Silverton's Silver Grille, open since 1996, to close for good on Sunday

The end of an era. Jeff and Naomi Nizlek have announced the impending closure of their Silverton restaurant, Silver Grille. 

They shared the decision to the restaurant's Facebook page on August 19. 

“We take the running of this establishment very seriously and have been blessed with wonderful friends and patrons who have made the effort so rewarding...We would like to thank so many people for the support and generosity and love that you have shown us for almost 20 years, please know it has been an agonizing decision to go and we will miss it so much because of you." 

The restaurant, 206 East Main St.,  opened in December 1996. Meant to be the retirement project of chef Donna Mattson and co-owner Kim Reierson, the couple sold it to Jeff Nizlek in 2000. 

Nizlek, who grew up in Beaverton, studied culinary arts at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He cooked at East Coast restaurants and abroad before returning to Oregon where he worked at Tony Demes' Couvron in Portland. When he saw the Silver Grille was for sale, he made the move out of a desire for a more rural life, a restaurant of his own to showcase ingredients grown and produced nearby. 

"Having spent so much time in rural areas," said Nizlek, "I really missed that." Besides, he added, the agriculture in this area means working "here is a cook's dream." 

With the exception of a few years in the late aughts, when Nizlek temporarily sold the restaurant to Joel Autryand instead cooked at The Bistro at Wellspring Medical Center, he has done just that.

Silver Grille offered an ambitious, seasonal and locally-driven menu a decade before farm-to-table sourcing was de rigueur for any chef worth their salt. Almost 20 years later, the Nisleks have decided to quit while they're ahead. 

"We've worked six days a week – sometimes seven – for 19 years," Nizlek said. "We're exhausted."

The couple recently welcomed their first grandchild, a perspective-shifting occasion that left them wondering how to free up time in the midst of running the small restaurant.

"We're still doing our best work," Nizlek said, it's just that now "there's bigger priorities."

When their longtime pastry chef, Marcus Luchte, accepted a new opportunity, the couple decided it was time for them to make a change, too. 

"We just knew it's the right time to transition," Nizlek said. "As soon as we made the decision, things in our personal lives have been falling into place."

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Even with Silver Grille is closing, Nizlek explained, he doesn't plan to completely retire.

"I still want to be a chef, I just don't want to be a restaurant owner anymore." The repairs, building upkeep, errands, cleaning, and bookkeeping that restaurant ownership requires, he said, "that's thirty of forty percent of my day."

A longstanding, supportive base of regular guests, he said, have made their efforts "wholly worth it."

"We have a lot of people we really, really love taking care of. People we see time and time again, and in a small town you see those people a lot."

The restaurant's final day of operations will be Sunday, September 1. Thereafter the Nizleks plan to sell the building and the Silver Grille space as a turn-key restaurant.

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Though it will no longer be the Silver Grille, Nizlek said, he hopes it will remain a space for dining in Silverton. "What I would like to see is someone who wants to come in and do their own thing." 

"We've done it as well as we can for as long as we can. It's time for someone else to do it." 

Emily Teel is the Food & Drink Editor at the Statesman Journal. Contact her at eteel@statesmanjournal.com, Facebook, or Twitter. See what she's cooking and where she's eating this week on Instagram: @emily_teel