A reservation made months ahead of time turned out to be on the evening of a special cider-themed collaboration with Bushwhacker Cider. How fortunate.
Kitchen and dining room:
The chicories with leek ash and egg (no photo) were amazing.
Chestnut soup with fried Jerusalem artichokes:
Pickled quail egg, salmon roe…
Gin-barrel-aged cider. And Alice (their granny smith cider) on tap.
Butter turnips. Excellent rutabaga. And sure, some pork.
Apizza Scholls: still one of my very favorite pizzas in the US (New Haven style), up there with DiFara’s in Brooklyn and Pizzaiolo in Oakland. Amazing crust texture (thin, pliant, slight crunch), balanced tomato sauce… yes.
In Portland recently, I had delicious Indian street-food-style dishes I’d never heard of, in a casual airy space with mismatched chairs and Bollywood movies on a projector. The highlights were the vegetarian kati roll (paneer, egg, pickled onion, chutney rolled in a paratha– every bite delicious) and the vada pav (potato dumpling dipped in chickpea flour and fried, with chutneys).
Another food-inspired trip to Portland (Oregon) with friends. We ate well. In a few quick cell phone photos:
Highlights:
Evoe: This place still blows me away. I wish I could cook this effortlessly, casually well. Two chefs at a counter with a simple stove, fresh ingredients, and simple delicious plates prepared to order. Charred greens with egg and anchovy. Piperade (a Basque dish of peppers and onions topped with a soft egg yolks). A salad made from translucently-sliced thin raw squash, soft cheese, and good olive oil. Peach-speck-purslane. Two types of peppers, sauteed with salt.
Ned Ludd: A charming organic (in the design sense) space with plants everywhere, piles of firewood, knick-knacks, and a brick oven. Steak with a nice grain/texture. Mussels and chanterelles. A fantastic creamy-soft sheepsmilk cheese (from Black Sheep, I think?) A spicy pFriem Family Saison.
Cascade Brewing (again). A range of challenging, wild beers. The Summer Gose (slightly tart, slightly salty, refreshing, dry) and the Golden Mulberry (puckering-tart, low on the funk) were both a fine balance between sour and easy-afternoon-drinking, as was the bemusingly clear/golden stout.
Heart Coffee (again). Ultra light roast, tart/acidic. No bitter-coffee aftertaste.
Screen Door. Brunch. My favorite fried chicken in years (moist, slightly spicy breading, so not-greasy it was even good as leftovers). Migas egg scramble with green chiles.
As well as various other food carts, beer bars (Bailey’s: though their new gaudy-bright animated electronic big-screen-TV beer list was a big step backwards in environment, Tugboat), coffee (Stumptown), and more (some mediocre regret poutine)…
Another year, another weekend trip to Portland to see friends, eat, and drink beer. Getting up early and going to sleep late– less to take advantage of the nightlife and more to fit in four meals a day. Some memories:
Heart Coffee: Easily the best coffee of the trip. A very light roast, lemony, smooth. Highly recommended.
Apizza Scholls:
Oh, wow.
I’d been here many years ago and remembered it being good, but the first hot slice of Margherita this time was one of the best slices of pizza I’ve had anywhere (including New Haven, Brooklyn, and Naples). Perfect. They nailed it. Thin crust without being crispy, elastic without being chewy, tender without letting grease soak through, tart distinctively tomato sauce without being too acidic, small pockets of excellent cheese and basil, and just the right temperature…. even 15 minutes later it wasn’t as amazing. The New York White Pie (fresh mozzarella, pecorino, ricotta, garlic) was also very good and moist, but not in the same league.
Yeah.
Horse Brass Pub (again):
I had to come back, it was as British-dark-wood cozy as I remembered, and the cask conditioned Hogsback Stout tasted as good. The beer equivalent of light roast coffee, with toasty grapefruity flavors.
Cascade Brewing Barrel Room:
Barrel-aged sour beers. Really good ones. 2 oz tasters let me gradually work my way through all 10 of them. And not at all crowded (well, at 3pm on a Friday…) A great way to spend all afternoon, and up there with Hair of the Dog in my favorite brewpubs in Portland.
The Noyaux was fantastic– I have to track it down. Blondes and tripels aged on oak for years, then another year on raspberries and apricot pits. Tart to the point of saliva-stimulating at first, then getting more and more funky (in a barnyard-straw way) as it warmed up. It smells like it would be sweet, but it’s not at all. A+.
The Vlad was also very good, a quad blonde aged in bourbon barrels, not one-note, and it kept developing as it warmed up. I don’t know if it would be interesting enough to drink a full pint, but I really enjoyed this small glass.
The Manhattan NW was the most interesting though not my favorite: a quad aged in bourbon barrels with sour cherries. Very woodsy in taste, but it smelled too much like grenadine syrup.
I thought the Chocolate Burbonic sounded interesting (porters, bourbon barrels, cinnamon, dates, chocolate? what’s not to like?) but I thought it was disgusting, evoking “subtle notes of bile”. Humbug.
Oh, and the apricot, cherry, and blueberry sour beers were all good, tart, and about what I expected from past bottles.
Lardo:
Yeah, yeah, a posed-food-getting-cold low-depth-of-field juxtaposition photo, I have to take one of these in between all the blurry quick cell phone shots.
A burger covered with porkstrami / pork belly, on a half-size loaf of bread because they were out of rolls. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious– but the “lardo sauce” was over the top and the whole thing was just too *pow* in my face creamy. Great at midnight after a beer at Apex, and I’d try something else from their menu, but I have no need to have that burger more than once in my life.
Luce:
A cheerful, friendly Italian bistro, which by total chance I was standing in front of when I got a message I should check it out. The $12 steak and salad lunch plate was a great deal, and the salad was remarkably good: interesting greens, parsley, dill, other slightly bitter greens– it tasted fresh out of someone’s backyard garden. The steak was fine though nothing special — if I’m there again I hear I should try their pasta.
Broder:
A fun place to eat brunch, though not mind-blowing or deserving of a Zagat 27 and a “Best Brunch Spots in Portland” award.
Excellent dill-infused aquavit bloody mary:
Baked scrambled eggs in a square skillet and a mashed potato pancake were cute twists on the typical brunch dishes… but neither tasted better than any generic eggs and potatoes:
Evoe, the counter in Pastaworks:
This was one of my favorite places to eat the last time I was in Portland. It was quite good this time but just short of excellent.
The oven-roasted rapini with meyer lemon and anchovies was fascinating: who knew that rapini would roast so well? The leaves were crispy but the stalks stayed moist, chewy, and really flavorful, unlike many roasted greens (I’m looking at you, kale):
A cauliflower soup with bottarga and a raw shaved squash salad with mint and balsamic were both interesting but very one note.
See See Motorcycle Coffee Company:
I went for the ambiance, the espresso was quite good.
Apex:
A huge beer selection (taps and bottles), the kind of place I’d think would be right up my alley– maybe if I went with a group of friends. I stopped by after a film festival on my own and it didn’t quite click for me. The not-so-cozy space and the bright high-tech beer lists were a little off, and the one beer I tried was nothing but a hop punch in the face.
Little T Baker:
Nice space, very good pretzel roll…
Good though I’m not inspired to rave about them: Common Grounds Coffee (though I do appreciate their fox logo and $1 coffee), the Pie Spot (a fine marionberry tart), the crepe food truck near Ladd’s Addition, the Korean taco truck next to Prost, Lucky Lab (mediocre pizza and beer), Amnesia (friendly outdoor seating and strangers, fine beer).
This is the final writeup from a weekend trip to Portland, focusing on our favorite beer places (Part 1: Portland Food, Part 2: Oregeon Brewers Festival). I half-wrote this right after the trip but hadn’t got around to posting it.
Bailey’s Taproom (SW Broadway and Pine, downtown)
A great place to taste beer– an informal space with plenty of seating and a rotating selection of about twenty beers on tap, including a lot of Oregon beer. For just $7.50 you can get a sampler of any five of your choice. I liked the Avatar Jasmine IPA (very faint hints of jasmine), but can’t remember what else we had (a scotch ale and one of the Upright beers, but I don’t seem to have notes).
Upright Brewing (on N Broadway, in a tricky-to-find location near freeway offramps and overpasses, in the basement of the Leftbank building)
We tried all nine beers they had on tap. My favorite by far (and one of my favorites of the trip– I brought some home) was the unusual Flora Rustica— it had some slightly vegetive flavors and an interesting faintly-bitter herbal taste (they said “spring yarrow” is one ingredient), as well as a bit of hot-pepper-like spiciness. It’s hard to describe but very worth trying [edit: the bottle I brought home didn’t have the same spiciness and wasn’t as strongly flavored]. Also exceptionally good was the Alphaphylactic Hop, not your typical hoppy beer. It had a slightly savory-vegetable-saute flavor, a light sweetness, a bit of hoppiness… and a taste that went on for a while and kept evolving (either as I got used to it, or as it warmed up). The Four was a very well-done saison-style ale with a slight orange flavor and a floral/honey smell. I also wrote down that I liked the Five but can’t remember the details. The Six, Seven (more of a cream-style ale), Weisse, and Engel Pils were also all good. I didn’t like the hoppy Leafer Madness as much.
Horse Brass Pub (SE Belmont & 46th)
A great English-style pub, with cozy dark wood, plenty of tables, many cask beers (hand-pumped, light carbonation, served closer to room temperature) and a wide selection of non-local beers as well. We had a few beers, including a good cask-conditioned version of Racer 5 IPA, but the highlight was the truly amazing Hogs Back Stout (cask): hard to describe, but slightly “chewy”, slightly coffee/oatmeal flavored, rich, not especially sweet or dry… “balanced”? The best stout I’ve ever had and one of my favorite beers of the trip.
Ignore the excessive foam in the photo below– we got a second round of the Hogs Back, but the cask ran out while pouring them, so we got these heady half-beers for free.
Amnesia Brewing Company (N Beech and Mississippi)
A pleasant brewpub for a beer at on a sunny day, with a big outdoor patio and indoor warehouse seating near the brewing apparatus, with a slight smell of grain in the air. We all liked the Plum Founded, a mild pale ale aged with… plums. The ESB and Cream of the Crop (a beer made with flaked corn and a hint of creaminess) were also both good, and refreshing on a sunny summer day. None of these were our favorites of the trip, but all of them were better than most beers we had at the OBF.
Following on the Portland Food Recap, here are some notes about the 60+ beers we tasted at the Oregon Brewers Festival back in August.
A side note before I talk about all the beers I didn’t like– yeah, yeah, it’s far easier to be a critic than to actually make something, these are just my opinions (well, combined with some comments and notes from James).
The OBF as they call it was the initial impetus for visiting Portland that particular weekend, though plenty of other beer, food, book-buying, and friend-visiting activities fit themselves into the available time.
Unfortunately, it was somewhat disappointing (and we sold our spare beer tokens so we could leave early). Most of the beers we tried were relatively unremarkable. The exception was a few of the Buzz Tent beers, but all of the buzz tent beers sold out Friday and it was closed Saturday and Sunday. The festival was also crowded, with big groups of people regularly yelling “Wooo!”, and mediocre food compared to elsewhere in Portland. We heard a brewer later say “oh, breweries don’t sent their best beers to OBF”, and suggested it was more a generic outdoor drinking party.
But it was still worth going for a few hours, even if just to taste a lot of beers quickly. A quick summary:
Beers we actively disliked:
Beers we all said “meh” about:
Beers we thought were decent, or that one of us really liked:
Our favorite few beers of the festival (though we had others outside the festival we liked more):
A few restaurant highlights from a recent trip to Portland (which also included beer tasting, biking around, and seeing a few friends, but I promised myself this wouldn’t be a blog that’s mostly long-winded stories about my day with only a passing mention of food):
The Waffle Window (at 36th and SE Hawthorne):
A waffle with sauteed mushrooms, spinach, roasted peppers, fresh tomatoes, and “marinated chevre”. The chevre had the consistency of a dense whipped cream and was a nice cool counterpart to everything else. Plus, look at that pleasing collection of colors with the blue-rimmed plate!
Little Bird (downtown):
I’d heard good things about Little Bird from a friend recently, and still remember the mind-blowing (and rich-food-giddy-coma-inducing) meal I had at its more formal big brother Le Pigeon years ago. By lucky chance, we’d just finished a beer tasting two blocks away and Little Bird had a late-night menu, and we split:
This whole delicious meal of four good dishes + a shared dessert + wine for three people was only $90 including tip.
Simpatica (just East of the river):
I love the Simpatica concept– they’re usually a catering company, but three times a week they serve a meal in their space. It’s informal (long communal wooden tables, simple plates, next to a catering-size kitchen where they’re finishing the dishes), with nicely muted lighting that keeps it from feeling like a cafeteria.
For dinner, you sit down at 7pm and get fed a three-course meal with dessert (no choices, and you may not know what the menu will be when you make reservations). I’ve just been there twice, and both times it was delicious, hearty food, usually with a substantial component of it cooked over the course of the day on their outdoor grill and some sort of good local greens.
This visit, the theme was “crawfish boil”, and we had:
Evoe (at SE Hawthorne and 38th)
This was probably my favorite food experience of the trip (though Little Bird was also very good). It’s just a few tables and seats along a counter inside the Pastaworks market, serving a collection of small dishes. It’s a light, bright, high-ceiling, airy (cliche?) space that doesn’t feel like a restaurant (and I mean that in a good way). We got to watch the food being prepared while ogling their jars of colorful pickled vegetables and chatting with the chefs about ingredients and restaurants in SF.
Everything we had here was basically perfect, including:
We also had some wine (I’m not really a wine connoisseur, so don’t have anything intelligent to say about it), and I had a hard cider that was slightly funky/earthy and interesting.
Ruby Jewel Scoops (on N Mississippi):
I’ve always liked salty sweets (for example, Poco Dolce tiles, or the Bi-Rite salted caramel ice cream), so I had to try Ruby Jewel’s “caramel and salted chocolate”. The base caramel ice cream was fairly good, but I loved the salty chocolate chunks and their localized nature. This may sound odd, but I like foods with interesting flavors presented side by side, so I can vary the taste ratios bite to bite.
Overall, really good food.
p.s. Credit for some of these photos goes to A.L., I can’t remember which ones were hers since she let me use her camera.
The Robot Must Eat 