Dillon Turner is the executive chef of Tavern on Main in downtown Springfield. A rural California native, he finds inspiration for the seasonal menus of the restaurant in both the seasonality of Oregon’s produce, and in the lengthy time it takes for all produce to grow.
“Coming from Los Angeles… it’s so much easier, you can get anything all the time. Coming here… it’s a little more seasonal,” he says in reference to why seasonality matters when it comes to menu planning. Highlighting farmers by using their produce is the most important thing in cooking for Dillon.
Tavern on Main features four seasonal menus with New American and Mexican inspiration, each of which Dillon plans out in coordination with what local farms, like Groundwork Organics, will be growing. He feels that rotating menus like this is a way of recognizing and showing appreciation for local efforts, both metaphorically and literally. By featuring seasonal ingredients, Dillon believes this style of menu planning does a better job of honoring the hard work that farmers are doing.
He likens the cycle of planting, growing, harvesting, and selling produce to an art, something that should be celebrated by maximizing how every ingredient is used in the kitchen. Dillon mentions Tavern on Main’s implementation of allium oil as an example, a neutral oil infused with the roots and skins of onions that would otherwise be thrown out. “It was more of a ‘make myself feel good’ thing before… now it’s necessary, and something I instill in every one of my cooks.” Not using every part of an ingredient whenever possible, he says, is like “a slap in the face to the farmer” or if you “took a streak across somebody’s canvas”.
One of Dillon’s goals when interacting with other market patrons is to bring more traffic towards Springfield. Hesitance to “cross the river” from Eugene to Springfield is a common response, he says. Citing the intentional renovation of downtown Springfield in particular as a point of interest, Dillon emphasizes that “it’s not what it was ten years ago”, and that local chefs and businesses are hard at work to rebrand Springfield as more welcoming to everyone, especially Eugene locals.
Dillon attributes this partially to recovery from COVID-19 on a mass scale, something that he believes farmers markets have done exceptionally well in, when compared to other social settings. “The area that I’ve seen where people are really excited and pushing for that is the farmers market, where everyone is still in their groove, still trying to push it and get Eugene back to what it was even just a couple years ago before the pandemic”. The sense of community that is present within the food scene no matter where you are, he says, is a big reason for this push.