Review: Art is on ‘The Menu’ as biting satire serves up some mean cuisine
‘The Menu’
Bitten by the food bug and obsessed with the restaurants that serve it, chef and executive chef Tom Collum became a local hero in 2007 after opening his first restaurant, “Chez Tom,” on Portland’s main drag. The restaurant quickly became a success and won the Oregon Chefs Association’s first regional award.
Tom recently became a local hero again — this time with a new book called “The Menu,” a biting satire that shows off Portland’s best and brightest and how they do it. “The menu” is on the list, with “The Restaurant,” “Garden of the Gods, ” and “Coffee and Chocolate” rounding out the top four.
— John Rummel
What We’re Reading
Review: ‘The Restaurant’
by John Rummel, The Oregonian
Tom Collum has a knack for being right about the culinary offerings of Portland.
Collum, a chef who’s built a national following with a dozen restaurants in the central Oregon city, had built his first restaurant, called “Chez Tom,” in 2007. Now he’s back with “The Restaurant,” which he calls “Portland’s culinary Mecca.”
“I don’t come to town for great restaurants,” Collum says. “I come and I look at restaurants and I try to learn. I’ll be honest and say, ‘I don’t know how they do this.’ “
This is Collum’s third book, and the second he’s written during the last year, as Collum has been on the fast track to the kind of success that often happens only once in a lifetime. “The Restaurant” was released recently at a time when chefs and restaurateurs alike are under siege.
— Michael Russell, The Oregonian
Praise for Tom’s “The Restaurant”:
I’ve always been intrigued by the food of the Pacific Northwest. I love Portland’s food, and I find its restaurants and chefs to