For decades, the restaurants and bars of Willamette Valley wine country told a specific story about what local food looked like here. An amorphous descriptor, “local” to the Willamette Valley mainly referred to Oregon-grown ingredients brought to the state by American settlers of European descent, things like hazelnuts, pears, even wine grapes themselves. And those ingredients—as well as ones truly native to the Pacific Northwest, like Chinook and chanterelles—were often presented in a European context, most often French or Italian. Thus, some culinary tropes developed within the wine country restaurant, which now feel (perhaps unfairly) dated: hazelnut and pear salads with Rogue Creamery blue cheese, pastas or risottos with truffles or morels, cedar plank salmon, desserts dotted with marionberries or Oregon hood strawberries, depending on the time of year.
But as the Willamette Valley grows, attracting chefs from cities like Portland or culinary destinations like Napa, the way chefs think about local food has expanded, shifted. For chef Jack Strong at the Allison Inn & Spa, serving local food means using both produce grown in the hotel’s garden and Native foods long foraged and fished by Willamette Valley area tribal communities. “Farm to table” is far more than a metaphor for Grounded Table’s Sarah Schafer; she’ll wander her restaurant group’s vegetable plots while designing dishes. All the while, chefs like Kari Shaughnessy or Haley and Brendan Byer are presenting Oregon-grown fruits and vegetables with the help of a global pantry, leaning on Japanese and Tunisian flavor profiles, to name a few. And, while many of these restaurants are clearly designed for a tasting menu format, others are intentionally approachable, be it a bakery serving smoked steelhead–topped bagels or a pub smoking meatloaf and portobello mushrooms. And so, dining in the Willamette Valley has become seriously fun, offering a new story—homages paid, but wholly original.
Sarah Schafer, Grounded Table and the Pub
Before she began smoking meatloaf at the Pub in McMinnville, before she started rolling pasta dough at sibling restaurant Grounded Table, and even before she was frying chicken at her former Portland restaurant Irving Street Kitchen, Sarah Schafer worked at some of New York’s most famous Michelin–starred restaurants—Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park. But she left it behind to move to Portland, to serve unfussy food with the tells of a high-end chef’s pedigree; pig’s head croquettes are “tater tots,” for instance. Eventually, she landed in the Willamette Valley to steer the kitchen at the nonchalantly elegant restaurant Grounded Table (formerly known as Humble Spirit) and, as of 2025, its new sibling cocktail bar, the Pub. Both exist within the universe of the multifaceted, farm-fueled hospitality group the Ground. The hope, in her words, was to “walk the walk” of farm-to-table cooking.
And walk it she does, traipsing through the Ground’s own farms, peeping spring peas and late-season Jimmy Nardello peppers to scheme dishes. Since Schafer took over the kitchen at Grounded Table in 2024, she’s kept a fierce grip on the driving ethos of the restaurant— nothing overly pretentious, always rooted in deliciousness—while making it her own. Opening the Pub, she gave Grounded Table’s more casual bent its own dedicated space, even adapting the cacophonously crispy fried chicken she developed at Irving Street Kitchen for a sandwich with farm pickles. In turn, Grounded Table has more room to breathe, owning its grace and sophistication without losing its nostalgia. In the spring, pasta with ham and peas came with housemade cavatelli, a classic combo elevated with a judicious touch of fresh mint; meadowlake hay custard with fennel and rhubarb conjured spring mornings in the backyard, evocative but not obvious. “I want to be soulful,” Schafer says, “but I want to add some elegance.” —Brooke Jackson-Glidden
Haley & Brendan Byer, Alea
Wild yeast fueled Haley and Brendan Byer’s love story, first sparked in the kitchen of a Napa restaurant. They connected by comparing notes over sourdough starters and, later, made late-night loaves—post–dinner service for Brendan and pre–baking shift for Haley. Now, the fruit of their fermentation-fueled partnership is on the menu at their buzzy new bakery and café in McMinnville, Alea…