Oregon trail

SINCE returning to his native Portland on the Pacific north-west coast of the USA in 1994 to open his restaurant Wildwood, Oregon chef Cory Schreiber has become the city's culinary star, renowned for his mastery of the wood-burning oven.

Unpretentious but located in a fashionable area of the city, the restaurant offers a menu created with north-western US produce by Schreiber, who is executive chef and operating partner. He uses ingredients such as Walla Walla Sweets - the sweetest of onions; salmon fished from the Chinook or Copper rivers; and oyster and razor clams from the abundant cold waters of the local coast.

Wildwood's clientele travel the breadth of Oregon to eat at the restaurant and Schreiber attributes this dedication to the unfussy American food he serves. "Wildwood is not eclectic. The people and area are practical, and the restaurant pertains to that quality. It's not trendy - I want it to be casual," he says.

Open seven days a week, the 120-seat restaurant's menu features seasonal ingredients - meats, seafood, vegetables and game - from local farms and suppliers. Chicken, rabbit and feathered game are farmed in the Columbia Valley; quail is a personal favourite; and quab, pheasant, partridge and goose all work their way on to the daily changing menu at some time during the year. Schreiber likes to visit his suppliers personally to ensure the quality of his produce. "Visiting keeps the relationship strong," he says.

The ingredients from these suppliers inspire Schreiber to produce what he describes as his "honest" style of cooking. Simplicity and careful choice of flattering flavours are essential to modern north-western US cuisine, and Schreiber avoids using too many complex ingredients at one time - subtlety is his keyword. He never combines more than three or four flavours in a dish.

Popular examples of his style are fried oyster salad in a cornmeal batter, fennel-cured salmon on tandoor-cooked bread, and crab- or salmon-cakes on a green salad with a‹oli. "My influences have all been American. I don't want to get muddled in eclectic this and eclectic that," he says.

Although he shuns trends, Schreiber, like most chefs, is open to experimenting with new ingredients - even garnishes. At the moment he favours crisp pea shoots, succulent fronds from the pea plant with a more delicate flavour than their parent vegetable. Schreiber uses them to garnish plates of fish such as pan-roasted Alaskan halibut with couscous-stuffed sweet peppers and saffron onions.

Natural combination

Unsurprisingly, as Schreiber's reputation has been built upon wood-fuelled cooking, at the heart of Wildwood's kitchen are two timber-burning ovens: a red brick oven and a clay tandoor. "The brick oven frees up cooking and adds a complementary wood flavouring to a dish," he explains. He enthuses about cooking seafood in this oven, describing the combination of wood and marine food as "natural".

Whole fish, for example, are mounted on stainless-steel skewers and placed vertically over the fuel of the fire. "There's no application of fats so you don't get a fried taste," says Schreiber. "The juices drip on to the coals and create flavoursome smoke which rises to the top of the oven to envelop the fish, or meat [if you're cooking it]. It's a dry heat that creates an intense crust."

The fish emerges from the oven quite firm, but once it has stood for a couple of minutes the flesh relaxes. Surprisingly, the flavour is unspoiled. Cooking in this way, in Schreiber's opinion, gives fish an unrivalled taste, "very direct; delicate but discernible".

The tandoor oven is used to cook 75% of the restaurant's meat dishes, including leg of lamb, rabbit and New York strip-loin steak. "Meat roasted on the bone picks up the flavour of the bone," says Schreiber. Sometimes he combines the brick and clay ovens to cook dishes. Stuffed pork loin is cooked in the brick oven first, is cooled and is then finished off in the tandoor.

More fuel-efficient than a wood-burning grill, the tandoor frees up the kitchen to concentrate on plate presentation and turnover demand. The quantity of wood the tandoor requires, however, is considerable. It uses 40-50lb out of the 50-75lb a day of mesquite that the restaurant burns; the remainder fuels the wood-burning stove. Hardwood is also burnt; the restaurant gets through a "cord" - about two cubic metres - a week.

But Schreiber has no thoughts of ditching his wood-burning cuisine. It is true to the Pacific north-west where he was born, and epitomises both his home state and his style - casual and authentic. n

Wildwood Restaurant & Bar, 1221 Northwest 21st Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97209, USA. Tel: 00 1 503 248 9663