By David & Susan Greenberg
Past filbert orchards, past long fences over which horses hung their heads, past a gamboling lamb, past rhododendrons lit by pink blossoms, past farmhouses built when manual typewriters were the height of technology, across the Willamette River, we entered Salem and parked at the Holman Hotel which is so new we almost expected to see torn wrapping paper. The parking valets and front desk clerks were warm smiles, our room had an excellent king bed with a cozy comforter, a pristine bathroom, large towels, bathrobes, a view of the river, and, best yet, daily housekeeping. Ideal.
De-suitcased and de-frazzled, nourishment was vital. Nearby Azul’s Taco House and La Familia Cider, both Latinx owned, share a casual, industrial, space that opens to the outside with massive garage doors. The ciders are made to emulate the flavors of agua frescas. We had a refreshing guava and a tamarind. We ate a queso that came with a vibrant green salsa, plump carnitas tacos, and a salad with carnitas. We savored the caramelized pork.
Replenished, we drove to Benedictine Brewery that serves beer brewed by the monks of Mt. Angel Abbey – every bottle brewed to the glory of God… Taste and Believe. We tasted and we believed. We particularly liked the Dark Night and Tyrant beers, each stygian and well structured with bitter hops.
Infused with its nectar, we visited Mt. Angel Abbey itself, just up the hill. It is a campus overlooking a bucolic landscape, anchored by a Romanesque-style church with a bell tower and a glorious pipe organ, a library, a museum, housing for the monks, classrooms, a bookstore and a coffee shop. It is a serene place to knit up the raveled sleeve of care.
“The abbey museum was originally created as a study aid for the biology department.” To this end it displayed a menagerie of taxidermied animals including a musk-ox, a grizzly bear, a moose, a sea-turtle, and eagles. Also, for those who find Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum edifying, there was a cow and a deer with extra legs, poor fellows. Yet, there was more, an exhibit of campaign bumper stickers from past American presidential campaigns, an arrowhead exhibit, a rock exhibit, an antique camera exhibit, a religious art exhibit, surely making this the foremost biology department museum in the world.
We tipped a preprandial glass of sauvignon blanc at the Holman Hotel’s restaurant, The Sanctuary. It’s a lovely space with a high ceiling and large windows and the social effervescence that makes drinking out so much more gratifying than drinking in.
We strolled to the Cozy Taberna, a Spanish tapas restaurant, to sup. Even before we turned the corner to enter, a burble of happy noise told us that we’d chosen well. And when we saw the line outside we knew that we’d received sage advice to make reservations. They seated us at the bar, right in front of the open kitchen which was ideal for seeing the food and catching the vibe.
We began with olives and bacon-wrapped dates (both great) and a drink apiece (great) as onramp to the main meal. The food flowing past us was magazine-level stunning, most of the meats, including octopus and salmon (on a fragrant cedar plank), enticingly charred. Based more on this than the menu itself, we chose a radicchio Caesar salad with croutons, bronzed lamb chops, and fetchingly grilled scallops with romesco sauce. The salad hit a ridiculous number of flavor and texture bumpers: crisp, slightly bitter leaves, citrusy-salty-garlicy-lemony-anchovy dressing, unctuous parmesan, crunchy croutons. Both the chops and the scallops were cooked à point. The meal was a masterpiece, crazy delicious, perfecto. In for a penny, in for a pound, having eaten with such excess we thought a dessert would be worth it even if we risked death. We split a molten chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, a cliché dessert, true, but so delicious, who cares. With the contrasting temperatures and contrasting textures and flavors we fork-fought for our shares. This restaurant is easily good enough to duke it out with the superstar restos in Portland. It’s so stunning that it would be worth a trip to Salem with an overnight stay just to eat there.
A long and sound sleep metabolized our excess and we were ready for another Salem day including a much anticipated visit to the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health, the actual facility where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed in 1975. Of course, this required nourishment and so we tucked into breakfast at Isaac’s Downtown nearby. There was a line to get in, testimony to the restaurant’s reputation. The restaurant is… “our effort to extend the family love and support that we would eagerly have given [our son who passed away] throughout his life to the young people in our community who have suffered from a shortage of it throughout theirs.” We felt that love in a delicious Everything Bagel and Avocado Toast.
The museum wasn’t open yet so we strolled hand-in-hand through Riverfront park, a lovely green space filled with joggers, families, and dogs, many lolling on the lawn. A carousel, with beaming children riding horses and beaming parents standing beside them, lifted our hearts.
The Oregon State Museum of Mental Health, staffed by folks who have worked in the hospital, is nested within the larger Oregon State Hospital (once called the Oregon State Insane Asylum) which is still a psychiatric hospital. Through excellent visuals, written material, audios and film clips, it conveyed the arc of mental health care in Oregon from its inception to today. At its start, lobotomies, forced sterilizations (of 2500 individuals, part of the “eugenics movement” for which Governor Kitzhaber apologized in 2002), electroshock therapies, and physical restraints such as straitjackets or tying patients to their beds were common. With a better understanding of neurochemistry and general enlightenment, the worst of these practices have ceased and the use of pharmaceuticals and, for instance, talk therapy, music therapy, art therapy, wilderness therapy, have become more common. A strong sense of sympathy for what past patients suffered exuded from the exhibits and from the staff itself. Of course, the museum also recounted the filming of the iconic One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest which was based on the classic book by Ken Kesey. It was a moving visit that made clear the need for enlightened care as now provided. We finished by paying our respects to around 3,000 inmates, “forgotten souls,” whose unclaimed ashes are held in copper urns within a columbarium nearby.
This museum is a rara avis, steeped in the human condition, illuminating others but also ourselves, and we strongly recommend a visit.
We ate lunch at the Wild Pear, once again weathering a long line, no better indicator of a restaurant’s quality. We had a banh mi and a Wild Pear salad with candied pecans, julienned pear, and blue cheese crumbles. The portions were so large that probably we should have split one order.
We had just enough time to visit the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, a handsome structure which holds quite an eclectic collection. We enjoyed native art, religious art, ancient art, English art, ceramic art, and art from self-taught prodigies. One of our favorites was a facsimile of a pair of sandals, including bands and buckles, that was entirely carved from a block of wood by a patient at the Oregon State Hospital.
Back for a quick nap and then dinner at Amadeus. We ate exemplary chicken schnitzel over perfectly cooked asparagus, over ideal mashed potatoes with lemon and capers. We drank a lovely red blend to go with it, strolled back and retired for a long, roborative sleep.
We stopped in the town of Independence on our way home. Looking through the windows of the Little Pumpkin Cat Cafe we saw cat antics that were as amusing as any play in Ashland. It serves as a cat adoption center but you can also book cat playdates, $15 per person for a 20 minute appointment, probably more effective and surely less expensive than a human therapist.
Second Chance Books, a warren of stacked bookshelves, is a heaven and haven for bibliophiles. We didn’t eat at Silk Thai Cuisine but it looked just like a Thai restaurant in Thailand and its menu was serious. We did breakfast at Gilgamesh Brewing, an all-you-can-eat cluster bomb. The freshly made biscuits and cinnamon rolls were standouts.
It is a mistake to think of Salem merely as a government town. It has a thick loam of culture and cuisine. It has a large, verdant park with a merry-go-round which just might be the right ventricle of happiness.
It has proper reverence for wine, beer, cider, and mixology. What else is there? Go.