Desperately Seeking Salem

Me: “So, this is a group house.”

Jeff: “Um… what do you mean.”

Me:  “A bunch of you live here together as a group.”

Jeff:  “Well, I live here, and Nate lives here and some other people live here, if that’s what you mean.”

Me: “So, it’s a group house.”

Jeff: “Um, it’s not really like that.”

Well, okay, I wasn’t at a group house last night — that’s what people call a bunch of young, just-out-of-college-aged 20-somethings living together in a house. We called it that in D.C., where I lived with 5 law students during their first year (not recommended), and I bet it’s called that everywhere else. Living in a group house was a rite of passage.

Everybody did it, and no, it was nothing like in Friends.

But in Salem, I have found, if you say someone lives in a “group house,” you are suggesting they belong to that 37% of the city population that makes frequent trips to the State Hospital or who should be stopping  there regularly.

This particular, er, combined living facility has something special about it. It is the site of a frequent event hosted by one Nate Rafn, local food personality and budding one-man media empire.

Nate hosts the television program Living Culture, which tells the secret life of Willamette Valley food (his brother Dan, pictured above in the headscarf, is the videographer). He’s surprisingly poised for a 25-year-old. And he knows how to throw a great, er, group house party.

For a couple of years now, Nate has been holding something he calls Salem’s underground supper club. He invites a couple of dozen people into a house in South Salem and cooks a meal for them featuring a local ingredient.

Last night’s menu:

Romaine with cheddar in a white wine vinaigrette
Barley “risotto” with McK Ranch beef
Chocolate brownie

It’s not often you get to socialize with complete strangers aged 17 to 70, but that’s what happens at the Rafn’s. The only common denominator among the patrons, besides some kind of connection to Nate or Dan, is a love of local foods and a desire to expand the palate.

For Nate, these dinners satisfy his need to have his own restaurant — that’s his ultimate goal, after all.

But for the diners, it’s something else: an early week mixer, a dash of the new, a chance to mingle with local food producers, a feeling that you’ve experienced something extraordinary  for the cost of a donation.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.