Your Hosts
Anna and Leo, at your service. Artists, foodies, wine lovers, bon vivants — we've been in Portland since 2005, with roots in Seattle as well as Barcelona (Anna) and Lausanne (Leo).
Anna is the Cordialista-in-Chief. A natural hostess, she loves to feed people and create a feeling of enchantment and welcome. Friendly, foodie Portland is an ideal habitat, attuned to the generous metaphysics Anna finds in kitchen and table.
Leo is the maître du Cordial, sommelier, cultural attaché, and court jester. A thoroughgoing xenophile, he loves to celebrate the unusual and unexpected and, above all, to share in the experience.
Venues & Variations
The Cordial happens in atypical places and spaces in, around, and beyond Portland. We're always scouting for interesting venues, and places we think people should know about. We like promoting cultural venues, farms, artisanal food producers, and so forth.
We also like cultural and calendarial themes, but in a sophisticated, non-schtick way. The first Cordial, for example, straddled Portuguese Freedom Day and Ludwig Wittgenstein's birthday. We designed a completely Austrian and Portuguese wine list, backed up with an Austro-Portuguese soundtrack. But we were less literal-minded with the menu, and didn't make anyone dress in quaint folk costume. We do have our dignity.
Arts and media figure as well. We use rear-projection video of our own devising to evoke and mash up times and places, such as the montage of classic Greek film and footage of us shopping for dinner ingredients at farmers' markets that we put together for the Hellenistic Solstice Cordial. Plans are afoot to interweave the likes of live music, readings, and performance.
The Menu
Anna is the mistress of the menu. She also likes to collaborate with other cooks and foodies. We are delighted to count Cyndy C., Jonnie L. and Krissy M. as Cordial Chefs, and many other friendly sous-chefs and preppers.
The menu is always ingredient-driven, artisanal, organic, seasonal, and local — including Anna's garden — augmented with recherché slow-food imports. We especially like imposing on traveling friends to bring home something hard to find.
The Wine List
Our pairing philosophy favors the unexpected and the risky, but it has yet to precipitate a brawl.
Working with clients in the phenomenal Oregon wine industry has made us serious about wine. In May, 2008 we completed the UK-based WSET Advanced Certification course, taught in Portland by the Wine & Spirit Archive, who are also wine consultants to The Cordial.
What We're Not
- Celebrity chefs, restaurateurs, or hospitality biz pros. We're devoted amateurs, in the original Olympics sense of the term (except clothed). This is a labor of love.
- Cliquey scenesters. We're surely not cool enough for that, and one of the central aspects of The Cordial is bringing together all kinds of people from all different walks of life. We love seeing people deep in conversation with someone they would never otherwise rub shoulders with. It's all really about dinner-table diplomacy.
- Food and wine snobs. We love the finer things — beautiful food, compelling wines, brilliant culture, enthralling settings, inspiring people — but that's because life is good, and it's just too short for half-assedness. Most of all though, it's too short for status games. Ede, bibe, lude!
