A Made-From-Scratch, Farm-to-Table Experience
At The Country Cat Dinner House & Bar, American craft cooking is truly at its prime. Adam and Jackie Sappington have masterfully created their unique interpretation of the country’s ever-evolving culinary heritage yielding a conversation-starting menu that highlights flavor profiles from Adam’s southern upbringing balanced out by classic Northwest styles. The cozy and soulful restaurant is nestled in southeast Portland’s rather unexpected Montavilla area, a family neighborhood reminiscent of Adam’s hometown in Missouri allowing the duo to foster a restaurant environment that serves the community first. The seasonally-focused menu represents the best local offerings from surrounding markets; in fact, 65 percent of their produce is hand-picked from the farmer’s market – it’s no wonder Adam can often be seen winding through the restaurant providing guests with a sample of the season’s first strawberries that then appear in various ways throughout their menus.
Homemade Delights
Cured for four months, The Country Cat’s popular country ham is made from the traditional process known from the days of Thomas Jefferson. Each year, they make five tons of house-cured bacon and over 1,000 pounds of beef jerky (better known there as “meat candy”) used in many ways including to garnish Bloody Mary’s. Even the ketchup is made from scratch at 10 gallons a week while 350 of the most perfect buttermilk biscuits are handmade, handcut and baked daily. Well-known for his artful butchery, Adam purchases and respectfully carves a whole 160-pound heritage pig on-site weekly utilizing everything available to create a carnivore’s dream menu. Perfectly punctuating this unique aspect of the restaurant is the popular Whole Hog plate featuring a brined chop, a pinwheel of pork belly, smoked shoulder meat and head cheese croquette, served over white corn grits with a seasonal fruit sauce. Simultaneously, the restaurant is well known for its exquisite fish entrees and wide-ranging vegetarian options.
About Adam and Jackie
Most every night, Portland’s well-known husband-and-wife culinary team Adam and Jackie Sappington can be found buzzing about The Country Cat Dinner House & Bar, their dream restaurant that they opened in April 2007. Adam serves as the Executive Chef while Jackie plays the role of Pastry Chef, seamlessly blending their talents into a family-driven and community-focused eatery centered on American craft cooking taking the farm-to-table
concept to admirable heights. The duo first met in 1995 while working together for three years at Portland’s Wildwood Restaurant, which laid a solid foundation of friendship and professional respect between the pair. Falling in love over the stove, they married in 2000 and always remain focused on camaraderie not competition, supporting each other as
well as balancing out their individual strengths and weaknesses. Active members of the community especially when it comes to educating area children about seasonal and local food, the Sappingtons have two sons of their own, Atticus and Quinn, whom they simply adore.