Chow

The first thing you notice when walking into Common Table is the 20-foot-long black walnut table, which runs the length of the new non-profit café on Oregon Avenue. The restaurant, which occupies the former Cork location, has been open for just over a month. Yet, with minimal promotion, save a few articles (we wrote about the enterprise back in August) and some Facebook activity, the café has been packed for both lunch and dinner nearly every day of the week.

Five years doesn't qualify a business as an “institution,” but given the recent mortality rate for Bend restaurants, we need an apt label for tenacious establishments like Bend Fish Company. “For the first 18 months… we hit a home run, but then the [stuff] hit the fan,” recalls Mike West who, along with his wife Cynthia, started the eatery in 2005. “We've survived, but lately it's been hard and we've had to find other revenue streams.”
The Wests built their reputation with moderately priced, well-prepared seafood served in a casual environment. To increase revenue, a sushi bar was added in 2007. The latest complement to their menu is “Island Grind'z Hawaiian BBQ,” inspired by their son Justin's culinary school project, completed while moonlighting at an island grill restaurant near San Francisco.

Five years doesn't qualify a business as an “institution,” but given the recent mortality rate for Bend restaurants, we need an apt label for tenacious establishments like Bend Fish Company. “For the first 18 months… we hit a home run, but then the [stuff] hit the fan,” recalls Mike West who, along with his wife Cynthia, started the eatery in 2005. “We've survived, but lately it's been hard and we've had to find other revenue streams.”

I have recently been contemplating cutting meat out of my diet. It seems, however that the restaurants that have opened as of late in Bend are meat-centric, and truthfully, I'm elated. Because that's the only excuse I can muster for why I ate three of the largest ribs I've ever seen on top of wolfing down a giant Hungarian sausage in one sitting last week.
The gluttonous meal I'm referring to took place at the old Cheerleader's Grill and Sports Pub location on Highway 97, which was recently taken over by Taylor's Sausage, the purveyor of 80 different types of sausage in addition to ribs, bacon, hams, smoked turkey, jerky and beef snack sticks. Taylor's Sausage, a five-generation family operation now run by brothers Terry and Scott Taylor, is based in the tiny town of Cave Junction in Southern Oregon, but has a reputation that spans the West Coast.

The irony of two people who lived and worked for many years in the heart of California's grape-growing region deciding to start a winery only after relocating to a city nearly 4000 feet in elevation with a two-month frost-free growing season is not lost on Scott and Liz Ratcliff, owners of Bend's Volcano Vineyards. But as winemakers, not growers, Central Oregon's proximity to the Northwest's fine wine areas, along with a smart business plan, is helping turn that ironic move into a very bright idea.

Volcano, one of a handful of the region's “micro-wineries,” permanently closed its downtown tasting room last month and will be opening a bottling and blending facility in the redeveloped Century Center on Century Drive in late October. While the tasting room was popular, the couple decided to focus on wine production instead of maintaining the shop's long hours. In addition to bottling and blending the Volcano label wine, the Ratcliffs plan to start a new, lower-priced label called “Magma,” with bottles priced in the $10 – $15 range. They will also bottle their popular Sangrias and plan to also sell boxed wines.