A Tale of Taste & Texture

(Photos courtesy of One Stop Writing Shop)

What do you do when you’ve owned and run some of the most renowned eateries in Central Oregon, including Bend’s The Victorian Café, Camp Sherman’s The Kokanee Café, Sunriver’s The Trout House, and Redmond’s The Pig and Pound? If you’re local restaurateur Paul Mercer, you open The McArthur Restaurant and Bar in Sisters, and offer up Pacific Northwest fare with 100 percent locally sourced organic ingredients.

I didn’t know what to expect when I passed the door to the Sisters Athletic Club on my way to the restaurant, which opened on the Five Pines campus in July. One look at the “morphing” menu, as Mercer calls it, since they change one to two items every couple of months, and I figured I was in for a treat. The evening’s appetizer confirmed that.

The Risotto Croquette is a crispy, creamy bit of heaven. That’s what happens when a talented chef — in this case, Morrie Christensen, who opened high-end steak houses across the country for years — creates oversized, golden brown fried arancini balls with wild mushroom and bacon risotto, topped with a sunny-side egg and nestled on a blue cheese cream sauce with a drizzle of balsamic. What’s not to love? The dinner had just begun, and my friend, Leah, and I were already figuring that we could drop by the bar and have this positively fun dish again, along with a glass of wine, when passing through Sisters. It’s probably a good thing that I live in Bend.

The dueling-textures play we loved so much would be echoed throughout the meal, including in the braised beet salad with its golden beet puree vinaigrette, along with lightly candied, buttery walnuts and creamy honey goat cheese, both of which provided a hint of sweetness that offset the earthiness of the beets.

As we moved to the entrees, the brilliantly seared and perfectly cooked steak was a little over-spiced for my taste, until I ran it through the garlic-shallot butter on the smashed potatoes, which proved to be little balls of crunchy-meets-velvety happiness. A total gamechanger!

Though I don’t usually opt for vegetarian dishes, the Ratatouille Filo Roll baked in a spicy tomato sauce sounded too interesting to pass up. Good thing, since it’s one of the best ratatouilles I’ve ever had, enveloped in what amounts to a flaky pizza pocket for grown-ups. It’s as if France and Italy fell in love and eloped to Greece. My friend and I were both thrilled that we’d jumped aboard for the delicious ride.

Our craveable study in textures culminated in dessert — a flourless chocolate-hazelnut torte served with generous teardrops of rich chocolate and caramel on the
plate — which was stupid good. Instead of what can often be a gooey experience, this was like biting into a high-end chocolate supercharged with chopped nuts. The taste was divine, but once again, the texture was everything. That’s clearly this chef’s superpower.