The story of Feast Food Company sounds like the emerging, classic tale of young up-and-comers of Central Oregon: Two longtime service-industry people live and work in Bend, get priced out of Bend, buy a house in Redmond and decide to invest in their new community, so they open a food cart business that goes so well that it fairly quickly turns into a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
Perhaps the toughest part of this process, for those who are fans of Feast’s food, is that there was something of a wait between the closure of the cart and the opening of the restaurant, now located along 7th Street, in a former house with a sprawling and inviting outdoor courtyard. Now that it’s open, though, readers have quite obviously responded with pleasure – as this Best New Restaurant award demonstrates. Feast opened as a cart in 2021 and then opened its restaurant late last year.
“The food cart was kind of like the base, jump-off point to make sure that the community was going to approach our food the way that we wanted,” said Co-owner Chris Leyden, who opened Feast with wife Emma Leyden. “That way we were able to meet a lot of people around, get really in touch with all the farms and really jumpstart what we wanted to do.”
A focus on local farms is the heart of Feast’s mission – bringing seasonal ingredients that are so local that the farms and purveyors tend to be sourced hyper-locally – mostly from around Redmond.
“We want to focus on the people who live here,” Emma Leyden said. “We worked in downtown Bend forever – it’s a very different vibe there, very touristy in the summer and then all of a sudden, you focus on your locals. But here, it’s just all locals, all the time. It’s really cool to have those moments where you’re familiar with people and they’re familiar with you.”
House-made pastas, pork chop, pork belly and fried mushrooms are some of the most popular items on the menu, the couple said – though with its focus on seasonality, there’s always something new to discover.
Feast Food Company
546 NW 7th St., Redmond
541-923-0170
Open Thu & Mon 11am-8pm,
Fri-Sat 11am-9pm, Sun 10am-8pm
Second place: Brand 44 North
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This article appears in Best of Central Oregon 2023.
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