazed, as we do, by just how much better these fresh, homemade tube steaks taste than factory-made ones from the supermarket. The progeny of Otto Eichentopf, who opened this neighborhood meat market in 1927, maintain the highest standards of old-world sausage making. The beauty of the links they make for lunch is that you really taste the meat from which they are made. Spices are used to accent, not overwhelm, the primary ingredient. Served in soft buns with a choice of onions, kraut, relish, mustard, or