January 31, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

As of February 1, Terroir Restaurant & Wine Bar will be closed. This journey has come to an end, but as Semisonic poetically said in the song “Closing Time”:

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

Cheers!

Stu

January 16, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

I hate to generalize, but in my 18 years in the biz, I’ve known two kinds of chefs: those who love to do functions, large parties and catering, and those who don’t. Most of my career has been spent in smallish, usually owner-operated, fine-dining restaurants and boutique hotels with little-to-no banquet space, so you guess which category I fall under.

Being an owner-operator myself, though, I have a choice to make when it comes to the eternal restaurant question: Do you take a large party and give up a-la-carte seating and/or possibly close for that private function, or do you turn it down and concentrate on regular business? I certainly expected the question to come up during the peak holiday season, but this dilemma reared its head more often than I would have imagined for a 60-seat restaurant.

...Read More

January 11, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Last week I received a letter in the mail. Yes, real mail, not e-mail, text message or carrier pigeon.

There’s nothing that earth-shattering in receiving a letter, except that is from a customer and her husband who dined with us a few days before and who happen to live in our neighborhood.

Let me digress for a moment and say that I’ve been jaded and skeptical about the online restaurant-reviewing “media,” particular in my fair city of Portland. In general, they pull out their keyboards before connecting the synapses in their brains and generally have some pre-existing biases that tend to conflict with the true ethics of reviewing.

With that in mind, I opened this handwritten envelope with a bit of trepidation and cynicism. My mind was thinking, “Oh great, a complaint letter.” That in itself isn’t necessarily a bad ...Read More

January 2, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

In this time of holiday giving, the issue of customer service seems to be at the forefront, at least here at Terroir. My question to all you purveyors, is “What happened to my customer service?”

The weekend before Christmas turned out to be a fairly busy time at the restaurant. Between parties, mixers and regular service, we were a bit busier than I expected. We started to run low on a few of my artisan cheeses, so I contacted one of my local specialty-foods distributors (an independently run business, for your information). I don’t do a lot of business with them because they lack the depth and knowledge of Pacific Northwest ingredients we typically need, and I have had customer-service ...Read More

December 13, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Cole (as in Cole Danehower, my wine and beverage guy, r.) and I were having dinner the other night, and we were discussing what has and hasn’t been accomplished on the public-relations front since we opened. The message we’d hoped to get across was, “Terroir is the quintessential Pacific-Northwest restaurant. A place that feels like a real restaurant. It’s a copacetic blend of good design and focused intent. Terroir is that rare restaurant that seems so right for its location, yet with an appeal far beyond its neighborhood. A place that will convince you that small plates, civilized dining and reasonably priced food can coexist.”

The problem is that the new customer base doesn&...Read More