A beautiful salad. Photo credit: Fallow’s Restaurant
The folks behind Bastion, a restaurant in Westmoreland that shows you that food can be both healthy and delicious, are opening up Fallow’s Restaurant, just up the street in the old Relish Gastropub space. They will offer dinner service (Bastion closes at 4pm the days they are open). As a fan of Bastion, I’m pretty excited about this.
Bastion, Then Fallow’s
First a little about Bastion. They are known for offering good food that accommodates a variety of dietary choices. They are “100% gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, soy-free, and corn-free, and aim to accommodate a variety of diets and ways of eating so that no matter how each person chooses to feed their body, there will be something for everyone on the menu.” I was pretty impressed by their grain-free bread last time I was there, and their sweet things are quite good. And I love that they serve wild-caught salmon from Iliamna Fish Company (their wild salmon salad was highlighted during the last Salad Week, too).
As for Fallow’s, the idea behind the name is that “letting land go fallow is a critical part of the regenerative agriculture system. It’s a period of rest.” Regenerative agriculture is really having its day in the sun lately, with people like Casey Means talking about it vigorously. It’s a type of biodynamic agriculture, but not identical to that. It essentially means the farmers put effort into increasing the fertility of the soil in which the food grows, which then yields a more nutrient-dense harvest (see Flying Coyote Farm). If it’s not clear already, know that Fallow’s will retain the same ethos as Bastion.
Fallow’s Origins + the New Space
I spoke with Paul Arnold and Marne Minard from Fallow’s and learned more about their efforts with the new restaurant. They both live in the neighborhood and are proud of what they’ve been able to create with Bastion, bringing their vision of healthy, well-sourced, nutrient-dense, and delicious food to Westmoreland (and nearby Sellwood). Over the years, Bastion customers have asked for dinner service, but Paul and Marne have felt that the counter service setup there was not conducive to that. So being able to create a new restaurant and serve dinner—just up the street at a location they love—is something they could not be more thrilled about.
The new space, which was home to the old Relish gastropub, met a lot of their needs for Fallow’s. A little backstory: Paul is friends with the owner of Relish, who retired. When it became clear that Relish was going to end he approached the owner about taking up the space—done and done. Aside from the interior there, the patio is a real win and will be a nice place to have an al fresco meal, especially during the warmer months.
Sourcing, Soil Health, and Education
When it comes to ingredients in the kitchen, Fallow’s will be locally-focused in their sourcing, bringing in ingredients from a variety of small farms in the area. With all the farms they work with, they ask about their farming practices with the goal of an alignment between the farmer’s and Fallow’s needs.
And while you’ll find organic ingredients everywhere in Portland, an emphasis on regenerative farming and soil health is what sets Fallow’s apart. Through this, they believe they are offering something unique in the area’s food scene, and are looking forward to sharing their vision with dinner service. “We are the only people we know in the area that are doing this,” Paul explained.
Aside from the food and drink they’ll offer, they hope to create opportunities for community education about the things they care deeply about when it comes to food. One of the things they mentioned is the possibility of showcasing farmers they work with. “People want to learn from us,” Marne said. Also in the realm of education, they also hope that their devotion to sourcing from regenerative farms will be an inspiration to other restaurants. They’d love to see more of them support farms that focus deeply on soil health. Marne remarked, “We want other restaurants to be like this!”
In Summary
Here’s a roundup of what to expect at Fallow’s:
- The kitchen will be 100% gluten-free, soy-free, seed-oil-free, and refined sugar-free.
- Optional raw cheeses will be available, but most of the menu will be dairy-free, as fresh raw dairy is illegal to serve in Oregon (raw dairy cheese aged at least 60 days is legal in the FDA’s eyes).
- There will be a full bar program, beer, and wine.
- Some cocktails will have refined sugar in them. At this point in the cocktail world, many of the pre-made mixers contain cane sugar—and there can be sugar in alcohol. The menu will indicate the presence of sugar when it’s there in a drink.
- More on cocktails: “We will be working hard to create refined sugar-free and non-alcoholic cocktails to elevate the menu to the next level!” Creativity in their cocktail program will fall primarily on the NA side of things and they are really looking forward to seeing what they can create there at Fallow’s. That said, if you want a traditional Manhattan or martini, you can have one there.
- Food: They will focus on using local and sustainably-sourced ingredients, continuing to cultivate relationships they’ve developed over the years with small farms on fertile land with good soil health.
- Plants will be the focal point of the meal, with the addition of high quality proteins as “an accoutrement” rather than the main event. Much of what they’ll offer as baseline will be inherently vegan.
- More on proteins: Meat will be sold a la carte; think of it as a kind of accompaniment to your vegetable-focused plate. One scenario: Someone could get a steak and three vegetable dishes and share between two or three persons.
- Look for bold flavors in everything.
They’ll be launching a Kickstarter in a couple of weeks, to help with marketing and to get the word out about Fallow’s.
They hope to open in early summer, and when that happens, look for them to be open Wednesdays through Saturdays starting at 4pm until close (they have not yet determined when “close” is yet). To keep up with their progress and updates, follow them on Instagram at @fallows.restwild.
Fallow’s Restaurant [projected third week of July, 2024]
6637 SE Milwaukie Avenue, Portland
Instagram
Updated July 1, 2024
Meg Cotner
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Relish was our favorite place to eat. The owner was a delightful man, and we miss him and his restaurant. I hope Fallow will become our favorite place to eat also. I do hope the new owners have made the entrance ADA compliant Or is allowing the use of the back door.
Fallows is going to be in Westmoreland, not Sellwood.
Thank you for this correction, Vikki. I have to admit that as someone who doesn’t live in the neighborhood (I live further north and east), it has been a lazy thing on my part to just call it all Sellwood, short for “Sellwood-Moreland” that Google Maps calls the area. So I’m glad you pointed out my error. I did a little research this morning and I gotta tell you: finding out the borders between Sellwood and Westmoreland is not a quick task. But I did find some help with this 2015 article from The Bee, “Drawing the line in Sellwood and Westmoreland.”
The most helpful line in the article is this section:
“But in defining where one draws a line today between Sellwood and Westmoreland, there is that grey area between Nehalem and Malden Streets. The five blocks north of Nehalem and south of Malden can call themselves part of whichever of the two districts they choose, we suppose. There is no firm line drawn, because the City of Portland considers both districts part of the same single neighborhood, with no dividing line necessary. What can NOT be in dispute, based upon these original borders, is that everything south of Nehalem is Sellwood, and everything north of Malden is definitely Westmoreland.”
Fallow’s is north of Malden, as you know, though barely west of Westmoreland’s original western border of SE Milwaukie (across the street!). But it sounds like this is splitting hairs at this point, after so many years since the establishment of Westmoreland.
And I totally get wanting to be accurate when it comes to neighborhood borders. I found the borders between neighborhoods in my old home of Astoria, Queens to have shifted over time, and I know parts of it that I called one thing, are now called another.
Again, thank you for pointing this inaccuracy out. I’ll adjust the article to reflect my new understanding. And thanks for reading!