Food & Drink

It was a great year for food in Bend and I got to partake in a lot of it. Here are the top 10 things I ate in 2011.
The D&D's Biscuits & Gravy
I fell in love in 2011… with the D&D's biscuits and gravy. Perfect any time of day, and especially good when you want to escape the Central Oregon morning sun in the dimly lit confines of The D. This is ultimate comfort food: good old-fashioned country cooking that you can count on being exactly the same each time.

I'm not yet ready to say goodbye to ma-and-pa video stores. Long ago, I worked at Westside Video and, when they went out of business, I started working for a chain rental store and silently mourned the loss of the weird and wacky local places of my youth. These were the sort of places where you could find not just movies, but illuminating conversations with clerks and owners about obscure '70s foreign horror films while they made you a sandwich or some frozen yogurt.
When I went to Video Village today, I found a place with some awesome eccentricities and a great collection of movies in a store where I wanted to spend my money. Oh, and I wanted some fried chicken. As I left Video Village with some boneless hot wings and an armful of movies, I realized I could definitely get used to this.

Hidden in the southside's unassuming Scandia Village shopping plaza off of Reed Market Road is the most authentic Mexican food joint I have found in Bend to date. Reyes Tortilleria owners Carlos and Martha Reyes of Michoacán, Mexico, started the business in 2003 simply as a tortilleria. Their amazing fresh corn tortillas, only $2.70 for a roughly half-foot stack, now sit displayed in the back corner of what has expanded into a heavily trafficked Mexican market, deli, bakery and eatery.
This is truly one-stop shopping for all things Mexican from piñatas to soap, sunglasses to conchas (Mexican sweet bread), calling cards to cabeza de puerco (pig's head). The kitchen is the centerpiece of Reyes, serving a refreshingly less Americanized version of Mexican fare from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

When you walk into the Depot Café in Sisters, the old town, dark wood exterior gives way to a casual dining room and seasonal outdoor seating area behind the restaurant, which plays host to live music during the summer months.
My companion and I arrived on a Saturday evening, reflecting on our last visit, which was over the summer after day spent playing tennis and walking around Sisters. We were hungry, but not starving, and thought we'd stop into the Depot Café (formerly the Depot Deli, the name by which some locals still call it) for a small bite to eat. Chris Wavrin was smoking filets of salmon on the outdoor smoker while his co-owner and wife, Pam Wavrin, ran the dining room that evening. We started with a Mediterranean-inspired appetizer: Hummus, pita and a variety of roasted veggies before sharing the salmon. The salmon was so delicious that on the way to Sisters just last week, I hoped that the salmon might once again appear on the specials menu that evening.