News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Janet Zuelke, Brian Shea and Shayla Breslow have created a new Sisters dining option at Poppies.
"It's a garden center; it's a gourmet market; it's a café."
That's how Janet Zuelke describes Poppies on Main Avenue.
The garden center came first for Zuelke, who ran a nursery for several years at another location in Sisters. She has a wide selection, including some rare and unusual plants.
"I decided I wanted to do something a little more year-round," she said, explaining the decision to open a café.
She contacted her daughter Shayla Breslow and her partner Brian Shea with an idea. Shea had moved a couple of years before to Portland from his native Savannah, Georgia. With a unique take on fusing Northwest cuisine with his Southern roots, Shea was well-prepared to build a niche for Poppies in Sisters' dining scene.
"A lot of what I was doing in Georgia is what we're doing here," Shea told The Nugget.
That includes some classic Southern delights like fried green tomatoes and the Savannah-style sweet-potato chips Poppies has offered as samples, luring countless customers to the café.
"It's like drawing ants to the sugar bin," Zuelke says with a smile.
The three partners are applying their own personal food resolution to their business.
"We wanted to know where our food is coming from and we wanted to be able to tell people where their food is coming from," Zuelke said.
That means using local sources - organic as much as possible - including edibles from Poppies' own garden.
The same spirit animates the gourmet market aspect of the business. Foodies will find Asian and Thai foods, an assortment of high-quality olive oils, free-range chicken eggs and a selection of finishing salts - which Shea says is "one of the coolest things we've got here." So cool, in fact, that Poppies will offer a class in the use of finishing salts.
There will also be a dining club featuring the work of guest chefs.
Starting this weekend, Poppies will begin offering brunch from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays. They invite diners to stop by and enjoy their unique cuisine "touched with Southern love."
Poppies is located at 221 W. Main Ave. For more information call 541-549-1033.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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