Luscious In The Press

There’s a new, underground fine dining experience in Bend

Rose Archer lit up the room, vibrating with energy as she spoke about Luscious Supper Club, her passion for teaching others how to cook and a personal mission to help people lead rich, fulfilling lives through food.

Archer is a 20-year-long Bend resident, single mom and a full-time deep tissue laser therapist at a company she runs out of her home. Her résumé transcends industries and continents, and at 46 years old, she’s just getting started.

Her accomplishments include working at Italy’s Osteria Francescana, ranked no. 1 in 2016 and 2018 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. This fact was no more than a passing mention during our one-hour conversation. Instead, the defining thread was Archer’s love for the art of food, which she puts to use for the benefit of the community.

According to Archer, her life’s purpose is nourishing the spirit of others through her supper club, helping people with their body pain through deep tissue laser therapy and demystifying cooking.

A private dining experience

Last December, Archer founded Luscious Supper Club, a fine dining multi-course dinner hosted in her living room on Bend’s east side.

The menu is not announced beforehand, and when customers purchase a $149 ticket, they have no idea what will be served. However, what is guaranteed is Archer’s unmistakable quality and a magical evening shared with 14 strangers. The process also allows Archer total creative freedom and the ability to change her mind on a dime based on the produce and ingredients available.

The supper club concept came easily to Archer, but she was unsure if she could fill her first dinner in January.

A single post on the Bend Foodies Facebook page resulted in 1,500 visits to her website.

The dinner was sold out 12 hours later.

Menu design

For Archer, creating a dish is an evolution that begins with a single ingredient. Each course is composed of five to six recipes, totaling over 40 recipes throughout the course of the evening.

The first course is an amuse-bouche, a tiny appetizer to excite the palate for what is to come. At a previous dinner, the amuse-bouche was twice-baked potatoes. While designing the dish, Archer considered how she could transform a baked potato, usually served as a large side dish, into something new and unexpected.

Archer selected miniature fingerling potatoes which she scooped out before piping back in with a decadent mashed potato. She then considered how to introduce temperature “as part of the story of the plate,” so she topped the potatoes with caviar and tobiko.

That was only the first course.

One of the following courses was inspired by a seafood boil. Archer found herself the recipient of a bunch of Dungeness crab. As she mulled over the dish at Whole Foods, her eyes landed on an overflowing table of Okinawa purple potatoes next to a stack of white Japanese sweet potatoes, which spawned the idea of two soups.

The result was a satiny potato soup with cream and truffle oil, one half a light cream color and the other a luscious purple. Archer then swirled the two together with a chopstick before placing a lemon herb crab salad down the middle of the bowl before resting one long rectangular lemon cracker on top.

Due to the laborious nature of each dinner, Archer handles dietary preferences on a case-by-case basis. She sends a survey ahead of the dinner to all guests.

“We ask a ton of questions,” Archer said. The survey helps Archer get to know her guests beforehand so that she’s able to curate the experience and ensure that her customers feel seen.

A labor of love

The supper club came together as a passion project for Archer, an outlet allowing her to enjoy the “very best parts of being a chef,” she said. So when it comes to running the numbers on the profit margins, she intentionally turns a blind eye.

“I purposely don’t add up all the hours that I work because I don’t want to take the fun out of it,” she said.

Archer sometimes logs 16-hour days in the kitchen the week of a supper. She’s also pouring herself into the project throughout the month outside of her full-time work. She’s perusing cookbooks, looking for ingredients, recipe testing, designing the menu, updating the website and emailing dinner guests.

The money pales in comparison to the fulfillment of hosting the dinner for Archer, who doesn’t want the concept to grow to such a point that she no longer touches each plate.

“The idea of getting to create something of my own — it’s when I’m in my best flow. It’s when I’m most lit up. It’s when I’m most excited. I work till midnight on my website because I want to, because I’m so excited to do it that I can’t fall asleep,” she said.

The concept is a labor of love for Archer and the team she has built to share the load, including dining room host Eve Dreher and sous chef Jenny Howard.

Just the beginning

It’s not easy to secure a seat at one of Archer’s dinners, but she has big ideas of how she wants Luscious Supper Club to evolve.

“This is the first iteration of the business,” Archer said. “And there will be future iterations.”

She is planning to host a larger dinner of approximately 50 guests at another location twice a year. It will still have the magic of the original suppers, but it will be much easier to secure a seat.

Archer’s 16 years of experience as a professional chef, founding a catering company at 27 and working as director of operations at a project management consulting firm have all led her to his moment — to alter the landscape of Bend’s food scene.

More Information

The dinners, which have already become a local sensation, are sold out through June 16. For the best chance at securing a seat, sign up for the newsletter at eatluscious.com.

Purchasing a ticket automatically enrolls guests as members of the Luscious Supper Club, and an opportunity to buy tickets for future events ahead of the public.