eROI Days Email Agency

With all the Spam out there, a friend told me about this Portland restaurant that you have to actually know someone to get on their email list and eat there. What the f*&k - I’m intrigued. So, I started asking everyone if they knew about it and within a few people, I heard “Yeah, Ripe is awesome. You’ve GOT to eat there.” I’ve got to agree. They’ve converted me from cynic to evangelist and their email is cool, too. Click through to see an example of their exclusive but minamilist email.

Ripe email:

“back from amazing trip to new york city - i will write up a travelogue for the culinary-minded in the next email. but this particular email brings us the first installment from matthew stadler, our newly anointed writer-in-residence. but before we get into his well placed meanderings it is my duty to announce the beginning of weekend brunch at the gotham bldg tavern - starting this saturday june 25th - we will be open every saturday and sunday henceforth from 9am - 2pm - expect the same menu we serve at breakfast during the week, with a few additional specials…

for new supper dates, please scroll down…

! a word from the writer in residence !

It would be nice if ripe could actually provide a study and a bedroom, something modest and with a view west over the concrete plant and the river. “Residence” would mean so much more than it does. To get morning coffee and a scone at the Gotham I would only need my house robe and slippers. As it is, I wake in North Portland, wash and dress for the day, then ride the MAX from Killingsworth. There is some pleasure in the commute.

Writers have always been itinerant and parasitic, a version of the tolerated fool. They survive and are housed at the pleasure of the court. Recently, court life has transformed into academia and a few thousand writers are given shelter health care, 401Ks, time to write when they aren’t teaching in exchange for serving the needs of the school, which can be largely custodial. I’ve made my appeal, but the best I could snag was to be ferried east every summer to spend eight weeks living in a freshly disinfected dormitory at Bard College where I consoled a few dozen graduate students about the progress of their arts. I was given money and summarily booted out every August to scrape by until the next July when school reconvened.

Ripe has offered me something better, which, coarsely put, is great food every day when I am hungry. I serve at the pleasure of my patrons, Michael and Naomi Hebberoy, a challenge that is enormously simplified by their status as owners of a for-profit business. They answer to no one. The daily conduct of a writer in the universities must satisfy an arcane labyrinth of bureaucratic entities, whereas I need only win the good humor of two very busy, and easily amused, patrons.

What will I do? I will engage the culture and society of the restaurants. This includes the table, but also the kitchen, pig farm, herb patch, bottling plant, and artists’ studios, which all circle back to dining. My hunch, the hunch the Hebberoys share, is that a new civic intelligence is afoot in Portland, and that its richest concentrations are at these tables, in the liveliness irrigated by good food and drink, by music and literature, and by all the hedonism that is native to these arts. Art is the way a city thinks. And contrary to the sedative ways of old institutional gatekeepers, art in Portland is contentious, out-of-line; it has a nightlife.

Ripe will host the nightlife of literature and the arts. As writer-in-residence, I will help articulate it through my occasional writings here, through a series of modest, card-sized essays distributed through the restaurants, and by helping the Hebberoys program public discourse into the life of the restaurants. Don’t worry. You’ll still get to eat your dinner in peace. You’ll just find a wider variety of things going on and, as the weeks go by, you’ll find some interesting reading at your table.

I’ll be at the Gotham (which my patrons have asked me to call “GBT,” so GBT it is) most mornings and many afternoons. And I’ll see you at family supper or clarklewis in the evening. Let me know if you see glimmers of this city that ought to find expression at ripe, and tell me what you think of the food. And please ask the Hebberoys to start work on that spare study and bedroom.

Matthew Stadler, writer in residence

the rest of the email

open family supper dates
in the press
what is ripe and why are they bothering me?

open family supper dates
request a reservation
now accepting reservations for our two outdoor garden tables - all garden reservations are weather permitting play-at-your-own-risk reservations
(unless otherwise noted assume dates have at least eight spots open…)
the family supper space continues to be available for private events…

june
24th
25th (garden only)
29th

july
1st
2nd
6th
7th
9th
13th
15th
20th
21st
23rd

august
4th
5th
10th
11th
12th
17th
18th
24th
25th
26th
27th

family supper is open to the public - have friends email us at eat@ripepdx.com or call 503.235.2294 to request a reservation…

in the press

look for the new issue of Art Culinaire (available at “books for cooks”) it has amazing recipes from morgan, scott dolich (park kitchen), and john eisenhart (pazzo) not to mention great writing and stunning food shots.
we have a nice feature in the july issue of Food and Wine on our trip to sicily, also check out the story by gabrielle hamilton in the same issue, she is a complete inspiration.
Alaska/Horizon Airlines has a write-up on clarklewis in their June issue, very well written, thank you Jennifer Tom
the new issue of Budget Travel has a great piece on portland, family supper is given prominent attention.
and apparently there is a piece on family supper coming out in the july Sunset - have yet to see it..

what is ripe and why are they bothering me?

ripe is:

getting harder to define - but is best understood as a collaboration of passionate food-crazed individuals that have a hearfelt belief that food and culture are one in the same.. and there is the more pedestrian definition: we are a restaurant group.

here are the details:

family supper

In march 2001 we began a series of informal dinners held in our home
twice monthly for around twenty guests. after serving over 1000 guests
in our living room, we moved to our new location on N interstate,
expanding our concept into a restaurant,
for lack of a better word…
..
since march 2002 we have been serving up to 45 diners,
5 nights a week in our open commercial kitchen…
all our guests arrive at the same time and sit together at three
long wooden tables
there are no waiters, just cooks bringing out large platters of food
and earthenware pots to be passed and eaten family style…
there is only one menu per night, there are no choices, though we encourage people to alert us to any dietary restrictions in advance.
…
The price of the meal is $25/per person + wine money + gratuity
dessert is available for $5
everyone receiving this email is invited to attend one of our suppers
dinner is served tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, and saturday
at 7:30, email or call 503.235.2294 to reserve a spot

(family supper received the highest grade karen brooks from the oregonian has ever given, has appeared in the new york times, food and wine, and many other national publications, and most recently made organic style’s top 20 “green” restaurants list).”