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Tackling community issues. Celebrating local voices.
Take an elevator to the third floor of the building housing the Downtown Athletic Club, and you’ll find one of the city’s most delicious restaurants. Zest opened about a year ago in the space formerly occupied by Ax Billy Grill.
The elevator poses as one of Zest’s challenges as well as a reward for diners who use it. A streetside door opens to a lobby adjacent to the Downtown Athletic Club, with the elevator tucked inside. Diners don’t need to enter the Downtown Athletic Club at all, and membership at the club is not required to eat at Zest — although members get a 10% discount when dining at Zest.
“It’s a very beautiful space,” said Borzi Marashi, owner of Zest. “It’s a little bit unique in the sense that you don’t have many other restaurants here with an elevator to the third floor. But it means we also need to work to let people know that it’s very easy to get to this space.”
Decades of hospitality
Marashi’s restaurant history in Eugene spans four decades. In 1978, as a University of Oregon student, he was studying general science with dreams of becoming a teacher. But fate had other plans when he started waiting tables at a small South Eugene restaurant called the Gazebo, where Cafe Med is today…