Register Guard Feature Article

Here's the article in Eugene's Register Guard which featured our restaurant. There was an IMMEDIATE increase in business!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heavenly haven of Oregon cuisine | Our Daily Bread Restaurant in Veneta serves up original and eclectic recipes in an old, little white church with rustic charm.

By Kelly Fenley

Register Guard special publications

Photos by Amanda Smith

Appeared in print: Wednesday, Nov 11, 2009

---

News: Last Seven Days: Story

---

Out in Veneta — yes, that on-your-way-to-the-coast little town in the fertile fold of wine and farm country — lies a blissful sanctuary for artisan dining.

Our Daily Bread Restaurant in the old Pentecostal church serves its flock with homebaked breads and desserts, original house specialties like sugar-cured prime rib and marinated salmon seasoned in white wine cream sauce, and dozens of wines from vineyards just a rain cloud or bend away in the country road.

No need for your Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes here, where the dining is at once casual and elegant. There’s an old pew or two at the assorted wood tables, but most folks sit on old-style wood chairs, warmed by a pellet stove and/or little electric space heaters placed along the well-worn wood floors.

By day, stained-glass windows, all in the same chapel pattern of blue, orange/red and clear panes, brighten the mood for breakfast and lunch. By night, antique-style pendant lights hanging from the restaurant’s exposed rafters are dimmed, setting the stage for candlelit dinners with linen napkins.

Either that or celebrating a Friday night football game over original-recipe onion rings and homespun hamburgers, as in hand-squeezed patties between fresh-baked buns. “We don’t often describe ourselves as fine dining,” enlightens Tabitha Eck, who, along with her parents, Timothy and Catharine Perkins, owns and operates the 70-seat restaurant with adjoining country store/wine shop and even a banquet room in the old parsonage. “We reach a fairly broad cut of the population, so we call it ‘family fine dining.’”

But it’s certainly more cafe by day than at night, when the Northwest fare gets pretty eclectic — “even for a dinner menu,” Eck says. Almost all the original recipes are steeped in southern Willamette Valley agriculture and slaughter.

“We try to stay fresh and natural,” sums up dad and head chef Tim. “We make our own bread … and none of it has preservatives. We keep MSG out of the house; nothing is artificial. We try to be authentic, close to the ground — fresh, real good. Nothing that’s going to foul somebody’s system.”

Family hearty

A family mission down to the Perkins’ youngest of five children, Our Daily Bread Restaurant fits heart and soul with a down-home, handcrafted, “wholesome country experience” promotion in west Lane, Linn and Benton counties.

“Oregon Country Trails” entices city folk with self-guided tours of wineries, farms, galleries, restaurants, fiber shops, meat markets, produce fields and other artisan enterprises in the Fern Ridge, Long Tom River and Alsea Valley areas (www.oregoncountry trails.com).

At Our Daily Bread, the handcrafting includes chef Tim’s Northwest menu specialties and head-baker Catharine’s artisan breads and desserts.

Tim credits his “greatest strengths” to mentoring from 10 or so certified chefs during his culinary career. “It sounds cliché, but I do have really high standards,” he says. “I don’t serve stuff that isn’t right.”

Consider his prime rib from the Childers Meat Co. in Eugene. “The way we do it isn’t the common way,” Tim reveals. “I take a knife and poke holes across the top to puncture the sinews and let the flavors seep in.” Lathered in Worcestershire sauce, a secret blend of seasonings and smoke-flavored sugar cure, the prime rib is slow cooked for what Tim calls “a country outdoor barbecue flavor.”

His other claims to fame include tenderized, roasted chicken breast stuffed with dried cranberries, hazelnuts, spinach and feta cheese, and one of his personal favorites, the house chicken borscht.

Other dinner specialties range from fish, oysters and crab cakes to pepper steaks, burgers, pastas and — the restaurant’s latest — foccacias topped with signature sauces and Mozzarella cheese.

Menu prices run from less than $10 to more than $20, and every dinner meal comes with Catharine and crew’s homebaked breads.

Bakery boom

Rising customer demand has Catharine’s convection oven at full tilt these days.

“We don’t make our own bagels or English muffins, but everything else that can be possibly baked and that we serve, we do ourselves,” she says.

Three mainstay breads — whole wheat, French and cinnamon swirl — cover most orders for sandwiches and French toast as well as supplying the dinner menu and take-out counter. Specialty breads from the in-house bakery may include walnut, Parmesan herb, cinnamon raisin and an occasional multi-grain.

Save room for dessert: carrot cake, cheese cakes, bread pudding and pies like lemon cloud, chocolate cream and marionberry.

“I think the majority of our recipes — probably 90 percent — are developed just for the restaurant,” Catharine says.

Culinary calling

Since washing dishes at his dad’s restaurant as a kid, Tim had wanted a place of his own. He found a culinary soulmate in Catharine — in fact the pair met and fell in love while working at the Twin Inns restaurant in Carlsbad, Calif.

College degrees aside, Tim became a career chef while Catharine remained a baker at heart even during her career as a social worker.

Yet the couple still had to whip up enough nerve to buy Our Daily Bread, which already had been renovated into a bakery and smaller scale restaurant over the previous decade by former owner Rick DeAngelo.

“As Tim and I talked, we felt like what we were led to do is own a business — particularly a restaurant,” says Catharine. “That’s my story, so here we are.”

As are the kids.

Eldest daughter Tabitha, 26, bowed out of her University of Oregon studies in pre-med and dance to join the fold as catering and special events manager. Like Mom and Dad before her, she found romance at work, marrying affable waiter Marshall Eck about two years ago. “He married the boss,” she muses.

All the other Perkins siblings — Alexandra Wood, 24, Kasia Wood, 20 (they married brothers), Jesselyn, 19, and Joseph, 17 — also work at the restaurant to some degree. A family that works together stresses out together, but mom Catharine loves the “absolute blessing” of seeing her grown children nearly every day.

In a cozy little old church, nonetheless.

“It’s a wonderful building,” Catharine says. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I always have a good feeling being here.”

Good and wholesome, in fact.

Staff writer Kelly Fenley may be contacted at sp.feedback@registerguard.com.

All in the Family

I thought this an opportune moment to write a bit about the family relationships for all of you ODB fans out there. Some of us operate behind the scences, so you may not know all of the players that work so hard to make your experiences are the ODB so complete.

Many of you know that our restaurant is family owned, but we give new meaning the to term 'family run.' Our Patriarch and Matriarch, Tim and Catharine Perkins, have five children all of whom have or do work in the restaurant. At present, all seven of us work in the restaurant save the one sister who is volunteering in South America. (Check out her story at http://theperukidsproject.blogspot.com.) The oldest three siblings are married and our spouses have also worked in the restaurant for special events or do presently hold positions there. Here's the run down of who's who and who does what at the ODB.

Timothy (Dad) is our Chef as well as our go-to for any kind of repair or maintenace.
Catharine (Mom) is our baker, bookkeeper, general manager, and also waits tables in the evening
Tabitha (me - oldest daughter) am our events manager, bar manager, marketing person, and wait tables during the day with my husband Marshall
Marshall is married to Tabitha and is our full time day server
Alex (second oldest) waits tables a few days a week when not busy with her full time job in the city. She is married to Robbie who helps us out on special events.
Kasia (middle child) is our full time day cook and is married to David, brother of Robbie, and also helps out on special events.
Jessie (second youngest) helps out in the dining room and bakery when not in another country.
Joesph (youngest) does dishes on the weekends and generally does the heavy lifting these days.

In addition to the family we have three other staff persons who all hold vital positions within our establishment:

Carolyn - our full time evening server
Jade - our full time dinner and brunch cook
Andrea - our part time baker, part time server as well as cooking on occasion

As you can see, we have a small staff and are a rather close-knit bunch because of it. We pull in outside labor for large events (usually people related in some way to our staff or selves), but we truly are the epitome of a small, family owned and run operation. So now you know!

West Lane News Article

Here's an article printed in this week's edition of the West Lane News, our local paper. They did a great job on the gift shop.

Gift Shop Features Local Goods
By MATT NICHOLSON Of The News
January 1st, 2009



VENETA — Our Daily Bread, one of Veneta’s most unique restaurants, has added a gift shop to a menu of services that already includes weddings and catering. Opened in conjunction with last month’s Christmas Bazaar, the gift shop will both cater to tourists and provide a marketplace for local producers to sell their goods.

The gift shop, called Our Country Store, occupies a small corner of the lower floor of the restaurant’s renovated church. It is stocked with local and regional products including gift baskets, cheeses, baked goods and a wide selection of wines from vineyards all across the Southern Willamette Valley.

Some of the first goods to be carried in the shop came from the restaurant’s next-door neighbor, the Farmers’ Market, which is held on the lot adjacent to Our Daily Bread. Tabitha Eck, who co-owns the restaurant with her parents, says the restaurant’s proximity to the Farmers’ Market has created a valuable partnership between the restaurant and local producers.

“It’s a great connection to have the local growers on board,” says Eck.

Housed inside a renovated church, Our Daily Bread stands out from Veneta’s eateries in more ways than one, with its vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows, wood furniture and warm character. The restaurant’s peaceful, aesthetic atmosphere has made it popular among locals for events ranging from lunchtime gatherings to weddings, but it’s also become something of a destination location for passing tourists. Eck says the restaurant’s unique structure is a big draw for tourists.

“Where have you ever seen a renovated church that has been turned into a restaurant?” says Eck.

Eck says that in the future, she would like to incorporate an art gallery into the gift shop to support local artists. Currently, Our Country Store features a few pieces from a local metal smith and a glassblower. But Eck says she would like to create an expansive gallery with rotating exhibits from local artists. She thinks an art gallery would be a good fit for the restaurant.

“It ties in perfectly with our desire for local (goods), and it ties in with our gift shop, as well,” she says.

Eck says the gift shop carries local and regional goods to support the Willamette Valley’s artisan producers. Eck says the new shop retails goods produced outside the valley only when they aren’t found locally, such as some varieties of red wine. But in keeping with the local emphasis of the restaurant, everything in the gift shop comes from Oregon.

“I try to only go out of the valley if there’s something we don’t have,” Eck says. “ I don’t have anything that’s not Oregon.”

Our Country Store

Time is a precious, precious commodity. There's only so much in a day and it seems like something suffers when you add just one more thing. The nice thing about being in business as a partnership and not a sole proprietor is that you can split up the ultimate responsibilities of business ownership. Well . . . we at the ODB have started a few new endeavours. Catharine will be taking on the wholesale end of the ODB while my personal new area is "Our Country Store."

With its beginnings as our wine shop, "Our Country Store" will house a variety of local and regional products. Our goal is to serve tourists with a gift shop setting while keeping an inventory of products locals will want as well. "Our Country Store" will include an ever increasing inventory of such edible products as nuts, honey,cheeses, jams, our salad dressings, wines, microbrews, chocolates, crackers, and a variety of locally bottled products from Winter Green Farms including spagehtti sauce. We'll also be looking at crafty items as well - metal and woodworking and such. We presently have a line of body products from Triple Tree Farms in Lorane. The possibilities go on and on. I feel like we have only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as vendors, distributors, and craftsmen go.

We also carry with us the heritage of the Veneta Downtown Farmer's Market. For those farmers who sold products in the lot next to us all summer, we are able to provide a year round option for them - especially those products that we can shelf for a while. In collaboration with another market venue and the Farmer's Market, we'll be hosting our own Holiday Bazaar on the weekend of November 21st and 22nd. Its such a huge tradition in Fern Ridge area that there about about 29 other locations happening all on this one weekend! We're expecting a tremendous turnout considering the high level of breakfast and lunch business without having a bazaar - just pass though traffic. Although, we expect to make the real money off of the increased restaurant business, we'll be selling our own host of ODB products - baked goods, gift baskets, and such. Exciting stuff and a great kick off to our own Country Store!

Dinner Theater

Sunday, October 5th we had our first dinner show here at the ODB entitled 'A Little Dinner Music.' A local community theater group, Kaleidoscope, presented an evening of song and food preformed by the New Vision Singers. This is a group Marshall and I sing with on Monday nights, so, as you can imagine, we were quite busy that evening. Between the two of us, we handled the bartending which was much more than we anticipated. We had a FULL HOUSE (actually a little over full due to a few unscheduled guests) with 64 attendees. The audience was composed of about 70% family and friends, so they made for an easy sell. Response was great with the audience laughing and clapping spontaneously throughout the evening.

The format of the event was that of singing waiters. The nine of us who were performing also served the entire meal. Each course was followed by a 5-7 minute set of songs. For those of you who don't know, the restaurant industry is overly populated with artists of all kinds. It's very hard too earn a living in the art world, so artist often fall into the restaurant industry just looking for enough money to pay the bills while they are pursuing their real career. Anyway . . . we were blessed with some very handy performers who also knew their way around the kitchen. The entire evening was a success from everyone's standpoint - the audience, the performers, Lu the Director, and we at the restaurant. Multiple individuals requested we do this again, maybe even do it once a month!

Marshall and I each had a little solo in the big pop medley with me singing a blurb from 'Let's get physical' (yeah, I know) and Marshall singing a bit of 'Spinning Wheel.' At one point the entire cast formed a kick line for a section of the old favorite 'This is it.' Boy did we get a huge response from the audience on that one! Most songs were accompanied by 'planned movement' (not dance) so there was a lot for the audience to take in.


Our kids, Shane and Harmony were in attendance sitting with our parents in the back. The kids have been to all of our rehearsals and knew the songs almost as well as we did. We'd hear them spontaneously break out into to one of the songs in the car or at the dinner table. Makes you wonder what they're singing at school! 'Let's get Physical' does come across quite the same from a three-year-old's mouth. My Mother-in-law tells me that Shane was telling her what was coming up next during the performance and both were often singing along with us.


Practices continue as we're work towards a full-length concert on December 6th. Plans are in the works for future Dinner Shows at the ODB, so stay tuned!

My Baby, My Business

What do you do with your days off? Do they end up being catch-up days? You know, where you catch up on everything around the house that you couldn't do during the workweek. Or do you make sure you do something out of the ordinary like go to the beach or a festival? For us, its always a mix of both. We always end up picking up around the house, but I find it impossible to not use this gift of time together better. (Sunday is my husband's and mine only day off together.) Every once in a while, a day off to just lie around the house is exactly what we need. This weekend was not one of those! What the business demands, the business gets.

Here's the deal when you own and run your own business. A day off is never sacred. You do what needs to be done no matter the day or time, because this is your baby. Yes, your business is a baby that you have to see is fed and rests regularly, cleaned up and dressed properly, held when it wakes up and cries, and taught new skills as it grows. Hopefully, after years of care and training, the 'baby' will grow up and not need so much hands-on care as it learns to take care of itself. This is how I think about it anyway. The end result of having a baby (owning your own business) is not to have a 20-year-old baby that still can't fend for itself without you. Rather you want a healthy and independent individual that you can be proud of and will go out on its own and be successful. Such is the goal of owning a business. Twenty years down the road you shouldn't have to be just as hands-on with the business as you were in the beginning (i.e. 75 hour weeks to keep it running). You want to be able to set back and enjoy the rewards. Well, we are in our third year of ownership here at the ODB. In keeping with the baby analogy, my 'baby' is potty trained, walking and talking on its own, and just learning its limits with authority. This is a time of great growth, tremendous challenges, and wonderful successes. All that to say, we're all still on-call when it comes to the needs of the business and there are no sacred days off.

Getting Started

Let me first start by introducing myself and giving you all the 'speal.' (For those of you who already know me, ignore this introduction.) My name is Tabitha Eck (new last name and still feels funny to see it after my name). I am part owner of Our Daily Bread Restaurant located in Veneta, Oregon which I own with my parents. Our restaurant serves all walks of life from the retired folks to wine tasting tourists. Located in a beautifully renovated country church, we have the perfect location in the middle of Southern Willamette Valley wine country as well as the atmosphere, service, and food to become a well-known destination spot for nearby Eugene residents and out-of-town guests as well.

OK! That's enough business for now. I want this blog to be much more than just yet another marketing scheme. This is a way for our guests (and future guests) to get to know us (mostly me) and our business a little bit better - to be a part of the ODB on a new level. The idea first came to me when I was searching out the owner of a local vineyard on the web and was directed to her personal blog. I felt like I got to know her and the vineyard on a more personal level than any profile I could have located. The more I thought about it, the more I saw a way to reach out to our guests.

Though business will always be a large part of the discussions here, family will be equally important. Our restaurant is the definition of a 'family-owned restaurant.' All four of my siblings have worked in the restaurant at one time or another with three of us still working here full-time. Our patriarch, Timothy, if our chef, while our matriarch, Catharine, splits her focus as much as I by taking on the finances and over seeing the bakery as well as the dining room on occassion. It was here that I met my husband, Marshall, whom I married this last December. I married into a ready-made family with a three year old daughter, Harmony, and a five year old son, Shane. These are the first grandkids and we are all enjoying (most of the time) the changes shifts in relationships like these bring to our business.

I think that is a good intro. Hopefully, you know where I am coming from and where I plan on going. I am sure there will times for venting a bit as well as opportunities for an inside look into our small, family business. I'll keep you posted!