THE RESTAURANTS OF EUGENE

When I lived in Eugene from 1991 to 2000 on East 26th Avenue, just a block off south Willamette Street, I could smell the different foods being cooked in a variety of restaurants up and down Willamette Street.   Depending on which way the wind was blowing  I could smell the grease from McDonalds a few blocks to the south or the smell of pastries from the bakery to the north.   It was very tempting in the evenings to just let my nose lead me down the street to whatever appealed the most.   There was everything from fast foods, pizzas, Italian, Mexican, Thai and the Glenwood restaurant serving American dishes, especially a good place for breakfast.   The Italian place was within a block and every Tuesday night it was all you could eat spaghetti night for the price of the first plate.    One of my favorites was a Korean place in the corner of the Payless Drug Store, which is gone now and replaced with a Market of Choice.   It was operated by a Korean family serving very authentic dishes and spicy.   Sometime after meeting Celia in November of 1997 we went to the Korean restaurant along with my son.   Celia decided to put some hot sauce on her dish and started violently coughing.   We had to pour water down her to quench the cough.   In the years that followed I think we ate at almost every restaurant in Eugene.  One of our favorites was the 19th Street Grill, which was close to where she worked at the Olum Child Development Center on the U of O campus.  It is now a McMenamins restaurant and on a few of our trips back to Eugene over the 20 years of our marriage we would stop at what we still called the 19th Street Grill and reminisce about our early days.  .