PR Process
We work with clients as their partners to think about fun solutions...and sometimes journalists find that process newsworthy. This article is from the Off the Menu column which regularly appears in The Oregonian. Read on.

Lisa Schroeder (The Oregonian/2000)

When Mother's Bistro & Bar chef/owner Lisa Schroeder, her partner Rob Sample and publicist Lisa Donoughe were casting about for a menu for the restaurant's upcoming James Beard House dinner, they were stymied. Though Schroeder's throngs of fans are happily sated with her mixture of comfort and cuisine, she felt uneasy about this project.

"I didn't want to do a chichi dinner," she said, "because that's not what Mother's is about."

But that, traditionally, has been the route taken by James Beard House's guest chefs.

Beard could be called the patriarch of American cuisine. His books rank among the treasures that contemporary cooks look to for inspiration. And Beard's exquisite taste and discerning palate stem from his childhood and his mother.

Mary Elizabeth Beard was, by all accounts, an independent woman with her own style and sensibility. In Portland in the 1920s she was making polenta and pesto, using recipes that she learned from her Italian greengrocer. These may not seem like exotic items today, but they were unheard of at the time.

Schroeder and Donoughe hit the books for research and were feeling defeated until a New York connection had the perfect answer. She told them Beard's book "Delights and Prejudices," a combination memoir and cookbook, recalled many of his mother's recipes. They located an autographed copy (good omen) and found their way into Elizabeth Beard's kitchen and the heart of her food.

The menu has been adapted to suit modern palates and Schroeder's tastes. The six-course dinner, called "Remembering Mother... The Cuisine of Elizabeth Beard," will be served in Portland on Nov. 8 as a warmup for the Beard House engagement in New York. Hard-to-find Cristom wines will complement the menu. $65 per person.

This article appeared on October 26, 2001.