Oregon’s Willamette Valley makes some of the best Pinot Noir in the world, but it’s just coming into its own as a wine destination. It’s a splendid countryside, a cross between Sonoma County and the farmlands of the Midwest where I grew up—an eclectic mix of vineyards and orchards, grain elevators and combines.
But as is often the case for wine destinations, the quality of the wine is way ahead of the tourism support system of fine restaurants and hotels. Willamette Valley is getting there. The most recent addition is О̄kta, a McMinnville restaurant that has French Laundry– and SingleThread-like aspirations.
О̄kta’s chef is Matthew Lightner, who formerly led the kitchen at New York’s Atera, where he earned two Michelin stars. His partners are Katie Jackson and her husband, Shaun Kajiwara, of Jackson Family Wines; the two transformed a 100-year-old former hardware store into a chic boutique hotel, the Tributary, and opened О̄kta in summer 2022.
О̄kta has just 26 seats and a handsome, minimalist design that allows the food and the open kitchen to be the main visual attractions. The raw ingredients of the evening’s hyper-local tasting menu are on display as guests walk inside. There might be Dungeness crab or whole Pacific rockfish, wild mushrooms, or squash, peppers and tomatoes. Most of the vegetables are grown on a one-acre farm a few miles away.
Lightner’s cuisine is understated and gracefully complex, with an attention to detail that’s obvious in each bite. Artful foams and other molecular gastronomy techniques accent many dishes. Meaty sablefish is delicately sweet yet savory, as paired with a glaze of carrot and amazake and a foam of kombu dashi, and rich and tender coffee-crusted ribeye is served with hedgehog mushrooms with chanterelle cream.
Menus range from $165 to $260 per person, depending on the day and season. Accompanying wine pairings similarly range from $160 to $190, and wine director Ron Acierto’s selections are smart and innovative. The 800-selection wine list is strong on Champagne and Oregon, and Acierto is building a solid foundation of Bordeaux and Burgundy.
A word about the waitstaff: They are head’s above the norm in Willamette Valley, attentive and well-schooled, although a sense of youthful inexperience lingers. That’s to be expected considering that О̄kta is breaking new ground in a once-sleepy farm town. As Lightner told me, “We know we’re a little ahead of our time here in McMinnville, but you have to start somewhere.”
Indeed, if О̄kta is a sign of things to come, Willamette Valley will be a destination truly worthy of its wines.
