For its winter issue, a local food magazine asked me to interview the new chef, Jason Stoller Smith, at Timberline Lodge on Oregon’s Mount Hood. The chef invited me last week to tour the lodge, follow him around a bit, and stay the evening for a winemaker’s dinner at the Silcox Hut, a stone cabin a mile up the mountain from the lodge only accessible by skis or snowcat.
Timberline Lodge is a W.P.A.-era ski resort built of huge stones and mammoth timber, full of late 1930s art and textiles. Its newel posts are carved into animals, and Native American symbols adorn the chimneys. The Lodge sits right where Mount Hood, a volcano, transitions from forest to a moon-like, boulder-strewn landscape. As I packed to spend the night, I thought “lodge chic” and wavered between a Sonja Henie-inspired, muff-accessorized ensemble and a late 1930s, bias-cut black crepe dress with velvet appliquéd peonies. The chef had not very helpfully said the dinner’s dress code was “casual formal.” And, of course, there was the question of perfume.
What fragrance would feel right with the remote Lodge and yet not intrude on a winemaker’s dinner? Lingering in my mind was M.F.K. Fisher’s foreword to Angelo Pellegrini’s book The Unprejudiced Palate where she recounted Pellegrini shunning her because he thought she’d worn perfume at a wine tasting (in fact, he was smelling the scented soap from his hotel.) I couldn’t imagine having the experience scent-free, but I didn’t want to intrude on anyone’s enjoyment of dinner…
