Approaching the dramatic entrance to Antica Terra, one gets the sense that something special will be happening inside. During a recent lunchtime visit, a tunneling hallway lined with boards of ink-stained cedar siphoned me from the bright sunlight of Oregon September into a moody, barrel-lined chamber. A former sheep barn outside the town of Amity, transformed in 2024 by the architecture studio West of West, the space is ringed by candlelit tasting rooms, each table piled with custom ceramics and sheepskin throws.
Each course of the wine and food pairing, which Antica Terra calls “A Very Nice Lunch,” held a mirror to this part of Oregon: the rich soils of the Willamette Valley, the fertile dip between the Cascades and the Coast Range, and the Pacific Ocean just an hour’s drive west. There were Tidepoint oysters and pickled Oregon sardines, smoky chicken hearts, cedar salmon with sweet-earthy burdock, and Wagyu with roasted estate grapes. A striking platter of local crudités included sweet, tender carrots, crisp pole beans, peaches, blackberries, and bouquets of broccoli rabe.
Being a tasting, the lunch ultimately served as a canvas for Antica Terra’s dazzling wines. But that the food itself is worth traveling for was affirmed when, in 2025, chef Timothy Wastell was recognized with a James Beard Award—and a sign that national attention is catching up to what’s been in motion for a few years now. The Willamette Valley, already a world-class wine region, is now also one of the country’s best places to eat.
Back to the Land
Hayward chef and recent James Beard Award semifinalist Kari Shaughnessy moved to the area in early 2020. She’d worked in San Francisco for much of her career, but was in search of a place with a smaller-town feel when an old boss, who had relocated to Portland, suggested the Willamette Valley. “‘There’s a lot of cool things happening in wine country,’” Shaughnessy recalls him saying. She thought: “Maybe there’s something for me there.”…