West Cafe is a young, but thriving restaurant in the Portland Art Museum neighborhood. Owned by Sean Concannon and Doug Smith, the flourishing eatery offers a Bailout menu for customers, making a dinner here affordable for anyone. With the tantalizing Wild Mushroom Lasagna, to the grilled Meatloaf sandwich and mashed potatoes, you’re sure to have a filling meal. We sat down with Sean Concannon at West Cafe, (1201 SW Jefferson Street) to discuss his passion for cooking and how they are thriving in the current economy.

id Magazine: How did you decide to pursue a career in the restaurant business?

Sean Concannon: It was a decision in 9th grade…It was that or horticulture. I new I would never get sick of eating food, and my mother wasn’t exactly a very good cook. She was a nutritional cook, but wasn’t a very good one. So it was taking destiny into my own hands for one, but the other side is I just new I’d never get sick of food…I could see get sick of having plants all my life.

You were an Executive Chef for the Performing Arts Center (PAC)?

I was. That was the first position I had when I moved here five years ago. I did that for one full season of the theater. They opened the Art Bar, it was under construction when I applied for the job, they just didn’t have a chef in place. I was fortunate enough to get the position…and it was a lot of fun! Throwing parties for the arts is fun, you know…everyone’s already going out for a good time, and their anticipation level wasn’t as critical or scrutinizing. We had three venues.

West Cafe…is the menu here rotational, seasonal or does it stay the same?

It’s actually seasonal and it’s really pretty much two seasons, that is what we’ve experienced with the Oregon palette. It migrates from the rainy season and the sunny season. That’s what we have morphed into. We originally started thinking we were going to do four seasons, but there’s only three in essence…so that’s kind of where it ended up.

I noticed that you specify on your menu, nutritional foods, fresh…do you you use local venders and the farmers markets?

We do use local vendors…Sheridan Produce is one of the companies and they actually support the Sauvie’s Island farmers and local vendors as much as they can. They’re from the 1920’s so they have that deep Portland connection, they keep Portland alive and support local businesses. It is nice to go through them, for me to go to the farmers market would be difficult to negotiate a fair price…it would put us in a bracket that we couldn’t afford to sell for under $20… I think there will come a point when the economy gets better, and they have product to offer they’ll come around and offer to restaurants, but when they’re at the market, they can’t offer it on two tiers.

How would you describe your food here…I know it’s fresh and nutritional, but how would classify it?

We’re thinking in about year five, we’ll launch a contest where someone can come up with our tag line, exactly what it is. Simply Inspired…is what we have at this point. people ask me what kind of food I serve…it’s fresh, we don’t fry anything, it doesn’t have a title that’s catchy for the American mentality to understand. It’s American Cuisine…it’s probably more along the lines of a Mediterranean diet…In that you’re eating more fresh vegetables and less carbohydrates and less protein, not the gargantuan portions, but ample portions that, you know, sustain us. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

I can’t pigeon-hole it…and nobody else can! I say to people, “Sit down, have some and tell me what you think,” and they’re like, “I don’t know what to tell you…” Mostly it’s whenever the vegetables are growing is what comes on the menu…I think we migrate-eat that way, you know…When the dark days come around, yeah, we hunker down and eat more meat, and creamy things…so I just try to go with that, but keep it healthy.
We do have that back philosophy, “Feed ‘Em Don’t Fatten ‘Em.”

Do you make everything fresh here? Or do you use vendors mostly?

We do…we have a bakeress lady who does nine tenths of our baking, then we sub-contract things out that are specialty items and that’s the on premises thing we bring in. They’re all done for us, so it’s not like I’m going to Safeway or Costco. Yes, it’s all fresh ingredients, homemade.

I noticed you have live music here…you host events like that here too?

We do have live jazz on Saturdays…it’s primarily because of our location is not a destination, people aren’t just traveling by and what have you…so in order to fill that void, because the construction stopped (he points) this was supposed to be a condo building right across the street…there was supposed to be more dynamic in the area, and there will be down the road. We thought, well, let’s put a little life in the place on Saturday nights, because the neighbors that here will join us all week long…but they go out on the weekend to the Pearl or the East side because that is their specialty. In order to bring folks into the neighborhood we launched that program.

We have a lovely line up on our blog…generally each Saturday is assigned to a different artist so there’s a regularity for people who enjoy certain artists, they know it’s like the first Saturday of the month for that artist. We now have a male vocalist, it started out with a female vocalist with accompanist, so it’s ambient, not the show blaring throughout…we’re into the ambiance, so it’s more background, you can talk over it if you want.

I also saw wine tastings?

Yes, every third Tuesday we do a wine tasting. It’s $35 per person, it is five small plates paired with five samples of wines…it’s a steal! I think it’s a price we can all live with to have an evening out with our friends, encumber you with all this information…it’s just to make you familiar with wines perhaps you’ve never tried before, we do give some tasting notice to remember them by…and we have a great following with that. It’s just one of those things that builds community, because we’re a neighborhood.

What drives your passion for the food you serve and the hospitality you provide our customers?

Well…I think to start…I think by nature we all have within us these enate characteristics…some of us are caregivers and some of us are providers or you may be a doer, and I do think that the gene I got from my grandmother, who was really the cook in the family…she was always a generous soul. She enjoyed entertaining, and it just comes natural to me…I grew up in a large family with eight children, so I was kind of used to all of that activity around me…that controlled chaos. Food to me…it’s a celebration, it’s more than just a means to sustain ourselves and our health. there’s lots of ways you can finesse it and love it to the table and it shows…and you can feel that in restaurants you go to, if the chef’s having a bad day…it’s just an average meal in front of you, but then another day it’s spectacular.

The reason is that someone paid more attention to it and care for it.Dinner is the last thing I do…so if I sit down to the dinner table, then the rest of the day is mine…sometimes that’s ten o’clock at night because the restaurant still needs to be run, but that meal is important to me, that I can have the rest of the day to myself…and that it’s the conclusion of my day.

Has the economy affected your business?

I think it’s affected all of the restaurant industry. I think what we’ve noticed is those that are less hands-on and management heavy have taken a bigger hit because labor is the single most expensive thing in the restaurant as far as costs. Doug and I are very hands-on, and we became even more hands-on…but I have to say, it’s been our best year. Because we have minded our P’s and Q’s, the bottom line has been creeping up. It has been certainly rewarding, knowing that we’ve been surfing through this era, but also that our efforts aren’t in vain…it’s not just keeping it level, it has actually increased.

I think Portland is a slower town to accept new businesses or change routines…so like on the east coast, they say if your restaurant makes it in the first year you’re golden. But I think it’s a two year qualifier out here because people don’t change their habits readily and venture out to new venues and appreciate them on the same level. They peek in here and there, but they go back to their other habits…which loyalty goes a long way. That’s just my observation, the growth is slower here.

I don’t know the ratio per capita in Portland, but there are so many restaurants in Portland, you couldn’t eat at all of them in your lifetime…someone I talked to said they had never been here, and finally came to have dinner and were delighted.

That’s good to hear! That’s always nice to hear. We’ve had an incredibly loyal following since day one…even when it was slower in that first year, we were reassured that we were on the right track…just the compliment of returns and sharing it with their friends, but also getting to know them and hearing their honest opinion. It’s been nice in that slow growth that we have been able to get to know our guests and appreciate them as individuals as opposed to a cluster of people.

I know you’re a PABA (Portland Area Business Association) member, and you are hosting an Our House dinner in their dinner series?

Yes, we were going to launch it in the summer, but it’s kind of a progressive thing. Michelle’s Pianos just down the street, we were going to start with a concert there and still will, but we’re turning it into more of a Christmas concert, seasonal. We moved it to December and we’ll do a 45 minute piano concert and have appetizers and wine down there…then bring the group back here and sit down for dinner and desert.

That sounds great!

Yes! It was Darcy White’s brainchild…she’s a customer who came up with it and when I heard it, I jumped on it because I thought it would be a fun thing to do. Our House is an incredible organization. If people don’t know what it is, they should go to the web site or tour the facility.

West Cafe 503. 227.8189 • 1201 SW Jefferson St