Oregon Rediviva

Author Archives: RichardEngeman

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Father’s: the Guru, the Treasure, the Best Food in Oregon

[caption id="attachment_804" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Father Ciranjavi on the menu cover, 1974[/caption] The Rajneeshee were not the only followers of an Indian guru who opened a restaurant in Oregon. Our other culinary guru was Ciranjavi Roy, who inspired Nelson and April Souza to create a novel upscale restaurant in the sleepy and rather remote seaside resort town of Manzanita, Oregon (1970 population: 261). Opened on June 17, 1974 and named Father’s for the guru, the restaurant was built to impress, using ...
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The Cake Plop, the Dozen Dozen Cookies, and the Fire

[caption id="attachment_793" align="alignleft" width="507"] View toward Astoria from our Warrenton house. January 1965[/caption] During my high school years Warrenton, we lived in an old farmhouse on a hill overlooking an expanse of former tidelands—now pastures and shopping malls—at the mouth of the Columbia River. We had no near neighbors, and my younger sister Laural and I were often left to our own devices; both our parents had bizarre and often-changing work schedules. We were pretty good at amusing ourselves, but ...
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Can Allies and Axis Unite? Really, the United Nations?

The United Nations was a huge presence in the 1950s, associated with efforts to establish peace around the world, to feed people, to relocate refugees, to improve health, to advance scientific discoveries. While some Americans viewed the United Nations as a big step toward damaging or destroying their country, for most it was a positive international step forward in a war-wracked world. That hopefulness registered very strongly for me after my recent acquisition of a railroad dining car menu, a ...
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Our Celebrity Chef of 1936

[caption id="attachment_782" align="alignleft" width="228"] Oregonian, Sept. 29, 1935[/caption] We live in an era of celebrity chefs: colorful characters, often tattooed, who preside over legendary kitchens in food-conscious cities and who concoct startling new recipes involving exotic ingredients and high-tech processes. The men who go BAM! and the women who tout EVOO are household names. It was not always so. Half a century ago, many of the celebrity names in the culinary world were contrived personae fronting for mega corporations: Betty ...
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A Vanished Albany Hostelry

[caption id="attachment_768" align="alignleft" width="576"] A promotional postcard. F. T. Mittauer owned the hotel from February 1924 until his death on March 19, 1925[/caption] A century ago, towns and cities were often characterized by their hotels. In Oregon, Portland had the Portland (for the elite, Queen Anne-style), the Benson (for lumber baron dignity), the Multnomah (for civic pride and boosterism). In Bend, there was Pilot Butte Inn (sportsmens' HQ); in Salem, the Chemeketa/Willamette/Marion (legislators' HQ); and there was a stolid sort ...
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A Tiffin in Portland

Here we have a menu for a meal at the famed Portland Hotel in 1904. What meal is it? Why, it's A Tiffin!How very raj! Starting from the British slang term "tiffing," for taking a drink, in the early nineteenth century it morphed into tiffin, to describe, in British India, a light lunch. It somehow reached our shores as a British-y word for lunch, even a fairly hefty lunch such as the one laid out for us in this ...
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Oregon Prunes: for Health!

Recipe booklet, 1909 I rather like prunes. However, I rarely eat them. As a child, I occasionally encountered pitted prunes stuffed with a nut and rolled in powdered sugar, and those were pretty appealing. Oh, wait a minute—those were dates, not prunes. A century ago, prunes were a great big crop in the Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco. And also in the hills of Clark County, northeast of Vancouver in Washington State. And in the Willamette Valley, ...
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Cruisin’ to Astoria

Over Labor Day weekend, I once again I found myself in Astoria aboard a cruise vessel, the American Spirit, once again as a guest speaker. This was a special themed cruise, a fact I discovered two days before I boarded the ship, and the theme was "Food and Wine." For that reason, we had a celebrity sommelier aboard, too, Reggie Daigneault from Seattle, and she was a whirlwind dispenser of excellent wines and wine lore for the entire ...
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Mable in Albany with Cranberries

My aunt Mable (not Mabel!) was born in 1913 in an Oregon logging camp. She married my dad's older brother Gaylord, and they lived in various places in western Oregon over the years: the now-vanished town of Signal, North Albany, Goshen, Albany, Springfield. Mable was the last survivor of my dad's generation, living long enough not only to vote for FDR in 1936, but also to vote for Hilary in 2016 (good for her!). She died last ...
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The Brief Life and Fiery End of The Elk

Graphically, it's not a very impressive menu, but it caught my eye. That was because the typography suggested that the menu was printed earlier than the seller's estimate of the 1920s. Oregon restaurant menus prior to the 1930s are pretty scarce, so I looked inside: what's to eat? The variety of offerings, as well as the prices, represented that the Elk Restaurant, Lunch and Oyster House was a modest, middle-class downtown establishment. And the date? About 1902. The location was ...
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