Oregon Experience: A Cuisine of Our Own

Contributors

Robert Clark began his career as a food, wine and travel writer. The Solace of Food: A Life of James Beard (Steerforth Press, 1998) was first published in 1993 as James Beard: A Biography (HarperCollins). Robert is the author of four novels, and his non-fiction books include River of the West: a chronicle of the Columbia (Picador, 1997.)  He writes and teaches writing in Seattle.

Richard H. Engeman is an Oregon historian and archivist and does historical research and consulting. He collects, among other things, old Oregon cookbooks and restaurant menus.  He is the author of two recent books: Eating It Up in Eden: the Oregon Century Farm & Ranch Cookbook (White House Grocery Press, 2009) and The Oregon Companion: an Historical Gazetteer of the Useful, the Curious, and the Arcane (Timber Press, 2009.)  Richard lives in Portland.

Duane and Irene Jue live in Astoria, Oregon.  During the 1970’s and 80’s, they took a cooking class from James Beard each of the 8 or 9 summers he taught at nearby Seaside High School.   Duane was also Beard’s West Coast dentist, and Beard visited and dined with the Jues many times during that period.

Owner of Jerry Lamb Interiors & Antiques in Portland, Jerry Lamb works in both Oregon and New York City.  He met James Beard in 1972, and soon afterward Beard hired him to decorate his Greenwich Village home.  That became an ongoing project, and the men became close friends.   After James Beard’s death in 1985, Jerry scattered his ashes on the beach at Gearhart, Oregon.

After years of working in San Francisco, David Machado came to Portland in 1991 as executive chef for Pazzo Ristorante.  He opened other regional restaurants for that company and several more for the Heathman Group, including Portland’s Southpark Seafood Grill and Hudson’s Bar and Grill in Vancouver. David owns Lauro Kitchen, Vindalho and the just-opened Nel Centro.

Cory Schreiber grew up in Portland and apprenticed at the Benson Hotel restaurant before working in a series of chef positions in Chicago and San Francisco. He founded Portland’s Wildwood restaurant in 1994 and won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Pacific Northwest in 1998.  Still in Portland, Cory now works for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, managing an innovative program to introduce more local produce to public school meal programs. He is the author of Wildwood: Cooking from the Source in the Pacific Northwest (Ten Speed Press, 2003) and co-author of Rustic Fruit Desserts: Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies, and More (Ten Speed Press, 2009)

Seattle resident Jacqueline B. Williams writes and lectures about pioneer life in the Pacific Northwest and collects early cookbooks. She has authored several books, including Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail (University Press of Kansas, 1993) and The Way We Ate: Pacific Northwest Cooking, 1843-1900 (Washington State University Press, 1996.)