Chow Town: McMinnville, Oregon

McMinnville has a darned cute downtown, with brick facades and those tschotke shops your mom likes, and, for some reason, a bronze statue of Ben Franklin – you can sit right next to him on the bench, button your shirt up, ladies, I hear Franklin was quite the lech, but even better, there’s some fine chow in that little town. We found ourselves passing in and out of there a few times on our recent exploration of the upper Willamette Valley and we dined, but good.

K&F at Union Block: A cute little corner espresso place. Free wifi (What? It matters!) and good joe in room full of natural light. I loved the coffee cups in bright colors — I watched a 70ish lady carefully select which saucers she wanted for underneath her one red and one yellow coffee cup. For the record, she chose green for under the red, but decided to go monochrome with the yellow. I’d have gone with the blue, of course. K&F at Union Block is at 403 E. 3rd.

Harvest Fresh Market: We wandered past at mid-day and envied the sandwiches so much that we went in to get our own – they were fat and fresh. They have loads of nice salads and treats, too, and they’re awfully nice. Wine tasters, go there to stock your picnic basket. Harvest Fresh is at 251 3rd.

Honest Chocolates: Oh my god oh my god oh my god, the salted caramels. Oh my god. Also, the ones where they soak the fruit in pinot before making them into chocolates? Oh my god. There’s really nothing more to say except that if you are ordering some for me, you’ll need my shipping address. Oh, and this quote from the very nice woman who runs the place: “Our chocolates won’t win any beauty contests, but we’re not too worried about that.” Seeing as how we went for chocolates elsewhere that were very pretty but boring, I’d say she’s spot on  Honest Chocolates is at 313 3rd.

Nick’s Italian Cafe: We missed the lunch menu, which I was bummed about because when we stopped in for dinner, there was only a prix fixe menu on display. I wasn’t freaked out by the price — it wasn’t cheap but I was feeling splashy — we just didn’t want that much food. Never mind, the waitress told us we could order from a smaller menu at the wine bar in back. It was awfully nice — we had a white pizza, some olives, some bread and olive oil, just snacky things — but we learned later that you don’t have to stick with the full menu, they’ll break it up for you. Nick’s Italian Cafe is at 521 3rd.