Press

The Chef's Dish: Lauro Kitchen's Jennifer Buehler + Recipe

LivePDX
June 16, 2008
By Jeremy Lloyd

By the ages of 10, Mozart had composed his first symphony, Picasso had created several paintings and Tiger Woods had already won two junior golf championships.

At the same age, Jennifer Buehler was also getting an early start on her life’s passion.

“When I was 10 years old, I found this old French cookbook,” says Buehler. “I looked through it, I planned out my menu, I made my mom take me to the grocery store and she bought everything I needed. I went home that night and I made filet of sole in white wine sauce, herbed baby new potatoes, I made my own salad dressing and I made chocolate mousse from scratch. My mom says I used every single pot and pan in the entire kitchen, and she said the meal was absolutely fantastic.”

“But,” she concedes, “for my 10-year-old palate, I didn’t really dig anything except for the chocolate mousse.”

Ok, so maybe Buehler wasn’t a child prodigy. But to put it in perspective, at the age of 10 yours truly could most likely be found scouring the backyard for a stick that, if you squinted hard enough, resembled a gun. Hey, not everybody can be a wunderkind.

Now serving as Chef de Cuisine at Lauro Kitchen in Southeast Portland, Buehler has a much bigger kitchen to work with and a lot more mouths to feed, but the joy she finds in her work seems to have stayed well intact. 

“I can’t imagine not being involved in this world in some way,” she says. “This job fulfills me in so many ways, I feel absolutely so lucky…At the end of my day, it doesn’t matter how hard I’ve worked or how tired I am, I have this sense of accomplishment, I have a sense of camaraderie. Part of this job for me is really emotionally oriented. I’m very much a nurturer by nature, and so it’s like I’m being given a gift to be able to please and take care of people and provide them with, hopefully, what is an awesome experience where they can come in and have great conversation and a good bottle of wine and good food. I think that’s such a special thing.”

The “awesome experience” Buehler refers to is, in part, the result of Lauro's airy and inviting 2,400 square foot dining room, highlighted by vaulted ceilings, exposed wooden beams, big windows that look out over Division Street and a bustling open kitchen that serves as the focal point of all the action. Such a space lends itself to a lively and social atmosphere, which is just the way Buehler likes it.

“I like that the restaurant itself has a real communal feel to it,” she says. “I often see tables talking to the tables next to them or even sharing bites of food every once in a while — that’s so cool.”

And while the atmosphere alone is worth a visit, it’s Buehler’s unique, delicious and wide-arching take on Mediterranean cuisine that has kept patrons coming back for seconds…and thirds.

Working under the tutelage of Chef/Owner David Machado — a well-respected figure on both the local and national scene — Buehler worked her way up from “grill girl,” as she describes it, to sous chef, and then, for the past two and a half years, to her current position at the culinary helm of Lauro's day-to-day operations. All the while she’s been perfecting, expanding and redefining the restaurant’s Mediterranean menu.

“We definitely started out based in a little more in Italian/Spanish/Portuguese cuisine,” explains Buehler. “But the Mediterranean is huge…so I’ve worked with David to continue to keep the menu really, really adaptable. So now we pull from all of Italy, Portugal, Spain, but also Greece, North Africa, Morocco, all of those places. And the cuisines, even though those places are close together, the cuisines are vastly, vastly different; it allows us a lot of room to play…We’ve made, not a big shift, but just a slight shift into more Middle Eastern food, more Lebanese, Moroccan, things like that. We’re doing things that have a lot of different spices, not hot-spicy, but a lot of flavor to them.”

Such a wide variety of culinary influences from this vast geographic area makes the dining experience at Lauro, to be perfectly honest, a hard one to define — even for a writer who is paid by the word. Each dish is simple in nature, yet meticulous care is taken in both preparation and presentation. Buehler also pays homage to the culinary traditions of each region, researching not only the recipes, but the history behind the food and ingredients.

“We’re going back to the roots of the food,” she explains. “A lot of the food in the Mediterranean is essentially peasant food…It took me a long time to really understand that the basics are better a lot of the time. You don’t need to have 15 things in a recipe in order to make it good.”

After experiencing so much success with the dinner menu — which, by the way, is very reasonably priced with only one item that breaks the $20 barrier — just this month Lauro also opened their doors to the lunch crowd.

“The lunch menu is both an extension of our dinner menu, and completely different,” says Buehler. “Much lighter fare, lots of salads, pastas, sandwiches, but still sticking to our Mediterranean roots. We’ve got a little bit of Moroccan influence there, and French influence, and Italian, and Lebanese — so kind of all over the board.”

Regardless of whether it’s lunch or dinner, Buehler takes pride in offering a dining experience that offers a little something for everyone.

“I think one of the neat things about our restaurant is that you can be adventurous if you want to, or you can just have a pizza or cheeseburger…not feel like you have to stretch yourself and eat something that you’re not familiar with. But if you want to try new things, you can certainly do that here, too.”

Lauro’s Fattoush Salad

Easy to prepare and refreshing to enjoy on hot days, this seemingly simple salad packs a flavorful punch and is more feeling than you might imagine.

- 4 halved grape tomatoes
- Small handful of romaine ribbons
- 2 torn butter lettuce leaves
- 6 - 8 julienned raw red pepper slices
- 6 - 8 julienned raw yellow pepper slices
- 6 - 8 cucumber slices
- 1 Tbsp chopped green onion
- 1 Tbsp julienned red onion
- 1 tsp toasted pine nuts
- Big pinches of chopped parsley & mint
- Sumac vinaigrette
    - ¼ cup lemon juice
    - 3 cups extra virgin olive oil
    - Season with salt & pepper
    - Shake to combine
- Feta cheese
- Toasted pita

1) Place all in ingredients in bowl.
2) Season with salt and pepper and dress with sumac vinaigrette.
3) Top with crumbled feta and serve with pita.