Food & Drink

What would a place called Terrebonne, literally meaning “good Earth,” be without good food? Thankfully, we'll never know, thanks to the Terrebonne Depot. Terrebonne Depot mixes a farm-to-fork menu, a modern country setting and solid ambiance (wild lavender and a wrap around porch surround the old train depot) to create an experience of enjoying what the “good Earth” has to offer. Located just a few miles north of Redmond, up the road from Smith Rock state park, the restaurant caters to climbers, locals and sightseers with casual elegance and a large menu that pleases large and small appetites.
After a long day at work, two friends and I headed out to Terrebonne Depot having been impressed by lunch there a few weeks earlier. My companion and I enjoyed a few house margaritas and the Oregon farm burger ($12.95). With house-cured pork belly, smoked cheddar, farm-fresh egg, house-made Texas sweet onion barbecue sauce and choice of beef, buffalo or garden burger, this is one of the better burgers I've tasted. Piled high with local ingredients, I couldn't think of anything to add – it was a collection of the best burger toppings on a freshly toasted bun.

In the midst of the faux-Western tourist territory of Sisters lays a hidden culinary gem: Poppies, a gourmet garden market and café. Poppies has been open for a year, but has not gotten the attention this one-of-a-kind eatery deserves.
After being sorely disappointed by a new restaurant in Redmond this week, I can definitively say that there is nothing like going out on a limb to try a new place and having your expectations exceeded. Poppies does everything right that most restaurants do wrong; they do not skimp on what some seem to consider trivial elements of a meal from the quality of the bread to the vegetable toppings and complimentary side items.
They are modest, too. When they say “sandwiches and burgers are served with chips,” they mean house-made sweet potato chips seasoned delicately with salt, sugar and cinnamon. When they say “burgers are served with lettuce, tomato, and red onion,” they mean lettuce from their garden, fresh tomatoes, non-mealy, soon to be sourced from the greenhouse on their nearby property.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for… frozen desserts? That's right. As we bid farewell to national ice cream month, we say hello to a frozen feature. And while Redmond stresses over whether to permit, regulate or fingerprint its ice cream vendors, we've got our fingers all over frozen treat purveyors in Bend that keep us cool in the remainder of these hot days.

Editor's Note: A few weeks ago, Source food writer Sydney Leonard said she was going to Northern California and that she'd be eating some good food down there. Naturally, we asked her to write about the trip… mostly because we were jealous we didn't get to go.
For the sake of simplicity, I told a San Francisco bank teller that I was on vacation, but for the sake of this story let's call it a visit. As a New Englander, I imagined California as nothing more than a stage for vacations and movies – contrived and synthetic. Perhaps it was the heat or the hard cider or the hours of driving a 1978 RV with shoddy breaks around the endless series of hairpin turns that define Marin County, but either way, the Pelican Inn at Muir Beach had both an ethereal and comforting effect on me.