Adam High reaches into a heavy-gauge plastic bag and pulls out a lamb forequarter raised by Henny Farms in south Salem, Oregon. Cleaver in hand, he edges around the shoulder joint; supple pink meat shears from the bone, lined with dapplings of fat. “I really enjoy this part of the job,” he says as he breaks down the animal for use at Broken Bread, his West Salem restaurant that opened this past November. “I feel that [doing your own butchering] allows you to use more of the animal … helping me to get back to a more natural way to prepare and consume food.”
It’s nearly a Portlandia joke: A hip young couple walk into a restaurant (with a name like Free Range, or Mycophage) and, when they ask to know more about the chicken who so graciously died to provide their meal, are given a capsule biography complete with photographs. But High is serious—serious about his commitment to local farmers, serious about affordability, and serious about expanding the possibilities for seriously good food in Salem, Oregon.
When High was young, he couldn’t wait to get out of Salem. “It didn’t occur to me [then] that you can make a city what you want if you work at it.” When High and his business partner Doug Davault decided to start their own restaurant, they placed a priority on local, sustainable cuisine. So Adam set out to find farmers in the Willamette Valley around Salem who were doing what he was looking for, who brought a holistic approach to their work. “They’re the folks that I hope to be building relationships with for years to come.”
While working as a chef at the Silver Grille in Silverton, he met Jonathan Ehmig, who has been raising Angus beef at Highland Oak Farm in Scio for the past five years. “[Adam is] interested in being very flexible and dynamic,” Ehmig says. “He’ll ask ‘What do you have available?’, ‘What do you have too much of?’” Because High is creative in the kitchen, he finds a way to use these surpluses (which are nevertheless of the same high quality as the rest of Highland Oak’s meat). Using the same tactic with produce, he is able to pass the cost savings on to restaurant patrons. “And it allows me to use the whole animal,” Ehmig says, cutting down on waste.
High and Davault envisioned a restaurant that would split the difference between fine dining-quality food, and the atmosphere of a warm and cozy casual restaurant—ideally, a community gathering place. High knew that he could find a way both to showcase the tremendous abundance of the Willamette Valley, and to keep prices relatively low for customers hoping to dine out in spite of the recession. He does this by keeping menu nimble and flexible, with a few staples (like his Roast Beast Sandwich or Omelet of the Day) whose fillings rotate, supplemented with a selection of daily specials.
High sources his pork from Jim and Wendy Parker, who run Heritage Farms Northwest in Dallas, Oregon. Though the Parkers’ farm does not technically hold an organic or grass-fed certification, High and his farmers are careful to avoid a reliance on easy answers. After all, certifications can only prove so much, and they are no substitute for visiting the farm in person and judging for oneself, as Adam has. For Wendy Parker, “My first priority is animal welfare. If there’s a torrential downpour, not a dry spot on the farm, then the guinea hogs’ house is flooded. If that means going out by headlamp to fix it, so be it.” Though the Parkers are looking into the rigorous Animal Welfare Approved certification, for now “our second guiding principal is just honesty and ethics. Wanna know what we feed our animals? We’ll tell you.”
So, what’s next for Broken Bread? High hopes to take on the role of an intermediary, helping to broaden the reach of local, seasonal, sustainable cuisine to populations in need in the Mid-Valley. It’s a shame that in the lush and fertile Willamette Valley, hunger still lurks, for many, just around the corner. In the end, High hopes, “Broken Bread” will not just symbolize a community sitting down to dine together, but also the the sharing of bounty and abundance.
