Dinner @ the Rafns'
~ 3 Course Dinners for Friends, Family, and Neighbors ~
First Sunday every month.
Dinner @ the Rafns' is Salem's "underground supper-club." We serve dinner once a month by reservation only. These dinners are not open to the public. However, we do make a practice of inviting new guests who want to attend.
Menu: 3 courses, local ingredients
Cost: donation
Seating Capacity: 30 guests
Next Dinner: December 7th
Information on reservations: contact Nate Rafn
Phone: 503-856-8122
Email: nathanrafn@hotmail.com
Young chef's home becomes best invite in town
Every month, dozens of people gather for Dinner at the Rafns'
February 15, 2007
There is dinner, and then there's Dinner at the Rafns'.
At Salem's quirkiest dinner party, a cast of characters 26 strong that might include a 60-year-old couple or a few 19-year-olds convenes in a funky living room and sits down to a meal of asparagus soup, red snapper cannelloni and a goat yogurt tart with hazelnut crust and fig sauce.
Their host has cooked it all himself in a weeklong flurry of fresh ingredients and power cooking.
There will be guitar music after dessert and new friends.
For more than a year, Nate Rafn, 23, has been hosting monthly invite-only dinners for a revolving cast of up to 30 guests -- some of whom are friends and family and some of whom have heard about Dinner at the Rafns' through Salem's culinary grapevine. People generally chip in to cover costs, but Rafn doesn't ask for money.
The dinners are part of a nationwide phenomenon of large-scale in-home dinner parties that gather friends and strangers for occasional culinary happenings. Ripe in Portland and Ghetto Gourmet of New York and San Francisco organize such parties via the Web.
Rafn, who grew up in Keizer, wants to hone his cooking skills, maximize local, fresh ingredients and break bread with friends and strangers.
He said it gives him a glimpse of what owning a restaurant might be like.
"The supper club is an exercise, a practice," Rafn said. "I'm developing relationships with producers, getting to know where I can find local ingredients and produce."
Rafn, who describes himself as a former "cereal and macaroni-and-cheese kind of guy," experienced his personal culinary awakening a few years ago after working his first shift at Caruso's Italian Cafe, the Keizer restaurant where he still works.
When he learned that he got a free meal after his shift, he picked the only thing on the menu that sounded familiar. At home, with a foam box of fettuccini alfredo and a spinach frittata, he tasted a new world.
"It was honestly one of the most transcendent experiences of my life," he said. "I had never tasted anything so deep in flavor."
From then on, he has immersed himself in the world of food, working with local chefs such as Caruso's Jerry Phipps and Mark Nasser, formerly of the Soup Cellar, as mentors.
He developed a concept and cable-access show called "Living Culture," based on tying people together with the nourishing, community-building possibilities of food.
His home, which he shares with brothers Kevin, 21, and Daniel, 26, is where the Dinner at the Rafns' suppers are held.
He said that he doesn't tend to get nervous before a big dinner, except at the exact moment when guests begin pouring into his little rooms.
For now, his dinners will remain casually invite-only -- although people who want to learn more about them can check out his Web site, www. livingcultureonline.com, or watch his Comcast cable-access show on CCTV.
Rafn said seeing his community come together over a meal in his own living room is "a beautiful thing."
"I just want it to stay the same. I get so much satisfaction out of doing this, I really can't think of a better way to spend my time."
mtheriault@statesmanjournal.com or (503) 399-6743.
Living Culture 2008
