“Hash” restaurant opens on Garthwick’s doorstep
Michael Murray, co-owner of the recently-opened “Hash” Restaurant on the border between Sellwood and Garthwick on S.E. 17th, serves up corned beef hash, one of restaurant’s many breakfast and lunch menu items.
Merry MacKinnon / THE BEE
When “Hash” Restaurant opened on Wednesday, September 3rd, on the south edge of Sellwood on S.E. 17th, the owners made a promise to their customers. In writing, on their breakfast and lunch menus, Richard Wong and Michael Murray pledged to use milk, cream, and butter from hormone-free cows, and eggs from cage-free, vegetarian-fed hens.
The owners, who attended culinary school together, also buy fresh, local produce and meat that doesn’t contain hormones or preservatives. They cure and smoke their own bacon, bake their own bread and, so far, report that they have avoided canned ingredients.
“We have yet to open a can in here,” says Murray, while preparing corned beef hash, one of the new restaurant’s signature dishes. “We do everything in-house.”
The recipe for hash has certainly evolved since its mid-Twentieth-Century concoction of mashed, unrecognizable leftovers. For one thing, Murray’s and Wong's hash isn’t even mixed: It’s layered.
And, they offer four versions — corned beef, bacon, veggie, and chanterelle mushroom. Their corned beef hash consists of tiers of diced herbed-potatoes and vegetables beneath
slices of corned beef, topped with a poached egg and accompanied by two pieces of home-made brioche, a fresh fruit salad, a delicately-spiced mustard hot sauce and jam (made with fresh Oregon strawberries, of course).
“Everything is local,” Murray explains, “as much as humanly possible.”
In some cases, “local” is only as far away as Murray’s backyard, where he grows the tomatoes that end up in other menu items — such as eggs Florentine, burgers, and B-L-T sandwiches. Murray’s vegetable garden is not far from Sel Gris Restaurant on S.E. Hawthorne Boulevard, which is where Murray and Wong previously worked.
“Mike helped open Sel Gris,” observes Wong, who now lives in Woodstock, after moving to Portland from Los Angeles.
Until several years ago, Wong had spent most of his adult life employed in the California high-tech industry, staring at a computer monitor. “I was downsized,” Wong ruefully recalls. “I was ready for a change. I decided to go to culinary school.”
Wong’s father had run a string of Cantonese seafood restaurants in Los Angeles, and Wong grew up working in them.
So he has a basis for comparison, when it comes to what Wong regards as the superior quality of many of the farm, fish and meat products Oregon has to offer.
“Oregon has a lot more products you can play with compared to L.A.,” Wong comments.
“The pork belly up here is awesome,” adds Murray, referring to their Carlton Farms gourmet meats provider. (That’s bacon, you understand.)
Hash’s menu is seasonal, and open to suggestion. “We’re trying to feel what our customers are looking for,” Murray explains.
So far, word-of-mouth is filling the tables at Hash’s location at 8728 S.E. 17th Avenue. On a recent Sunday the line was out the door. The restaurant’s telephone number is 503/239-3966.