Ken and Grace Evenstad purchased the anemic remnants of a generics pharmaceutical company in 1969 for $1,500 and, with a dose of iron will, restored its circulation, and watched it swell into a billion-dollar corporation. Not sated by that success, they decided to start yet another pharmaceutical company, this time selling only one type of medication, the kind known to induce contentment, camaraderie, contemplation, connoisseurship, and jollity: wine. They founded Domaine Serene Winery in Dayton, Oregon, and, later, Maison Evenstad in Burgundy. Their wines are most definitely not generics.
In 2019, they opened a wine lounge in Lake Oswego, offering elevated but simple dishes such as charcuterie plates, duck confit, wagyu burgers, and the like. In 2025, with chef John Conlin ready to flex his muscles, they stretched further, culminating in the six-course Chef’s Pairing Dinner accompanied by their wines. Cost: $250. A sum that focuses the mind.
From what we had gathered, the dinner felt like it would be a summit attempt – all their experience, capital, and conviction assembled at one table. We visited to see just what heights it would take us to.
Jeans and Ironed Shirts
Neighbored by two artisanal bakeries, an auspicious sign, the Lake Oswego wine lounge looks modest from the outside, perhaps intentionally so. Upon entering, we were struck by its architecturally rich, modernist library look, handsomely displaying wine bottles instead of books.
Ambience favors blue jeans and button-down shirts that someone took the trouble to iron, unbuttoned jackets over T-shirts, wisps of Chanel No. 5. At a nearby table, guests nibbled olives. There were no white tablecloths, no servers in suits, nothing yet to suggest the kitchen harbored big guns. Only the prolific stemware, delicate as though blown from a child’s bubble pipe, hinted at what we hoped lay ahead.
Our Six-Course Chef’s Pairing Dinner Begins
A Plate of Amuse-Gueules
Quintin Robertson, the gracious sommelier, set the meal in motion by delivering menus printed with our names and a glass of their 2016 Domaine Serene Vintage Brut méthode champenoise. It transmitted mineral notes from the volcanic basaltic soil in which it was grown and carried the scent of toasted brioche. With it came a plate of amuse-gueules: a fresh oyster in apple-cider mignonette with trout eggs; a crepe encasing whitefish salad; a tempura sweetbread in blueberry-muscatel vinegar glaze, flecked with snipped chives. This is precisely what a potentially ponderous meal needs: a catapult to hurl it into the air. The meal ahead was substantial. This was our lift.
©Carter Hiyama
We continued with pristine albacore poke served with firm spheres of pear in a slurp of verjus and dashi. The dashi brought a gentle smokiness we have not encountered in similar dishes. The pear was unexpected yet inevitable, those twin qualities marking the finest cuisine. This was shaping into a high-performance meal.
It was paired with a 2022 Château de la Crée Santenay Premier Cru Les Gravières Chardonnay, a white Burgundy from the Evenstads’ Burgundian estate. In 2015, the Evenstads acquired Château de la Crée, becoming the first Oregon winery owners to plant their flag in Burgundy, a return, in a sense, to the region that first stirred their ambitions. In the glass, the wine conveyed as much emotion as flavor, carrying a whisper of stone on the back of the tongue. The flavor was so eloquent that our eyes met, and we nodded. Could such momentum be sustained?
A Vegetable Intermezzo
A vegetable intermezzo followed: roasted beet salad atop labneh dusted in pistachio crumbs. It came with our favorite pinot of the evening, a 2011 Domaine Serene Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir, round and generous yet with earthy depths that echoed the beets themselves. The wine was poured into a slightly fluted glass reserved, we were told, for New World Pinots, in contrast to the unfluted bowls used for Old World. Why is beyond our ken.
The first three courses had moved with quickness and clarity. Then came our apogee: cavatelli in a sauce of winter squash, guanciale, and Grana Padano cheese. The dish was remarkable because of the cavatelli itself, house-made from semolina flour and water. It expressed two opposing qualities at once, brawn and delicacy. There was resistance to the bite, then tenderness. We would have happily eaten it with nothing more than butter and salt.
Two Savory Courses
The meal continued its clear sense of direction, beginning with bright precision and growing deeper and more resonant. Next came sablefish, white and buttery, seared perfectly, resting upon a sunchoke purée. As a textural contrast, sunchoke chips were scattered across the plate. The tuber, whose talents include epiphanous soup, remains oddly underused. A larger portion of this dish alone would have made a luxurious meal.
Because the servings were measured, we could sustain one final savory course: American Wagyu strip steak cooked to a flawless medium rare. Of uniform color within, we suspect it was first prepared sous vide and then seared. It arrived in a deeply flavored jus. As compelling as the meat was, an accompanying celery root pavé dropped our jaws, thin buttered layers baked together like a mille-feuille. The dish is more commonly made with potatoes. This variation was inspired.
A Sweet Finish
We finished with two desserts. First, sea buckthorn ice cream with almond crumbles, bright and slightly tart. Then a chocolate torte so butterfatted it is a wonder neither it nor we spontaneously combusted, accompanied by vanilla ice cream and a pour of Domaine Serene Chardonnay VSOP Brandy, warm with notes of orchard fruit and caramel.
The landing was smooth, arc complete.
Domaine Serene made the summit and, more impressively, returned safely, descents being more dangerous than ascents. Their grapes reflect terroir, certainly. But the meal itself displayed terroir of another kind–intellectual, creative, entrepreneurial, all converging in a singular expression. It felt born of the same instinct that buys a faltering enterprise and turns it into a juggernaut.
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