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.

I have a confession. I am Chipotle‘s biggest fan. As in, the brand owned by the McDonald’s corporation. As in, the big-as-your-head, freshyly-mixed burritos over on Lancaster Drive served an the Aztec-industrial chic dining room.

Well, I’ve found something to assuage my guilt.

Last Friday we found ourselves heading back to Salem from Woodburn after a slightly out-of-the-way Craigslist pickup. We had our stomachs set on Word of Mouth, but just as we drove past the entrance towards the parking lot, a server flipped the front door sign from open to “closed.” Wah wah wah.

So we headed to Venti’s. And our large-lobed, big-hearted Venti guy cocked his head apologetically and pointed us towards the bar stairs because our favorite stop for crunchy hippie food closes its upstairs kitchen at 9:00 (they do offer a limited bar menu, which while delicious, doesn’t quite fit the bill for your green curry cravings).

Wah wah wah.

Um… gelato? Um… pizza? Um… Chipotle?

Ta da! La Perla, the slightly bare bones but strangely elegant little Mexican place in the Reed Opera House — the one with the best tourist location in all of Salem — stays open until 11:00 p.m. on Fridays.

Pretty rockin’ for a place that doesn’t even serve alcohol.

We kinda love La Perla because there are always teenagers hanging out there — as if this place, in offering no beer or wine or even a margherita, can be a good, cheap place for teens to hang out on a Friday night. When I was a kid, all we had was TCBY.

But we really love La Perla because the food is the kind of great Mexican street food that you could get from the best street vendors in Latin America — crisp, fresh vegetables, perfectly spiced, salsa made fresh a couple of times a day, fish tacos, which, while not as big as your head, are so flavorful that you’ll wonder where the owner Marco gets his tomatoes in winter.

And a taco costs 99 cents. I always order two and then end up ordering another one.

I drink my tacos down with a big glass of horchata, a cloyingly sweet and surprisingly addictive rice milk that I haven’t seen offered in a Mexican restaurant since I lived in State College, PA.

We left La Perla around 10:30. The streets were empty, a soft rain had started, and we were full. Happily, merrily, exhaustingly full.