Dinner at Paulée

Laura Domela — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 18:46:36 +0000

Yesterday we left our beautiful 4th Flat at Third Street Flats in McMinnville and stopped for a light lunch at Nick's Italian Cafe just down the road. Nick's is a great neighborhood place with very good food!

We stopped by Twelve Wine (a few doors down from Nick's) after lunch to taste a couple wines. (Kevin had previously worked with the owner of Twelve Wine. We were sitting next to him on a flight back from San Jose about a year ago and found out he and his wife owned a vineyard in Carlton. Glad we finally got down there to try their wines!) We left with a couple bottles of wine, and picked up a few chocolates at Honest Chocolates (they share a storefront with Twelve Wines, and they had pumpkin bacon ganache chocolates…how could we resist?) and then we headed to our next stop: Inn at Red Hills in Dundee.

(**Note: My original plan for Kevin's birthday dinner on Tuesday was to take him to Paulée. However, Paulée is closed on Tuesdays and so was born the "Three days of food and wine in the Oregon wine country extravaganza birthday celebration" with the last night being dinner at Paulée.)

We checked into our room at the Inn (which was fine, but not nearly as cool as our 4th Flat was), worked for a bit, and decided to visit one more winery we'd read about (just down the road — the Dobbes Family Estate). Joe Dobbes has been making wine since 1985 and created the Dobbes Family Estate in Dundee, Oregon in 2003.

We walked into the tasting room from the cold (27 degrees or something!) and were immediately and warmly greeted by Joe's wife, Patricia. She was incredibly friendly and charming, and made sure we had a lovely tasting experience. (Thanks Patricia!) Joe makes some fantastic wines, and his second label, Wine by Joe, (from the website:) "is one of the first high quality screw top ventures in Oregon, producing quality Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc varietals. Wishing to give back, Joe donates a portion of all WINE BY JOE proceeds to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Northwest. "

They also have a Charitable Giving Program where each quarter, a different employee has the opportunity to select a cause that has special meaning to them. During that quarter they feature a wine and donate 10 percent of its sales to the chosen charity.

Cool people. Good wine.

Okay, and now finally: Paulée.

Our reservation was for 6pm.
– midweek in December
– the week or so after Thanksgiving
– when the temp outside is 27 degrees Fahrenheit
– and the forecast is for snow

And that's how we ended up being the only party for dinner last night. We sat at the chef's counter and had the 9 course chef's tasting menu with wine pairings, and it was incredible.

I took no photos at all except this one from the counter into the kitchen, but trust me, the food was gorgeously plated and expertly crafted. The ambiance inside was lovely as well: warm, contemporary, inviting. Here's a shot from their website so you can get a feel for the interior:

The chefs and the servers were so wonderful. There's no way you could really plan for this kind of focused, individual treatment (well, unless you bought the restaurant out for yourselves for the night I suppose) and we feel pretty lucky to have happened into it. We will definitely be coming back to Paulée.

McMinnville, Oregon

Laura Domela — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 15:03:33 +0000

We're in McMinnville this week (wine country Oregon) to celebrate Kevin's birthday. We didn't bring the Airstream this time because I found a really cool place to stay downtown in McMinnville called the 3rd Street Flats. There are four flats in varying sizes and I picked the one called The Retreat for the start of Kevin's birthday week. Look at how cool this place is!

There's a great stocked (pots, pans, dishes, etc.) kitchen, cute dining room complete with wine bar and every kind of wine glass you might need, a comfy bedroom, a fireplace, original artwork, bamboo floors….. Love the decor, too!

Last night (night one of birthday foodie celebration) I took Kevin to dinner at the Joel Palmer House in nearby Dayton, Oregon. We had the mushroom madness tasting menu and it was fantastic. Every dish was so flavorful. By far the standout (probably because of the decadence factor) was the Painted Hills grass-fed filet of beef, topped with pan-seared fois gras and shaved Oregon white truffles. Yeah, the broccoli there was amazing too, but whatever…would you get a load of all those truffles??? (The chef, Chris Czarnecki, came out to see how we were doing right in the middle of this dish. Could not have been better timing!)

We're doing some work this morning, cooking breakfast in the flat, and then we're going to head over to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, maybe hit a winery or two, and then I have another dinner plan tonight for birthday dinner number 2!

There's a great little market across the street where we picked up a few things we forgot. Here's a snap taken right out front:

The living room when we got home last night (fireplace is on the left, out of frame, but really sweet):

I highly recommend this place if you're ever in McMinnville without your RV and want a cool place to stay. There are some really good restaurants and wineries withing walking distance, and tons more within driving distance.

(*Side story: During the time I was working on my private pilot's license, the McMinnville airport was the first stop of my first solo cross-country flight. No GPS or big colorful flat screen moving map telling you where you are and what other traffic is around you and how high the terrain is … just the instruments that feel pretty outdated now and a big chart unfolded in my lap, marked up with all my lines and notes and landmarks. I flew the plane and looked between the chart and the ground below to keep myself located. I landed at the airport in McMinnville, taxied over to visitor parking, wiped my brow and collected my nerve before taking off and flying to my next stop in Corvallis. There again I landed, taxied, parked, wiped brow, collected nerve again…then headed back toward Portland.

I remember vividly approaching the range of hills just West of town as I navigated myself back to my home airport. I knew then — seeing that range of hills — that I could visually find my way home, even if I didn't have the map or my instruments. It gave me a HUGE feeling of relief. At that point, I was able to finally FEEL what I was doing. I was transporting myself through the air at 3500 feet in a vehicle…a vehicle that felt a lot like a 1971 Volkswagen bug, with wings.

All of a sudden in that moment, I said to myself, outloud in the little Cessna 150: "I'm flying a fucking airplane!"

What a crazy feeling!)

McMinnville – Riveted

Dinner at Paulée

McMinnville, Oregon