Wild Rye
Restaurant · Crook County ·
High-desert cuisine, juniper-braised lamb, smokey rolls, and views
High-desert cuisine, juniper-braised lamb, smokey rolls, and views
"About 20 minutes outside of Bend, Wild Rye sits atop the hill at Brasada Ranch Resort with a refined dining experience and an immaculate view of sunsets over the cascades. Chef Karl Holl takes inspiration from the surrounding high desert. His signature juniper braised lamb over rye berry risotto perfectly reflects the desert. He starts by crushing whole juniper branches with garlic, shallots, bay leaf, and other aromatics, which is rubbed into a cut of loin and shoulder to cure. Many dishes are torched or charred (rather than barbecued). Don’t miss the sumptuous smokey rolls topped with a pile of juniper salt. Holl’s creativity shines in the roasted beets and smoked yogurt with seasonal citrus, basil, lime leaf, and pistachio rose rubble that’s best eaten when mixed and distributed throughout the salad. Popular, too, is the Fifty-Dollar Burger that earns its price tag as it includes fois gras and is sprinkled with edible gold dust." - Barb Gonzalez
"Opening June 20 at 16986 SW Brasada Ranch Road, I see Wild Rye as Chef Karl Holl’s ambitious reimagining of Brasada Ranch’s flagship dining: a season-driven, high-desert–informed restaurant that leans into smoke, char and foraged flavors. The menu is rooted in relationships with local farmers and ranchers and on-property ingredients like juniper berries and sagebrush; if the concept had a signature it would be the juniper-rubbed lamb, in which whole juniper branches are crushed with garlic, shallots, bay leaf and aromatics, rubbed into loin and shoulder to cure, seared with a touch of smoke and then braised in wine (white in warm months, red in winter). Nods to Holl’s foraging appear in dishes like pickled mushrooms atop smoked beef carpaccio, and seasonality will show by swapping peak ingredients into mainstays (for example, halibut in coconut fish broth with asparagus and favas in summer shifting to red curry squash and kale in fall). The over-the-top Fifty Dollar Burger embodies the resort’s opulence—a bone marrow brioche bun (marrow whipped into butter and folded into the dough), an Angus patty, a slice of foie gras torchon, truffle aioli and a dusting of edible gold—and the bar program, conceived with Scott Baird of Trick Dog, emphasizes Oregon-distilled vodkas and gins and western whiskeys with cocktails like the vodka-based Huckleberry Fix and the Oregon Trail Mix Old Fashioned served with cacao-and-nut bark." - Janey Wong
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