jonoropeza's Profile
Vancouver BC Hound returning for more Portland chow
Jill: Speaking of that neighborhood, what are your thoughts on Bar Avignon and Savoy? Have had both on the to-try list but just haven't gotten around to trying them yet.
Grayelf: Another one for your wine-and-apps list is Kir. They have a fantastically nichie rose-heavy wine list and the dishes go well with the type of wine. Close to Le Pigeon. A night starting at Kir and finishing at Le Pig is a GOOD night. :)
Vancouver BC Hound returning for more Portland chow
I like to do the same thing. St. Jack in the SE - as if you need *another* name - is a favorite happy hour spot of mine. They have a fried tripe dish that I can't get enough of, a salad, cheese plate, moules, and a burger. We'll get all five and that's dinner for the two of us. Good bartenders, good drinks.
Navarre is yet another spot. Much more like places in Spain than TB is. Owner knows a good deal about Spanish wine. Have had two very nice meals there, just sitting at the bar eating tapas and enjoying a bottle that he's picked out.
I was in San Francisco last weekend. Ate well, don't get me wrong. But this town - especially now with SF booming due to the social media IPO buzz - the value we get at some of these happy hours here in PDX, compared to what you get in SF... it's really, really nice.
Vancouver BC Hound returning for more Portland chow
Nice plan! Enjoyed reading your report from your last trip.
re: Toro Bravo
To me, it's pretty solid. Much more so if you go in thinking Spanish-influenced PNW food rather than 'I want authentic Spanish'.
My experience has been that the best stuff tends to be at the beginning of their menu. Their pintxos, tapas, the 'french kisses' prunes stuffes with foie gras. Moving down the menu I've found a few more disappointments.
Visiting the Willamette Valley for the first time in September !!!
If you're looking to taste amazing Pinot: Broadley, Soter, Sokol Blossor, Domaine Serene and Et Fille are some of my faves. Several of those (as well as many of our smaller producers) are by appointment only. Call ahead.
Carlton Winemakers Studio is a good visit; you could probably spend an afternoon there.
Torii Mor has a nice room, open most days of the week, and they make wines outside of the region if you need a break from Pinot.
Be careful with some of the producers that are open on a drop in basis. I've tasted in Burgundy, Napa and Sonoma and have never seen such outrageous tasting fees as I have in the Willamette Valley. Penner Ash and Adelsheim in particular are offenders; $20-$25, small pours, and neither apply the fee towards bottles purchased. (Both make nice wine though, just try them in town at a wine bar not at the tasting room)
If it was me, I would either stay around McMinnville / Newberg if I wanted a quiet wine country vacation, or in Portland if I wanted to have fun at night.
Cheers,
JO
Portland Food Trucks and Food Cart Tour
66 bucks buys a lot of food cart food.
Top of my head five cart tour:
9th and Alder: Porchetta Sandwich at People's Pig.
5th and Stark : Samosas at Real Taste Of India
12th and Hawthorne: Fries with your choice of sauces at Potato Champion
42nd and Belmont: Smoked salmon lefses at Viking Soul Food
50th and Division: Tiger prawns and chips at Year of the Fish
That's probably $40-$45 worth of food and you will likely be stuffed out of your gourds if you get through it all.
Or you could just hit four or five carts at 9th and Alder.
JMHO there's not one or two 'can't miss' carts here in Portland... it's very hard to go wrong as the carts that just are flat out bad tend to fail pretty fast... when all else fails, choose the cart with the long line... a lot of the magic is just in exploring the different pods, smelling, looking, talking to people, trying things on a whim... anyway, have fun...
Vancouver Hound's first trip to Portland -- help a hungry elf out?
Well greyelf, how did you find our city? Tasty I hope?
Downtown food carts
Hi Melissa -
A few recs for the 9th and Alder pod:
Khao Man Gai, yes try that
808 Grinds does really nice Hawaiian plate lunches, one is enough for two people
People's Pig: The porchetta.
Frying Scotsman if you like fish and chips
Altengartz does great brats and backyard-style burgers
Samuari Bento: Takoyaki
Mai Pho: I like her dumpling soup, best thing on a cold day
Addy's Sandwiches, European-style baguette sandwiches, reminds me of Paris
Huong's: 4 bucks for a tasty chicken banh mi
Eurotrash is there as well... they have some interesting ideas but I've never really had anything there that wowed me... might just be me as plenty of others seem to really like it.
I moved out of the neighborhood late last year, so there may be some new stars that have opened up recently, but those were my favorites of the bunch that's been there for a while... have fun exploring,
- JO
Vancouver Hound's first trip to Portland -- help a hungry elf out?
Little T also makes kouign amann... not every day I don't think, you may want to call ahead. They had some this morning when I was there.
Vancouver Hound's first trip to Portland -- help a hungry elf out?
Hi Jill -
Thanks for the heads up on another great coffee shop in our neighborhood! I stopped at Spielman this morning on my way downtown. Good croissants. Their espresso seemed like a lighter roast... really nice fruitiness to it. I really like that it was a decent pull. I've been to a few places in town that have their machines set so ristretto that a single espresso turns out to be a trickle of syrup in the bottom of a cup. Spielman's single is a good 3 sips... 'goldilocks pull' in my book...
Thanks again!
Vancouver Hound's first trip to Portland -- help a hungry elf out?
Hair of the Dog is a good brewer to check out. Really unique beers. Decent food at the tasting room.
If you're downtown, Bailey's Taproom. One of the best beer bars I've been to on the West Coast, maybe *the* best considering how affordable they make it to try a lot of really good beers. Cheers -
Lamb Shanks
Nice.
Meyer lemons are in season... instead of the canned tomatoes, three or four meyer lemons can be good. Cut up and seeded, thrown in peel and all. Liquid from the tomatoes gets replaced by water or chicken stock.
Sometimes after braising the shanks like this, we put them on the grill for a few minutes on each side while reducing the sauce. Or we'll let the shanks cool, tear the meat off, and fry it up... pulled lamb... really good in tacos.
Return to Pok Pok
Hey Emily -
JillO has posted a good list below. HA VL on 82nd for Vietnamese soup and sandwiches. In the 10th and Alder cart pod, I like Huong's for pho and bahn mi; 808 Grindz for Hawaiian-inspired food; Nary at Mai Pho is a gem and I've liked almost everything she's made; Samauri Bento makes great Takoyaki. For Chinese I like Om Seafood... when I crave 'Chinese' it's usually shellfish I want and especially crab; Om does crab right. For Indian, I think New Taste of India cart on 4th is as good as I've had here in Portland.
Cheers,
- J O
Learning to bake without recipes
Start with one recipe. Say for a loaf of bread. Make that same recipe over and over again. You make bread twice a week for a year, that's 100 loaves. Over the course of those 100 loaves you're going to discover all sorts of subtleties that aren't in any book. At some point you'll probably start tweaking this and that and trying little experiments. Don't be afraid to make mistakes... you'll learn more from the failures than you will from the successes. Don't worry if the 2nd or the 5th or the 27th loaf isn't any good. Throw it out and try again. Keep pushing. Have fun!
Sharing Wine at a Restaurant (or anywhere really)
Well... I know some sad folks who couldn't make full frontal nudity suggestive. On the other hand, was once friends with a girl who could make "pass the broccoli" extremely suggestive, as well as highly inappropriate.... ;)
Sharing Wine at a Restaurant (or anywhere really)
I'd go with: Ok if you bought the bottle. Not ok if you split the cost; you never know if his/her partner was planning to finish it, and there might be weirdness when the bill comes. Either way, probably better off pouring into your glass rather than drinking straight from their glass.
Return to Pok Pok
The fish sauce wings. Anything off of the grilled meat list. I don't remember the noodle dishes being all that spicy either. Watch out for the clams - I can't remember if it's at Pok Pok or across the street at Whiskey Soda, but one of them has a clam dish that is very, very hot.
I don't see why you can't ask for the heat to be toned down though... just ask them to use less chilis, or omit them altogether... never hurts to ask.
Your post reminded me of my first trip to Thailand. My friend and I had the good fortune to share quite a few meals with locals in Bangkok and out in the country. We both thought "Watch out, these guys are going to firebomb us."
Actually it turned out to be the other way around - out of several dozen folks we ate with, not one of them liked their food as spicy as we did, and to many of them our 'medium spicy' was unbearable!
Short list of MUSTs in Portland
Ok Jill, I went to Oblique on Friday, Coava yesterday.
Oblique: Solid cup of coffee. Big dark chocolate flavors. Not a lot of nuance but very good indeed.
Coava: Two different roasts. Both knocked my socks off in different ways... one was light and almost fruity, the other rich with caramel notes and an aftertaste that stuck with me for a good half hour. Two of the best cups of coffee I've had anywhere. WOW!
Funny enough, for me I found the atmosphere at Oblique a tad dull... am just not a fan of that style of coffee shop. Whereas the Coava space is everything I like in a coffee shop... wide open, vibrant, lots of plugs for the technology. Different strokes. :)
Heart and Cellar Door are next on my list. Thanks again for the ideas! Don't forget Spella downtown for their hand-pulled shots... definitely an embarrassment of coffee riches in this town.
Short list of MUSTs in Portland
For me, what's special about Pok Pok is that it's a Modern American take on Thai cooking, yet many of their dishes also remind me very much of food I've eaten in Thailand. Much more so than the typical Thai restaurant in the Northwest. So I always get this sense that I'm eating in a cutting edge restaurant in Bangkok, even though there's nothing like Pok Pok in Bangkok (or not that I've found), if that makes sense.
-----
Pok Pok
3226 SE Division St, Portland, OR
Short list of MUSTs in Portland
Cool. Think I'll start my exploration with Oblique, since they're pretty close to my place.
Me too on the coffee geek thing. I lived in San Diego for 10 years prior to moving to Portland. Great city, good food, very weak coffee scene though. 2 years here in Portland and now I'm a complete coffee snob, LOL.
Working my way through a bag of Water Ave's Sumatra Aceh's beans right now. Big cigar flavors. I usually french press because I like it dirty and strong, will have to try the pour over technique one of these days though -
Short list of MUSTs in Portland
Hey Jill -
Nice list! Which of those is your favorite? I just recently moved to the east side and haven't settled on a regular yet... hitting my local Stumptown most of the time now as they do make a *decent* macchiato I spose. ;)
-----
Stumptown
4525 SE Division St, Portland, OR 97206
Short list of MUSTs in Portland
Hey Big C -
I lived at 13th and Burnside for a year... here is a late afternoon / early evening crawl that I have done and just recently took some out of town friends on, they were fairly well blown away:
Espresso at Barista (best coffee shop I have ever been to anywhere), takoyaki from Samauri Bento in the 10th & Alder pod, either a beer at Bailey's Taproom (they open at 4) or a glass of pinot from Oregon Wines on Broadway, happy hour sushi at Masu (sit at the bar, tell the chef you are from out of town and want something unique... uni if you like it is reliably amazing here), cocktails at Clyde, dinner at either Little Bird or Gruner.
Plenty of taxis in the area, though I recommend walking (waddling?) back to the hotel after an excursion like that... :)
Amazing Carts: People's Pig in that same cart pod... I'm a softie for well done pig but I think what they produce is pretty amazing... a lot of the amazingness though is the people... the friendly guys at 808 Grinds, the gal at the sandwich cart who is making sandwiches exactly how you get them in Paris, Nary at Mai Pho, sweetest lady, if you go there and get soup and then come back in a year, she will remember how spicy you like your soup...
-----
Bailey's Taproom
213 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205
Authentic Chinese Food in PDX
You're right, there are too many right now and many will no doubt fail; I think if you open something unique and incredible though, you'll get the business, regardless of the supply glut. I know I'd be willing to drive anywhere in the city for the type of street food I remember from my trips to Shanghai.
Of course if your logistics stink or your margins are too thin you'll fail anyway regardless of how many customers you get... but that's another point entirely. :)
Perfect Roast Chicken
Whatever technique you end up using (I'm partial to Julia's myself), I've found the two most important factors in making a perfect roast chicken are thoroughly drying the chicken, and letting the chicken come to room temperature before roasting.
(the usual caveats about room temp meat / food safety apply; I've done probably 100 chickens in the last 15 years and have never gotten sick, nonetheless don't call me if *you* do :) )
Olympia and Lacey area update?
One of the stands at the farmer's market in Olympia does a hangtown fry for breakfast. Serious stuff. Good crab cakes too. Sorry, can't remember their name or seem to find them Googling.
Batdorf and Bronson... have never eaten there, but they do a mean macchiato.
I'm not much for La Tarasca, but Tacos El Rey in Centralia is something special. Probably the best tacos I've had north of San Francisco. The buche... oh the buche. If you see a guy driving down the I5, leaning out his window, belting out an ode to a pig's esophagus... well, that'd be me.
-----
La Tarasca
1001 W Main St, Centralia, WA 98531
Eating 395
It's a great drive. Sparse country, lonely highway. Unfortunately, not a lot of chow.
One I can give you, if you like taco trucks, is Tacos Los Primos in Yakima. 1st & D, in the parking lot next to the laundry. Whenever we drive out to wine country, there's always a stop at Los Primos along the way.
Quite a few times while doing the 395 drive, I've found myself at the buffet at the El Dorado in Reno. It's quantity over quality but the quality's not horrible either. Years ago I went to the Burning Man festival... ate at the El Dorado on the way, it covered me for three days.
Good luck! Please post anything you find in Eastern OR... :)
-----
El Dorado Restaurant
1616 S Gold St Ste 1, Centralia, WA 98531
So Sue Me... [moved from San Diego]
What a waste. Thanks for posting the city attorney's email address, JR. If this is how Mr. Goldsmith intends to 'make his name', by challenging state code, he must have asked his interns to bring him the most ridiculously frivolous cause they could find.
I spent a little while last night Googling around to read reactions to Jay's tipping policy.
What I learned is that there are plenty of cheap bastards out there who aren't tipping close to 18% on a regular basis.
I guess this might be why I tend to get such excellent service at restaurants I frequent. And here I thought it was because of my charming personality. :)
What's good in Kitsap?
You mean it's not just trees all the way to Alaska??? :)
You're right, I didn't get north of Bremerton this summer. I have been to Whiskey Creek in Keyport a few times in the past. Kinda meh about it. Bring me a Farmer George's rib eye and I'll grill ya one on our back porch that'll knock'em out of the park.
One thing I did forget to mention: Tom Farmer's oysters. He has a little shop south of Allyn, and is usually at the Port Orchard Saturday morning market. Great oysters, even in the summer season. Crisp, sweet, and very redolent of the Sound. In December they're ridiculously good. The Once A Winter Plan: Head to Esquin in Seattle, bring back the most ridiculously expensive bottle of Chablis they've got, then get a couple dozen of Tom's oysters and slurp down. Heaven.
What's good in Kitsap?
Thanks to all who've posted on this thread! You helped me survive a summer exile in Kitsap. Now for a little giveback... my own (highly opinionated!) short list.
Farmer George's is one of the best meat markets I've ever been to. Outstanding beef, especially the tri tip. Pork is good as well. Delicious local chickens. Raw milk. I chuckle when I see someone buying meat in Safeway or Fred Meyer down the road. They have no idea what they're missing.
La Poblanita in Bremerton for great Mexican. Tripe, carne asada and carnitas are all killer. Only the barbacoa - purportedly a 'house specialty' - has been disappointing. Beware of most Mexican places on the peninsula - many do boring food blandly and without passion. Especially bad were El Sombrero and Blue Agave in Port Orchard.
Koi's in Port Orchard does a pretty decent bowl of pho. It's nothing like you'll find in Seattle or LA or San Jose, but it'll get you by. I can't recommend the rest of the menu, it reminds me of the general Kitsap 'Asian Food' strategy - cook the hell out of the most boring cuts of meat we can find, top those with a sugary sauce, and for God's sake make sure there's no offending spices in it.
Big Apple Diner does Greasy Spoon as well as any place I've been west of the Rockies. Nothing better than biscuits and gravy with a side of scrambled eggs after a dawn run up Wildcat Trail.
Fritz's Fry House in Bremerton for frites and a beer. Heaven on a warm evening, or before catching the ferry to the ballgame. I was in Brussels this spring - Fritz's fries stand up to anything I had there.
La Fermata and Brix 25 are the two best fine dining spots on the peninsula. La Fermata especially is a labor of love - they can't be making much money doing what they're doing and paying what they must be paying for their raw materials. Neither provide a blow-you-away experience like a high-end place in Seattle may have the potential to, but that's hardly the point. This is well-done fine dining without having to ride a ferry or cross a bridge.
Rosa's Coffee Roasters in Port Orchard roasts some damn good coffee. If you stop in on a weekday afternoon, the owner may give you a tour and let you taste his creations.
As Shanab points out above, the best Thai on the peninsula may well be at the Port Orchard farmer's market. Excellent pad. Overall though the best farmer's market experience I found is the Thursday market in Bremerton. Lots of local produce, and a few vendors bringing cherries and other summer fruits in from Yakima.
Never made it to Shelton to try Xinh's. I really want to though. Next time.
Finally, Fred Meyer in Port Orchard has a very good selection of dry cooking ingredients, including many of the brands that Whole Foods carries. Their wine section is not bad either.
Good luck, and thanks again all! Kitsap really is a beautiful place, if not a little slow for a die-hard city boy like myself. And there is good food here.
Logan Heights Taco Crawl (San Diego)
Thanks again for leading the way Josh, that was a good ride and a great feed. Next time we'll have to meet a little later so we can do that warm-up pint at Hammies - this boy pedals on beer.
I had both the buche and the cabeza at El Paisa. The buche was probably the best I've had in SD. Like Josh said, the slightly chewy pieces were reminiscent of clams. I had the cabeza as well - soft and yummy, but not quite as gelatinous as I like my cabeza.
The shrimp at Mariscos German are awesome. Can't wait to go back and try one of those Tostada Locas...
The taco de tripa at La Fachada may have been my favorite of the day. The texture and taste of the tripa was everything I love in organ meat - tender, slightly sweet, underpinned but not overpowered by earthiness. Yum! I liked La Fachada's cabeza a little better than El Paisa's, too.
best restaurant in san diego?
For my $200, in SD it's gotta be Market. (Del Mar, San Diego, close enough) IMHO Better & more consistent than Region ever was, and I was at Region as often as my wallet would allow (living 4 blocks away helped).
