Oregon Fare With California Flair

Oregon Fare With California Flair

Half contemporary, half hippie, Cafe Eugene gives Albany a taste of its own medicine.

A restaurant modeled on Eugene, Ore., in Albany.

It seems like a weird fit. But dig a little deeper and it starts to make more sense.

The new restaurant in the heart of Solano Avenue is the brainchild of Ryan Murff, an Oregon native who has worked his way through several higher-end dining establishments, starting with Roy’s in Hawaii, and more recently in the Bay Area, Michael Mina, Café Rouge, and Oliveto.

The concept, Murff told me before the restaurant opened, was inspired by Excelsior Cafe, a popular dining spot in his native Eugene in the 1970s and ’80s and an early adopter of the local and sustainable food movement in the Pacific Northwest. As someone raising his children in Albany, Murff wanted to bring the same kind of well-prepared, farm-to-table fare and casual, unpretentious vibe, plus “a splash of granola-hippie,” that would appeal to the many younger families in the area.

Let’s see: farm-to-table food; family-friendly; college town; hippie vibe. That sounds an awful lot like Albany’s neighbor to the south, Berkeley. So maybe it’s a concept that’s not so foreign after all.

The twist, however, was that Murff also wanted to make things hip enough that those same parents (and yes, even nonparents) would want to come grab a bite or a drink in the evening without the kids. It’s a delicate balancing act, and in lesser hands, the restaurant could easily have fallen into the trap of wanting to be all things to all people but never really appealing to anyone. Lucky for locals, they’re in good hands.

A few sets of hands, actually.

Running the kitchen on a day-to-day basis is executive chef Amanda Joost Gehring, whose résumé includes stints at Berkeley’s Sea Salt, Lalime’s, and Café Rouge. Finally, Murff’s business partner and the eatery’s co-owner is none other than Jon Guhl, founder of cult deep-dish pizza favorite Little Star. He added to his growing East Bay empire with The Star on Oakland’s Grand Avenue and Boss Burger on Solano, on which he also partnered with Murff.

All that experience pays off. From the get-go, Cafe Eugene feels like a polished product, much more so than the typical new restaurant. The décor is warm and woodsy and cozy in a way that suggests a hip Northwest lodge (it helps that Murff inherited the great interior from Guhl, who moved his Little Star Pizza to a renovated space next door.) The wait staff, while clearly not lifelong professionals, was friendly, personable, competent, and obviously well-trained, while the kitchen hummed along like a well-oiled machine. I didn’t experience a single service misstep over the course of three visits. Meanwhile, Murff channeled his experience working with the bar team from Michael Mina to create a solid cocktail program—I’d especially recommend the gin-based I-5 High Five and the tequila-backed White Bird (the name is a sly reference to the detox tent at Eugene’s famously free-spirited Oregon Country Fair).

Which brings us to the food. It’s good. It’s very good, in fact. And it’s made that much more interesting because the kitchen offers a different angle on the same-old California cuisine. Cafe Eugene doesn’t just pay lip service to its namesake; the food has a legitimate Oregon bent to it.

That manifests itself on the dinner menu most obviously with an emphasis on seafood, plus a touch of the kind of lumberjack-inspired heartiness—chowder, grits, veggies with cheese sauce—that’s more common in the rugged climes of the Northwest. Not to say this is some gimmicky log-cabin concept that only serves biscuits and gravy (although it does serve that). Rather, it’s Oregon-style food that’s extremely well-executed and filtered through a contemporary California lens.

That means that the quiveringly tender braised pork shoulder was accented by succulent, flavor-packed wedges of acorn squash, salty cojita cheese, and a zesty tomatillo sauce served atop light-as-air creamy grits. (As was the case with most other dishes, it was also gorgeously presented.) Normally, pork shoulder with grits would be a recipe for a food coma, but I finished the entire generous portion without feeling weighed down. And that was a fairly consistent theme for the dishes on a menu that, as a friend put it succinctly, reads heavy but eats light.

It was certainly the case with the excellent grilled rib-eye. The steak retained enough fat and chewiness to give it a reassuringly muscular texture, but was softened by being served Italian style in thin slices with charred chicories and a bright lemon-anchovy vinaigrette. The “green eggs and sam” on the brunch menu—currently served Friday through Sunday—sounded like a gut-buster. Instead, the kale-spiked scrambled eggs were served atop a light, flaky biscuit with shards of the lovely house-smoked salmon and a delicate, lemony Hollandaise sauce. Once again: food coma averted.

Another aspect about the menu at Cafe Eugene that I liked is that it gives you options. The five or so main courses are buttressed by smaller (but still substantial) plates. Those are designed to be shared but could also serve as a quick, cheap bite if you’re not looking for a full meal. The Oregon toasts are a particularly fun addition. You can pick two out of three toppings—tofu pâté; sardine rillettes; cured salmon with Meyer lemon crème fraîche and salmon roe—served on toasted Acme (or gluten-free) bread. I especially liked the tofu pâté with avocado and herb salad. The tofu was surprisingly rich and creamy, and that dish, combined with the roasted cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with decadent cheddar Mornay sauce and a tender burrata with pickled beets and toasted pistachios, gives diners several interesting, inventive vegetarian starters to chose between.

If there was one qualm I have with the food, it’s that dishes leaned toward the mild. For example, the burger on the brunch menu was highlighted by a tender but under-seasoned beef patty, sunnyside-up egg, and creamy cheese spread. Those are all perfectly nice ingredients on their own, but together they melded into a fairly forgettable mashup that begged for something (sharper cheese, a salty hit of bacon?) to give it a bit of punch. Steamed P.E.I. mussels, while fresh and tender, came in a too-subtle smoked pimenton broth that lacked that one distinctive element (garlic, lemon, fennel) that comes to the forefront in the best versions of what is one of my personal favorites.

But maybe that’s an inevitable side effect of a restaurant that aims to be known for as a healthy and family-friendly dining spot. While I did occasionally yearn for food that was a bit sharper edged, I appreciated the fact that nothing was overloaded with salt or sugar or spice. There’s an appealing simplicity and honesty to the food, while the kitchen employs enough offbeat ingredients and techniques to keep things interesting.

For me, Cafe Eugene’s vibe was perhaps best exemplified by one of my favorite dishes on the menu, the fried wild rice. The crispy textured rice is mixed with meaty hedgehog mushrooms and cranberry beans and topped by a poached egg and evergreen sauce, a vividly green concoction whose flavor seemed to encapsulate the essence of the Oregon woods. It’s a hearty, sustaining dish that feels both modern and, yes, a little hippie-crunchy. The more I tried of it, the more I liked it.

I won’t be surprised if that’s how Albany locals soon come to regard this restaurant as a whole.


Cafe Eugene

1175 Solano Ave., Albany,
510-647-9999,
www.CafeEugene.com.
Tue.-Thu. 5:30-9pm,
Fri.-Sat. 9am-10pm,
Sun. 9am-9pm.
Average entrée is $19.
Full bar.
Credit cards accepted.

Faces of the East Bay