Sneak Peek: April Specials!

Okay, I'm not going to give it all away... but here are some of the ingredients we will be featuring next month:

• Carrots (the Easter Bunny will be happy with our Dessert Special!)
• 2 - count 'em - TWO types of Ravioli for you stuffed pasta fans...
• Spring Leeks
• Avocado - OH... some of you know what this means... A big thank you to Megan P & her colleagues at Holiday Touch for requesting this one.

Keep your eyes peeled for the specials email in your box tomorrow.

Remember you can send in your requests for specials - we do try to feature seasonal ingredients so don't get discouraged if it takes a while for your favorite special to make an appearance.

HOW is it possible...

That the Red Lion Hotel on Market Street is placing third for "Best Wedding Location" over beautiful local venues like wineries and other parks and locations? The fact that Willamette Valley Grill - a part of the Red Lion property is placing in so many categories - even those that it doesn't really qualify in - suggests that this voting once a day, as many times as you care to, is only going to show how many computers and employees you have under your control.
I'd like to believe that this process has some semblance of what Salem residents really think... but I'm starting to resent having to beg people to vote more than once to keep the playing field somewhat level.
Oh well, off to the next dilemma... because as a wise colleague pointed out - Does anyone really believe that that chain restaurant out on Lancaster is "real Italian"?
So, just in case you feel the urge to go in and vote everyday, please help out some of our friends:

• Willaby's Catering (under Professional Services)
• Coldstone Creamery (LOCALLY owned and operated, even though it's a franchise)
• Grand Vines - Best Place to Buy Wine, also under Entertainment - Best Place to Taste Wine
• Word of Mouth Neighborhood Bistro - great people serving great food :)
• Venti's Cafe - cool bar, great expanded menu (try the Honey Pepper Pork!)
• Caruso's - SO GLAD they are leading in Italian! We wouldn't begrudge them winning this category at ALL!

I'm sure there are many more quality, locally owned places that I'm missing, but these are some of our favorites! Feel free to comment and share your favorites too - wouldn't it be cool if locally owned places could place over corporate chains?

Statesman Journal - BEST OF

I don't remember seeing anything about this last year, but this year it looks like they have changed the gameplan a bit... Nominations are being taken until the 19th, and then voting among the nominees will run from March 20th to April 10th.
If you have a few minutes pop on over to http://community.statesmanjournal.com/bestof/ and start entering your faves... the categories have been expanded to include personal and professional services, which I think is great!
You can nominate in as many or as few categories as you like.
We'd also like to send out big congratulations to our friends, Maggie & Stephanie, et al on their new venture... we'll tell you more as soon as we get the go ahead. ;)
Happy St. Patrick's Day - be SAFE on the roads!

Come OOONNNNN Spring!

Anyone else wishing that doom and gloom predictions of rain for next week weren't true? Floods so fierce we'll all need arks to get around? I'm enjoying the sunshine as much as I can for right now. We're looking forward to things warming up enough that we can have outside seating too...
Here's what we are thinking with the outside seating: we plan to offer that outside seating as first come, first seated and you order your food "to go" inside. After running several scenarios through our operations gurus, this is the first incarnation. Since we don't want to compromise on the level of attention that our full-service diners inside receive, and we aren't confident at this point that we can deliver that same level of service outside, we think this will be a good alternative.
Feel free to drop us an email: janet@willamettenoodle.com and let us know what your suggestions might be.
Thanks to everyone that's sent us their feedback - both positive and the not-so-positive. Yes - you read that right... we actually do appreciate it when someone lets us know we didn't hit the mark. We really like to be able to fix an issue at the time it happens - although we understand it isn't always possible. By letting us know, we take that information and make every effort to ensure that we don't have that same issue going forward.
Oh - one other update, I've been dragged - reluctantly - into the world of Twitter... so you can actually sign up to follow us on Twitter (WNCtoo) and get updates on the daily soup and any other specials we might be running at the time. Check it out - let me know what you think!