Food & Drink

There are a few highly regarded restaurants in Bend that are often considered destinations due to their reputation for upscale dining and upscale prices. Among these restaurants, loyal followers book reservations in advance to save themselves a seat for an experience worth a little extra. One such restaurant is Baltazar's, which I visited for the first time just a few weeks ago.
We weren't celebrating a special occasion, but the atmosphere transformed our ordinary night into a festive evening. The warm, rich colors of the dining room complemented by bright fiesta ware and colorful margarita glasses begged for celebration. There's a certain authenticity about the space itself that took me back to my years living in the barrio presidio neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, flanked by generations-old Mexican restaurants. And yet there we were, surrounded by a bike shop, smoothie shop, a coffee hut and the cyclopub amid authenticity right here in Bend, against all odds. Baltazar, the owner, greeted us warmly as we walked through the door. We were impressed by the high ceilings and the rich smells coming from the kitchen.

There's a calming sense of symmetry when doing everything in threes and last Tuesday marked my third year of marriage to my lovely wife, Gwendolyn. To celebrate our anniversary, we decided that instead of going out for a nice meal, we would go out to three: One place for appetizers, one for the main course and another for dessert. Our evening went like this:
Appetizer and drinks at Pine Tavern
Gwendolyn and I honeymooned in Seaside, Ore., and probably ate 50 pounds of steamer clams while we were there. It was the dead of winter and the town was deserted, except for us, as we walked from our resort to a different restaurant every night through the light rain and mist. We sampled the clams wherever we went and tried to decide who did them the best (my vote went to Pudgy's). We left Seaside after a week with a deep love of steamers smothered in lemon and butter sauce.

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.