Can a single seat inspire a restaurant?
Jeff Vejr, owner of Northeast Portland wine bar Les Caves, has been eating in the intimate dining room above Cellar Door Coffee Roasters for more than a decade. He first climbed the staircase near Southeast 11th Avenue and Harrison Street when it was 2nd Story, again when it was Fenrir, then reached quasi-regular status at Willow, where his preferred perch was the far end of the chef’s counter, near the kitchen.
So when the space became available last summer, Vejr snatched it up without knowing precisely what it would become.
“I’m a sucker for intimate locations,” says Vejr, likening his upcoming restaurant here to his time managing the brick-walled Northeast Portland wine bar Alu. “You can’t buy this aesthetic and feel. It would cost so much money to try to replicate these uneven walls, this weird plaster and lath.”
Vejr’s first call was to Joel Stocks, the former Holdfast Dining co-chef, who has wowed diners with his and wife Emily’s pop-up series Jem, hosted these past two summers at their Northeast Portland garage.
“Jeff reached out late last summer,” Joel Stocks said. “Jem was going great, but I always wanted to get back to a traditional restaurant environment. We came and looked at the space, and it was the first time I walked through here, and it was like, ‘Oh my God.’ The creaky floor. The old windows.”
And now, a plan. Later this month, Vejr and Stocks will open L’Orange, a wine-focused restaurant channeling the warmth of the Western Mediterranean, with wines and dishes from Southern France to the Italian Riviera. Think cured anchovies with shaved fennel and apricot-orange jam. Grilled cabbage and salt cod brandade in a brown butter dressing. Mussels and clams in tarragon butter with a mini baguette from Little T bakery on the side.
L’Orange will launch by the end of the month as an a la carte operation with affordable wines and mains including duck, pork and sturgeon for less than $30, all part of Vejr’s sense that diners could use a little Old Portland value.
“(I’ve been) thinking back on the early days of Paley’s Place, Park Kitchen, Carafe, Kir, or Bar Avignon: places you could go in and get a really good glass of wine and a meal at a reasonable price,” Vejr says. “That’s something that we’ve gone away from.”
An early look at the opening menu reveals 10 savory dishes — Vejr and Stocks seem especially excited about a crab crepe and its optional caviar add-on — and a handful of desserts — a chocolate mousse tartlet with torched meringue, say, or a strawberry clafoutis with lemon balm ice cream. Additionally, Stocks and his team plan to add weekly specials, some featuring Duroc pigs raised by his own cousins in Grants Pass. That could mean a boudin blanc sausage with green garlic sauerkraut or six bone-in pork chops with a peppercorn sauce. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Braised pork with fava and pocha beans, harissa and black olive from L’Orange, an upcoming wine-focused restaurant drawing inspiration from the Western Mediterranean.Courtesy of Emily Stocks
Stocks is particularly excited about his kitchen crew, with longtime Coquine sous chef Nick Duff and former La Luna Cafe chef Ben Shaw, who he first worked with at the original Noble Rot space.
“Both of those guys could clearly be running their own kitchens, but they took my call and wanted to start this project with me,” Stocks said. “I’m pretty excited. In this climate where everyone’s talking about how hard it is to find staff, I’ve basically got a whole kitchen of veterans.”
Eventually, the restaurant’s 7-seat bar will be used for a Friday-Saturday tasting menu, tentatively dubbed Telegram, after a previous use for the space. L’Orange’s dining room and lounge area will remain open with around 20 seats combined for guests looking for an experience as simple as a bowl of spiced hazelnuts and a glass of wine.
The wine list will be familiar to fans of Vejr’s work at Les Caves, not to mention his pairings at Holdfast, the restaurant Stocks ran with co-chef Will Preisch behind nearby Deadshot cocktail bar until its pandemic-forced closure. L’Orange’s list will lean more toward classics, Vejr says, with wines from the coastal Mediterranean, Burgundy and some “really aggressive higher end glass pours” — this from the man who once offered a daily $5 glass at Les Caves.
L’Orange will also pour wines from Ovum, whose co-founder John House is a partner at L’Orange, and Golden Cluster, Vejr’s own label.
New decor includes a rainbow of Le Creuset lids, pale green paint inspired by another Le Creuset color only available in France and mirrored tiles with incandescent light that lend the bar area a copper-colored glow. But the first public sign that new life would soon inhabit the upstairs restaurant came in the former of an actual sign, slim and orange, with the restaurant’s name in capital letters running down the side of L’Orange’s old building.
“When Portland does things right, we can really over deliver on space, food and price,” Vejr says. “Here at L’Orange we want to bring back that sense of value, that Old Portland feel.”
L’Orange hopes to serve dinner from 5 to 11 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday starting before the end of June at 2005 S.E. 11th Ave., 503-880-5682, lorangepdx.com. Note: Because of its staircase, L’Orange is not ADA accessible.
Read more:
Langbaan, Holdfast Dining and Portland’s year of the pop-up
Holdfast Dining reimagines fine dining for a fast-casual world
How Portland became the most exciting place in America to drink wine
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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