Get your Heart warmed at the Common Table!

Last Sunday on a snowy morning at the Common Table as I opened up for brunch

six ladies came in and asked for a menu. I gently explained that on Sundays we do brunch

in a buffet style. The women took a seat and one woman came up to the counter asking

what the price was for brunch? I replied that it was $15 and came with coffee and tea.

Still damp from the snow falling outside she hesitated then said, “well, my girlfriends

and I always go out for breakfast and we never pay more than $10! “Well,” I said not

wanting her party to leave, ”Where do you all go”? I added that our brunch was local

and organic, having everything from lox to fresh fruit and spinach salads, not to mention

the awesome Pumpkin Coconut French toast, veggie Bennies and regular Benedicts.

I quietly added that I felt we offered a comparable product as other restaurants here in

Bend such as the McKay Cottage and Victorian Café. The party decided to stay and I was

pleased to see them giving us a try.

Their table happily giggled for it was one of the ladies birthdays. I continued

with my usual tasks when I noticed three young street kids heading in our doors to warm up

a bit from a cold night out in the snow. I knew the boys and said hello, one of them

asked for our bathroom key. Just as I was going to bring them some donated grace tea,

I noticed the record needed flipping (yes! We have an awesome record player too!).

I ran over, and as I was flipping the record the women who had nearly walked out, snuck up and whispered “Do

you know these boys?” I said yes, they were good people just really economically challenged

and homeless at this time. The woman hesitated and looked very deep into my eyes, then

stated quietly, “I want to buy the three of them brunch, but don’t tell them it’s me. I

just want to see their face when you give it to them, but please don’t make a big deal

out of it, they don’t need to know its me.”

The young man came out of the bathroom to join his two friends, one of them was

a little wet from the conditions he had endured all night. I gave them a moment as they

sat down at the common table to warm up some more. I came over and told them that a

wonderful patron of the Common Table wanted to buy the three of them brunch. They

literally squealed with excitement and one guy said “we get coffee too?” I said you

bet you do, go wash up and grab a plate. I had never seen kids move so fast. It was a

beautiful moment for humanity, tears almost came to my eyes as I watched them pile

up there plates with our healthy organic local breakfast. Their smiles warmed the heart of

the woman who had anonymously paid for the meal, and mine too! With all the crazy happenings

and struggles challenging America right now, at least for today I knew our world was going to be all right here in

Bend . Thank you Common Table for inspiring us all to be better people.

Darla Turk 3/25/11 Bend, Oregon

Owning a cafe is a dream of many folks. A place to let your creativity and soul shine. The ultimate venue of hosting people.
After six months in the business, it is my observation that running a cafe is more like being a farmer than hosting a fabulous dinner party for friends. Everyday is long hours and countless chores. Last night I left the cafe at midnight, put the cloth napkins in the wash, and awoke needing to put the napkins in the dryer. This morning when I arrived at the cafe at 9am, my to do list included mounting a light for the specials chalkboard (the battery operated model I mounted was junk), and installing a shelf in the kitchen. As I attended to these chores in the quiet hours before opening, the beer line cleaner named April arrived. She had trouble reinserting the Guinness tap, and in the process of helping fix the problem, I sprayed enough stout on my sweater to smell like beer the rest of the day.
It is just before 9pm as I sit at the bar writing the cafe blog and I am experiencing the reason why people dream of opening a cafe – the and energy of people gathering and sharing around food and drink.
The books from the day will need to be balanced at closing and the napkins put into the wash at midnight, and 7am will be wake-up time – be careful what you dream for.

Changes in Latitudes Changes in Attitudes —
Get into Common Table for Jimmy Buffet night – we will be spinning JB Lps – and do a little chuggin’ for charity tonight. Cheeseburgers on the menu for sure.

Writing a blog post on listening is ironic. Yet, a blog functioning well is a listening tool. I write, you consider and respond, we engage. Listening to one another.

It is the challenge of our day to listen and engage meaningfully with one another.

Common Table intends to make the table available for meaningful engagement.

City Club meets at CT every Friday 10am-12 for dialogue around the issues of our day.

The Common Table is open every day for the practice of gathering around the table and listening to one another.

The start-up of anything significant takes an enormous amount of energy, time, inspiration, resilience, determination, thick skin, cooperation, courage, and maybe most of all – revitalization, that is, if the project is to continue well with energy and imagination. Today I took a run for the first time in a long time. Running is one thing that comes easy to me. I can go out for an hour run after a few months break, just as easily as I can get back on my bicycle and pedal. So today I went for a rejuvenating run in the fresh snow with my dog Bela. From my house just across the street from the Deschutes River, Bela and I ran up the canyon trail along the river bank. At first I was simply trying to remember what it is like to run, forcing myself not to turn around, perhaps to attend to something more productive or eat something tasty. After twenty minutes or so I began getting into a rhythm and after a ways we turned around and began back the way we had come. I noticed the geese fishing quite near the river bank, and I was amused by their head first dives into the water with their tail in the air, feet pedaling for equanimity. I then noticed a small black water fowl with a crest at the back of its head. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but supposed the duck had a red eye, and it dove into the water out of sight for several moments, and then popped out of the water with a little shake of the crest. Each time the duck dove I imagined what it was doing under water, maybe chasing small fish, or canoodling for creatures hiding under rocks. After a few moments of watching, and wondering and squinting over just what sort of fowl this was and considering its fascinating life, I began to realize that being outdoors along the river was exactly what I should be doing more of.

I arrived at Common Table at 6 a.m. this morning to write-up the days menus in consultation with our chef, Matt Mulder. Here is what we came up with for today:
Common Table
Farmhouse Cooking

Breakfast Plates
All Common Table Breakfasts come with choice of house potatoes, toast, biscuit or grits

Common Table Eggs, any style 6
Common Table Porridge, steel cut oats with baked boche pears 6

Common Table Parmesan Cheese Grits, with bacon (veg option) 8
Egg and Bacon, with roasted balsamic tomato on local baguette 7

Char-grilled vegetable salad with eggs in bread case 7

Simple Breakfast Burrito, with roasted potatoes, beans, chile,
sour-cream and cilantro 9
Croque Madame, challa bread, Juniper Grove otentique goat cheese, sliced ham, Dijon mustard topped with poached egg and house made hollandaise 10
Basil Scrambled Eggs, with Juniper Grove otentique goat cheese 7

Common Table Daily Quiche, house made whole wheat and butter crust, whipped eggs and three seasonal ingredients 7

Sides
House-potatoes 3, seasonal fruit 3, toast 2, scones, nitrate free bacon 3, ham 3, grits 2, pancake 3, one egg any style 2, slice of quiche 4, corn bread 3

Drinks
Coffee 2
Tea 2
Orange Juice 2/3
Cranberry 2/3
Tomato 2/3
Grapefruit 2/3
Milk 2/3

Common Table Bloody Mary 6.5
Screwdriver 5.50
Mimosa 6
Bellini (peach schnapps, pomegranate, ½ shot vodka) 6.50
Kir Royale (champagne, sugar, bitters, lemon twist) 6

Common Table
Rustic Farm to Table Cooking

Lunch Plates
All Common Table lunches come with choice of fruit, salad, potato torta (thin layered potatoes with cheese)

Roast Beef Sandwich, with onions on toasted local bread 10

Simple Ham and Cheese Sandwich, with tomato, onions, and greens, topped with rosemary aioli (oil and garlic) 9

Bacon Lettuce Tomato, on toasted fresh local bread, with house-made mayonnaise 9

Chicken Coleslaw Sandwich, open face on fresh local bread 9

Croque Madame, challa bread, Juniper Grove Farm otentique goat cheese, sliced ham, Dijon mustard topped with poached egg and house made hollandaise 10

Daily Quiche, whole wheat and butter crust, whipped eggs and three seasonal ingredients 7

Simple Burrito, with roasted potatoes, beans, chile,
sour-cream and cilantro 9

Pizzette, olive-oil and garlic base, cherry tomato, fresh herbs, ricotta, finely grated parmesan 5

Pizzette, olive-oil and garlic base, ham, morenay (béchamel and gruyere), sage pesto 5

Salad

Brown rice salad with soy dressing 7

Red cabbage, Spanish onion and seasonal fruit 7

‘Wild Weed’ salad with parmesan 7

Chicken, apple & hazelnut salad 8

Simple green house salad 4

Drinks

Ice-tea 2
Pepsi 1.50
Diet Pepsi 1.50
Sierra Mist 1.50
Cranberry 1.50
Orange 1.50
Grapefruit 1.50
Tomato 1.50
Coffee 2
Tea 2

Fermented Drinks

Draft
Pabst Blue Ribbon 1.75/2.25
Mirror Pond 3.50/4.75
Bend Brewery Seasonal 3.25/4.75
Three Creeks IPA 3.25/4.75
Boneyard Black 13 3.25/4.75

Bottles
Dog Fish 60 minute IPA 4.50
Paulaner Oktoberfest 4
Rogue Dead Guy Ale 4
Mirror Pond 3.50
Coors Light 2.50
Kaliber (non-alcoholic) 3.00

This morning at 8 a.m. I was screwing hickory table tops to their bases. Sawdust and cardboard boxes scattered at 10:30 a.m. No food stuffs in the kitchen at 11:30 a.m.
At 11:31 a.m. Common Table’s first two guests arrived. At 11:32 a.m. food arrived at the doors of 150 NW Oregon Ave. At 11:50 a.m. the first plate of food arrived on the black walnut common table. And it was delicious. Over the course of the afternoon many people, all friends or relatives, streamed through the doors and ate and chatted. The staff did a brilliant job on their first day, from the kitchen to the servers to the bar tends. The several volunteers did a brilliant job too. It was a terrific day at Common Table and a very memorable one, to be savored, until tomorrow evening, when CT hosts all of the contractors who helped make the amazing space become a reality!

Common Table received the first publication addressed to the organization, the August 9th New Yorker. The front cover was typical of summer, a drawing of a stylish woman in a bikini sitting next to a pool, her hand held device had just slipped out of her hand into the water, no doubt a widely held summer happening in this day and age. On the inside, a David Sedaris personal history story called Standing By: fear, loathing, flying. The usual hilarious Sedaris, I laughed aloud several times. I rarely laugh while reading, but maybe always with Sedaris. I read a long article in The Political Scene questioning whether the U.S. Senate is beyond hope. In Shouts and Murmurs I brushed up on just what the WikiLeaks leaked; Iggy Pop and his current state; and oysters in Louisiana. By this point my flight had landed in San Francisco and I was the wiser for the hour plus flight. The hope is that Common Table subscriptions to The New Yorker and other periodicals will provide an opportunity for people in Bend Oregon to expose themselves to great writing about a wide variety of topics and in so doing know more and have a broader perspective. Common Table’s mission statement is to Feed All People, Cherish the Earth, and Pursue Awareness. The New Yorker helps us to pursue awareness. Please gift Common Table with your favorite periodical!