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by Brittany Wilson
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photos by Brittany Wilson
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli, located on the corner of SE 23rd & Division, is open 7 days a week. The eatery offers patrons a choice of hot entrees, salad bar, four soups daily, a variety of raw vegan dishes, and an assortment of breads, rolls and desserts. All this is in addition to the business’ renowned seasoned tofu product, which is sold in-house, and at a variety of supermarkets and co-ops around town.
The salad bar (pictured left and below) features pasta and potato salads, as well as more traditional salad toppings.
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A nose-diving economy can be fatal for new small businesses. But for consumers, it highlights the ones that refuse to compromise their ethics just to make ends meet.
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli (http://papagees.com) is known for being the most organic restaurant in Portland, and despite economic woes, owner Grant Dixon won’t switch even his most expensive ingredients for anything less than high-quality organic.
“Choosing to go organic and buy only local produce really affects our cost points. We definitely had to raise prices, which offended some people, but we’re committed to being as close to 100 percent organic as possible,” Dixon explains.
Dixon began peddling his own line of tofu in the Portland area in 1999. He started catering local music festivals and soon was stocking his tofu on the shelves of People’s Co-op and other local markets. Dixon also cooked for the now-closed Daily Grind, a natural foods store on Hawthorne. The store’s e-mail list helped him alert several hundred former regulars when Papa G’s opened its doors in 2007 at its current location.
Borrowing the classic deli structure, Papa G’s boasts a large salad bar and an even larger hot case filled with read-to-feast entrées, vegetables, and side dishes. Raw snacks and vegan brownies and cookies are also for sale.
So how good can organic vegan food be? The stand-out dish, tofu and vegetable curry, is one of those memorable meals that gets gushed over for days, until the return for seconds is inevitable. It warmly blossoms into a complex bouquet of rich flavor — with the perfect level of spice — and ignites the palate in the way that only authentic Indian food can. The macaroni and cheese is so creamy and rich; it even satisfies stomachs that can’t imagine the dish without dairy.
These dishes are available daily in addition to rotating special entrees, which have recently included organic green bean casserole and organic polenta with tempeh and spinach. Side dishes include local red mashed potatoes, marinated carrots, coconut greens, and savory black beans and short grain brown rice, which pairs with the tofu curry like yin and yang.
The salad bar draws in many customers as a quick take-out lunch option and Papa G’s could easily have one of Portland’s best. The spread begins with fresh, local mixed greens, followed by three long rows of assorted vegetables, slaws, and pasta salads.
The sesame noodles are exquisite — almost too delicious to be in a salad bar — and have the perfect amount of spice, along with a splash of citrus-nuttiness. The curried penne with peas is creamy, rich, and slightly milder. Salad dressing options are adventurous and include blackberry vinaigrette and sesame tahini dressing, both of which are light, savory, and not too oily.
All the vegetables are cut fresh daily and the entire bar is preservative- and sulfite-free. If the $9.75/lb price tag turns you off, keep in mind it’s only $1.75 more than Whole Foods, and your money will be supporting a small business and the local farms that supplied the fresh food.
Dixon gets his produce from the Organically Grown Company, which acts as the middle man between the Pacific Northwest’s organic farms and restaurants. This ensures that all of his ingredients are fresh, local, and always organic.
Most of his produce comes from three local farms: Deep Roots, Mustard Seed and Gathering Together. All Dixon has to do is place his order online and wait to receive the fresh food. Last fall, he purchased extra mushrooms and dehydrated them in order to use them this winter, a practice he learned growing up on his family’s dairy farm in Missouri.
“My family would freeze, can, or dehydrate a lot of our vegetables to use in the off seasons. When I would go to the grocery store, I never had to step foot into the produce aisle. We ate everything from our garden or stuff that had been put up last season,” Dixon explains.
Composting food was another practice he grew up with, which was done to give back to the soil for the next crops. Papa G’s has a large compost bin with a sign overhead letting customers know there’s more to be composted than one might think, including food-soiled napkins and their biodegradable take out containers. “We have a 30-gallon trash can and we barely manage to fill it up one-quarter of the way!”
Papa G’s commitment to sustainability extends to the way the deli is run, as well. They use a high-temperature dishwasher, which doesn’t require chemicals and therefore prevents water contamination. “It still uses water and power, but the power we’re on is green power, so the balance is pretty right,” Dixon says.
He hopes to install solar power to light up his sign in the near future.
Plans for the future revolve around making it out of the grim economy.
“Survival is the number one goal right now. It’s definitely a challenge, and economically, we’ve probably lost about 75 percent of where we were at from the end of August to December. It took some juggling but we’re getting back on top.”
Economics aside, Dixon envisions a new sandwich line at the deli and plans to obtain a liquor license, specifically for Sunday nights when they feature live acoustic music.
Papa G’s is one of those rare places where the food is delicious not just by organic or vegan standards — it’s just sensationally delicious — but also its food is prepared by talented chefs who thankfully care about the environment and support local agriculture.
Dining out has become more of a luxury than a regular habit lately, but places like Papa G’s could write the new definition of “more bang for your buck.” The money from that meal will support a small local business as well as a local organic farm, and knowing where your food comes from is money well spent.
Brittany Wilson is a Portland-based journalist.
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