Eugene Weekly

Chef Josh Welton’s hairy right forearm has a big tattoo of fried eggs and a side of bacon.  “I really love breakfast. I’m not kidding,” he laughs, patting flour off his black chef coat.  Welton opened Tres Mil Border Cafe a year ago inside 5th Street Market’s food court. On a Sunday morning, he is busy behind the counter, serving up huevos rancheros with thick, house-made corn tortillas and generous spoonsful of sour cream. A reasonable trickle of people stand in line to order breakfast. Continue reading →

According to Jorge Navarro, everyone should go to New Orleans at least once. He traveled to the Louisiana hot spot when he turned 40, and soon after, started Café Navarro, which served New Orleans-inspired dishes in Eugene until 2001. “I consider New Orleans-style food to be the real American culinary tradition,” Navarro says, explaining how the city’s famed Creole cuisine incorporates European, African, Native American and other influences, turning them into something new.   Continue reading →

Ask around the area of Eugene near the UO campus: “Where can I get a good burrito?”  Odds are, the answer will be spoken in reverential tones of cult-like devotion: “Chachi’s.” “You hear sometimes people walking by,” says Chachi’s co-owner and founder Adie Coy, “and they’re chatting with their friends and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh try this burrito — bulgogi!’ or, ‘They make the best breakfast burrito!’”  Continue reading →

Living in Lane County can be a charming mix of city culture and country life. For example, a short drive west from the city of Eugene is Our Daily Bread Restaurant in Veneta. Located in a renovated ’40s-era church, Our Daily Bread is a full-service restaurant offering home-style comfort with a fine dining twist.  The vintage atmosphere of the church offers intriguing nooks for intimate conversation or open space for a family-style, communal experience. You may even chat with a server who attended the church as a young girl. Continue reading →

Tiny Tavern is dead. Long live Tiny Tavern. With the protracted death rattle and final expiring sigh of the Whiteaker’s seediest bar now just another piece of Eugene folk history, the question “what will become of Tiny’s?” has at last been answered: It will be a restaurant, of course. Continue reading →

Walking through the dense, cherry-wood front door of The Pint Pot Public House, you’re greeted by many things: the sound of bagpipes, the smell of hearty spices, snug armchairs in dimly lit corners, stacks of board games and smiles from welcoming strangers.  Immediately, your eyes are drawn to writing in chalk atop the bar: “May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.” And while The Pint Pot may be small, its collection of patrons is brimming. Continue reading →

When Aaron and Mariah Kastrava acquired The Divine Cupcake in early May, they were ready for a challenge. Previously, the married couple had planned to open a coffee house, but when an opportunity for something sweeter arrived, they went all in.  After closing its store in west Eugene in 2012, The Divine Cupcake (which existed for nine years under previous ownership) operated principally as an online business, and the Kastravas understood this going in.  Continue reading →