Restaurant Review: Swine Dining BBQ & Brew, Gresham, Oregon

"I was a Highwayman.

Along the coach roads I did ride"

There is so much about Swine Dining BBQ & Brew in Gresham, Oregon that is unassuming, from the decidedly non-rustic strip mall location (next to a Chipotle) to the paper plates on which the food is served that one could almost unassume that the food could be good.  But, once you pass through the glass doors, you pass into that olfactory paradise known as smoking meat.  It permeates the place.  Girls fainted before Frank Sinatra, threw their underwear to Tom Jones, and screamed for the Beatles.  The noses of barbecue lovers will have a similar reaction.

"I was a sailor,

I was born upon the tide"

There is no wait staff.  Friendly counter staff take the orders, and bring out the food.  Sometimes, the owner, Dan, takes his turn at the cash register.  

I was lured in for the first time when Swine Dining first opened after watching a Michael Pollan's series called "Cooked."  One of the episodes was called "Fire," which covered with lavish cinematography the pursuit of pit barbecue.  I wanted some.  I stopped in with a few friends.  I had the brisket and the chicken.  I was a little disappointed at the time by the dryness of both meats.  I had planned on not returning, but something magical happened.  The owner brought out samples of something called "Burnt Ends."  Burnt Ends are the ends of the brisket that are closest to the heat.  They were indeed charred all over, but they were moist, and delicious, and smokey, and nummy in the most addictive sense of the word.  They have them every Friday.  I have returned for them regularly ever since.  

"I was a dam builder,
Across the river deep and wide."

I'm happy to report that the brisket and chicken were dry only that once, and I assume that it was because the restaurant was very new.  I was there today, which is a Tuesday, with my stepson, and ordered the brisket, and the pulled pork.  Both were melt-in-your-mouth smokey wonderful, as they have been every time since that first visit.  I use the spicy BBQ sauce, by the way. You should too.  The fries had a good scald on them, not anemic or limp, and they passed the salt test.

Truly good french fries require only salt.  Ketchup is okay to spruce up bad fries, and sometimes sort of good ones when they start getting cold, but really good fries never need any.  This is a personal opinion, and I know that to some out there, ketchup is a requirement.  Try the salt test.  Get to know fries in their native habitat.

"I fly a starship,
Across the universe divide."

The music at Swine Dining is decidedly country.  I'm an old-school rock-n-roller, but there are some country songs that have left deep and abiding marks in my consciousness.  "The Highwaymam" by The Highwymen: Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash is one such song.  It played while I was there today.  While my stepson ate his "All in the Corral (which he described as 'a work of genius'), and talked about distant worlds, and characters from the books he is writing, I heard the opening lines of "The Highwayman," and though that it was just about perfect.

Gary L. Quay
July 31, 2018.

Getting Started as a Food Blogger

First off, I need to start taking better pictures of food.

Second, what do I have to add to the burgoning field of food blogging?  I'm not really a chef.  Why do I think I can run with the lions of gastronomic edification?  I have three skills that could prove helpful.

1. I have a background in food and restaurants.
2. I have a creative writing degree.
3. I'm a professional photographer.

I also love to cook, but here comes the rub: I don't want to spend all day at it.
I also love good restaurants.
I was a foodie when we were called "gourmands."  Thank goodness for change.

My food awakening came with a 1978 visit to a higher breed of restaurant in Reading, PA called Stokesay Castle.  The food of my upbringing was pedestrian.  There was no garlic, no hot peppers, no herbs but oregano and basil, and very little variety.  It was the age of baloney sandwiches, breakfast cereals, and white bread.  Stokesay's was a myth to us.  We were diner folks.

Now, sometimes a diner can be a wonderful experience.  I don't want to put them down.  I just think that there is more to life than just diners.

Stokesay's was where I discovered garlic, and the idea that broccoli could taste good, and didn't have to be olive green to be cooked properly.  I had my first Fillet Mignon there.  It was medium rare.  I was never the same after that.

My reason for visiting was a field trip during my participation in a vocational school (called a Vo-Tech) for Restaurant Practice: a three-year program we called "Food Prep."  It was not a culinary institute, but we had Mr. Albright, who was known as local gourmet chef who turned down the limelight to teach the next generation. We were high school students, so the bar wasn't so high.  I learned a lot, but I would require a lot of maturing, and some of life's hard knocks, to become a decent cook.

After a series of low-end restaurant jobs, and the realization that the depressed economy of the time was not going to improve my employment situation anytime soon, I enlisted in the Army.  With the description of Army cooks boiling prime ribs in "Apocalypse Now! by the character "Chef" fresh in my mind, I opted to go to radar school.  The Army got me out of Central Pennsylvania, and into the idea of actually going to college.

I had picked up a desire to write in high school, so I decided to go to college for creative writing.  This was clearly not going to help my job prospects.  I wanted to become a professor, and teach college students.  As if fate was listening, and had different ideas, I got involved in campus political organizations way too deeply, and my grades suffered.  I graduated with an extremely high 'C', so when it came time to go to grad school, my dean had some advice.  "Go out into the world, get a job, and watch everyone.  After 10 years, write the Great, American Novel."  So, I parlayed my Vo-Tech into restaurant jobs to get me by for a few years.  I moved to Oregon in the meantime, and managed a couple more restaurants, opened my own small fleet of espresso stands, went bankrupt, and by 1999 found myself working on trains in Portland.  All the while, my writing improved.  I went from fantasy and Sci-Fi to murder mysteries to blogging about photography.  I have a novel in the can, but I haven't tried to publish it.  Maybe soon.

In 2018, I find myself wanting to put my acquired passions, skills, and  after 20 years listening to shows like "The Splendid Table," and watching "America's test Kitchen," and "Good Eats," I want to give it a spin myself.

So, stay tuned for more.  I live in Oregon's Columbia Gorge, and regularly inhabit local restaurants.  I may even throw in some pictures of the local scenery.

Thanks for reading.

Gary L. Quay