The
Raccoon Lodge,
7424 SW Beaverton
Hillsdale Highway, 296-0110.
11:30 am-11 pm Monday-Thursday, 11:30 am-midnight Friday-Saturday,
11:30 am-9 pm Sunday. Prices moderate.
Picks: Millennium Malt Scottish ale, steak fries (with
ketchup), and peanut butter pie. Nice touch:
Skunked hunter platter, an all-veggie meal in an otherwise
hunters-only club house.
A trip to Raleigh Hills to visit the year-old Raccoon Lodge
is sort of like a trip to a beer-sponsored amusement park,
complete with long weekend lines and big, huggable mascots.
Big is definitely the theme here. Everything's massive
and polished with that corporate comfort suburbanites like
to cozy up to for din-din. The shocker is that it's not
a chain. It's a homegrown operation, largely stocked with
Oregon booty like cod pulled in from the coast and local
beer grains.
The latter products make for remarkably good beers. One
highlight on tap right now at the Raccoon Lodge is the seasonal
brew, Millennium Malt, a Scottish-style ale that's neither
bitter nor dark. Instead, it plays the role of mild-mannered
creeper beer, transparent-brown and easy-drinkin'. Imbibers
will find nooks and crannies all over the Raccoon Lodge
perfect for visiting the bottom of a pint glass. There's
also a poolroom bar, a crescent-shaped bar upstairs and
a tarp-covered beer garden out back. Beer is accessible
at all times and from all angles.
Good as the beer is, it's just one facet of the Lodge.
There's just so much going on, so many bells and whistles,
that it's tough to focus on the menu in the midst of blaring
pop music, TV sports and the glass-eyed stares of mounted
buck heads.
An easy starter is a half-bucket of French fries ($3.25).
They're served five different ways, from shoestrings to
tater-tots. And they're hand-cut and cooked to order so
everything stays hot. The bad news is that they share a
billing with eight gimmicky dipping sauces.
The dips are tolerable at best (frumpy, middle-aged-seeming
tartar sauce) and Halloweenish at worst (muddy, speckly
curry-peanut sauce). Yet almost everyone who orders the
fries requests a selection of dips. Dips are all-American.
Dips equal good times, right? Not always. Stick with plain
tomato ketchup.
Fortunately, the chefs responsible for the raspberry habañero
dip (boo, hiss) make up with enormous, fashionably presented
dinner entrees. This kitchen exceeds the expectations generally
placed on brewpubs, with zealous twists on familiar cottage
recipes. One example is the cider-brined roast pork loin
with apple chutney and whipped yams. This is a fuel-injected
take on what is essentially a down home supper. The six
pork slices are tangy on all edges because the cider-brine
is so sticky, sugary and dark. The whipped yams are a tad
on the bland side, but this actually works out well against
the aggressive acidity of the green-apple chutney.
All one hundred of the flavors I detected in this dish
are tasty enough, but the pork loin dinner wins extra points
for being the tallest dish on the menu. Measured from the
table top to the tips of the thin fried-potato slices sprouting
vertically from the belly of the mashed tatters, I estimate
the dish was about 7 inches tall.
The next-tallest dish on the menu is the grilled 10-ounce
top sirloin, which climbs to at least a full 5 inches. The
base is an inch-thick steak nestled on a chunky pile of
mashed potatoes and smothered in a port-wine mushroom gravy--a
thick reduction that absolutely blankets your tongue. On
top of this solid foundation are three scooping handfuls
of crunchy fried onions, fluffed into a Swiss mountain.
With such an ostentatious touch, the dinner becomes a monument
to ultra-rich eating as much as just a really tall steak
dinner. The strange thing is that you usually give a piece
of meat the ol' cover-up when the cut is sub-par or over-cooked.
But this hunk of protein was nice and juicy, plump and tender,
cooked to a perfect pinkish medium with 90-degree grill
marks top and bottom.
If it seems puzzling that such a fine specimen would be
smothered by an army of strong flavors, then I haven't communicated
the sensory-maximization goal of the Raccoon Lodge. This
steak says go big or go home.
Needless to say, dessert is a test of your warrior spirit.
The humongous portions and the stunningly rich food and
beer already spell overindulgence for many adventurers at
the end of regulation dinner. But what the hell, try the
peanut-butter pie--the soft and chewy glue will spackle
up any gaps in your gullet.
After rollicking at the Raccoon Lodge, you will go home
big and tall, maybe even a little tipsy. Yet it will somehow
feel right, like you got your money's worth, and someday,
you will go back in search of more.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 9,
2000
|
