Willamette Week Restaurant Guide 2017/2018 by Willamette Week Newspaper

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PORTLAND

WILLAMETTE WEEK'S

RESTAURANT 50 GUIDE

BEST RESTAURANTS, RANKED

2017/2018

p. 24

YEAR OF THE

ROOSTER p. 10

YEAR OF THE

VEGETABLE p. 16

WILL AMETTE WEEK

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

FUBONN TH E KEY TO A S IAN CU I S I N E I S AT

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table of

CONTENTS

E D I TO R ' S L E T T E R p. 8

YEAR OF THE ROOSTER p. 10

YEAR OF THE

NEIGHBOR

E AT S

VEGETABLE HOOD

Downt own p .35 We s t S uburbs p.4 5 NW 21 st and 23rd p O l d To .50 w n / Pe arl p.5 Centra 2 l Easts ide p.5 Divisio 4 n /C l i n ton p. Hawth 5 6 orne/B elmon Ke r n s t p. 62 p.69 Outer Northe a s t p .7 East C 3 ounty p .7 6 North Po r t l a nd p.8 6

p. 16

BEST RESTAURANTS p. 24

THE REPLACEMENTS A Portland History Quiz p. 88

North by Northwest EAT AROUND THE REGION

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

INDEX p. 93 7

E DITOR'S LE T TER

CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS

Martin Cizmar and Matthew Korfhage

ART DIRECTOR COPY EDITORS

Rosie Struve Kat Merck, Nicole Groessel,

Bridget Roddy EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

Jordan Michelman, Crystal Contreras, Shannon Gormley, Matthew Singer, Sophia June, Adrienne So, Rachel Monahan, Aaron Mesh, Walker MacMurdo, Michael C. Zusman, Kat Merck, Nigel Jacquiss, Brian Panganiban, Katie Shepherd, Zach Middleton C O V E R P H O T O Thomas Teal P H O T O G R A P H E R S Thomas Teal, Christine Dong, Emily Joan Greene, Henry Cromett, Sam Gehrke, Joe Riedl, Aubrey Gigandet C R E A T I V E D I R E C T O R Alyssa Walker A D D E S I G N E R Brittany Mohr A D V E R T I S I N G D I R E C T O R Iris Meyers P R O M O T I O N S M A N A G E R Maria Caicedo A C C O U N T E X E C U T I V E S Michael Donhowe, Erika Ellis, Kevin Friedman, Matt Plambeck, Sharri Miller Regan, Sam Wild, Christopher Hawley MARKETING

Do you remember the first time you had Indian food? I was in college in Ohio, and my Eastern philosophy professor offered extra credit to anyone who presented a receipt from the only Indian spot in town, which he was afraid would close. My embarrassing unfamiliarity with the most basic elements of the cuisine of a billion-plus people popped to mind after a recent chat with Christopher Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen and Milk Street when he came through town. Kimball is old enough to have vivid memories of his first encounter with Mexican cilantro and California goat cheese. “I thought it was some exotic thing. Now you can probably go to the 7-Eleven and get goat cheese,” he said. “We’re at the point where there’s sumac and zaatar and duqqa and Aleppo peppers everywhere.” While editing this year’s edition of Willamette Week’s Restaurant Guide, I’ve been thinking a lot about my talk with Kimball, and about how far American food has come in the past decade. In Portland, we tend to think of our food scene as distinct. It’s true we have plenty to crow about, from an unparalleled backroom Thai restaurant (page 28) to the most-hailed Russian restaurant in the country (page 32). But the trends that most shaped our city’s restaurants this year aren’t unique to us—our city is getting bigger and the globe is getting smaller. Portland is becoming a much more worldly place. There's more wealth and more diversity, and we’re seeing that show up in our food scene, where so many of the city’s new restaurants were either highbudget openings in hotels, or casual spots focused on cuisines once unfamiliar to the city outside of small immigrant communities. The trend we’re most excited about, and which we’re recognizing in the space reserved for Portland’s Restaurant of the Year, is the influx of exciting new East Asian spots in the central city. For years, we’ve encouraged our readers to avail themselves of the excellent Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese foods available in the area. Too often, we heard that traveling to 82nd Avenue or the suburbs is a hassle, or that they wanted a more polished experience. With the arrival of hand-cut Dongbeistyle noodles at Chin’s Kitchen in Hollywood, and

the soul-stirring dumplings at XLB on Williams and Han Oak in Kerns, there are no more excuses. The other trend we’re excited about is the influx of excellent new plant-based fare. Veganism has exploded worldwide, but Portland’s socially conscious population and access to top-notch produce has made this city a showcase of the emerging cuisine. Tusk, while not strictly vegetarian, has become one of the country’s most influential restaurants through its creative and bold vegetable dishes, and new spots like Kati (page 56) and Aviv (page 16) have upped the available level of meatless meals. Probably the biggest difference you’ll notice between this year’s guide and past editions is the presence of counter-service spots, pop-ups and carts. We don’t think of ourselves as particularly stodgy, but we’ve always limited the guide to traditional restaurants that accommodate walk-ins and offer sit-down service. That is no longer a tenable approach. Too many of the best meals in town now come from places that do counter service or are pop-ups. By insisting on table-service and walk-in meals, our list would have left off the best new burger in town (page 64), the city’s best fried chicken (pages 37 and 54) and the best barbecue (page 43). I’m old enough to remember my first encounters with Indian, Thai and Ethiopian food. My toddler never will—she’s been eating at Enat Kitchen (page 60) since before she had teeth. To me, there’s something inspiring about that. Food is always a great way to bring people together, and Portland is fortunate enough to be the type of city that attracts people from all over the world. As always, this guide is intended to help you explore our city’s incredible food scene. There’s more to explore than ever, from pizza good enough to cure a New Yorker’s homesickness (page 45) to a meticulously sourced fish house with a 90-deep list of by-the-glass sakes (page 81). — M A RT I N C I Z M A R

PROMOTIONS

Sam Eaton ACCOUNTING MANAGER

Kim Engelke

MANAGER OF INFORMATION

Brian Panganiban Spencer Winans Jane Smith Mark L. Zusman

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER PUBLISHER

WILLAMETTE WEEK 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210 Phone 503-243-2122, Fax 503-243-1115 PUBLISHED BY

City of Roses Media Company Send comments to: M C I Z M A R @ W W E E K . C O M

ON THE COVER :

TUSK // (P. 34) SHOT BY THOMAS TEAL

WILL AMETTE WEEK

w r es t aur an t of the yea r:

YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

XLB | Joe Riedl

This is the Year Portland Finally Got Exciting Handmade Asian Dumplings and Pepper-Bath Chicken Smack Dab in the Middle of the City By Matthew Korfhage Photos by Emily Joan Greene, Joe Riedl, and Aubrey Gigandet Illustrations by Vee Chenting Qian

WILL AMETTE WEEK

r es t aur an t of the yea r:

YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

People told Wendy and Cindy Li they were crazy. Three different owners had already failed at Chin’s Kitchen, a 70-year-old Hollywood District restaurant better known for its mammoth glowing neon than its chop suey. Any spot in the center of Portland is a bad spot for Chinese restaurants, the Li sisters were warned by their Chinese friends. “So many people said, ‘You can’t cook Chinese food in that neighborhood,’” says Wendy Li. “Too many Americans live there. They want American Chinese. You have to cook American food.” Wendy, a veteran of international business and a published poet in her native Mandarin, thought different. She had watched old-guard American Chinese restaurants fail, and she’d also seen the success of Northeast Broadway spot Shandong, devoted in part to the regional cuisine of owner Henry Liu’s parents. “Chinese food is better than American Chinese,” she says. At a now-packed Chin’s Kitchen, she and her sister opened the first Dongbei restaurant in Oregon, devoted to the dumplings, pork stews and noodles of China’s northeastern rust belt. Li and her sister Cindy are not alone. They’re part of the most exciting trend in Portland food this year. Once sequestered in the immigrant enclaves of 82nd Avenue and Beaverton, fantastic regional Asian food has finally come to the middle of Portland. In Portland, 2017 has been the Year of the Rooster. Rather than honor a single Restaurant of the Year, we’re paying homage to a newfound wealth of restaurants serving excellent East Asian food in the center of the city—a transformation in Portland dining that would have seemed impossible even a few years ago. Alongside Chin’s, this year saw the opening of two other Asian restaurants unlike any Portland has ever seen. At XLB on North Williams (see page 64), second-generation Chinese chef Jasper Shen serves meat-stuffed baozi and now-magical xiao long bao dumplings filled with warming, herbal broth. And at Southeast Stark Street’s Danwei Canting (see page 54), Kyo Koo cooks a la za ji “pepper bath” chicken that’s evolved into our favorite in Portland, an exploding grenade of numbing sichuan peppercorn and chili-pepper spice.

Chin's Kitchen | Emily Joan Greene

XLB | Joe Riedl

Danwei Canting | Aubrey Gigandet

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

r es t aur an t of the yea r:

YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

Chin's Kitchen | Emily Joan Greene

Meanwhile, Peter Cho’s two-year-old Korean spot Han Oak (see page 61) found its voice this year, ditching staid reservationsonly prix-fixe and embracing the democratic pleasures of hand-torn noodles, ramen-andspam budae jjigae stew, and broth-soaked mandoo dumplings filled with oxtail. Han Oak has become one of the most inspired restaurant experiences in Portland. Even Portland’s already impressive Thai scene was further deepened with the addition of Pok Pok NW (page 48) and Hawthorne’s Farmhouse Kitchen (page 62), started by Michelin-recognized chefs. This is a sea change in Portland dining, one made possible by a new generation of diners more traveled than any before them, and more likely to have lived in big cities like Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles— places with rich, vibrant and varied Asian food scenes. “I am always surprised,” Li says. “So many customers have had experiences in China. A couple came in and ordered in Mandarin.” Li was surprised to see customers ordering dishes that are her own favorites on the menu, like a terrific kidney-and-pepper plate whose meat is knife-scored into little cones to soak up even more garlic-soy flavor from the wok.

Many of the dishes at Chin’s will be new to most diners. It’s a rarity not just in Portland but in the country, one of few Dongbei-style restaurants anywhere in America, serving pork hocks brined and slow-roasted into tender and salty sweetness, brightly acidic tofuskin salad blazing with chilies, beefy soup with thick hand-cut noodles, and Russiantinged pork and sauerkraut soup loaded up with translucent sweet-potato noodles. Even before the Lis opened Chin’s, Cindy’s dumplings were famous in the local Chinese community. She’d been serving them out of a little eatery inside the Food Depot on outer Powell Boulevard, where Chinese chefs stocked up on ingredients. When that eatery closed, dumpling fans flooded Chinese social media app WeChat, asking where they could get her wonderful pork-and-shrimpstuffed pasta. Chin’s is now packed to bursting with diners gathered around the food Cindy grew up cooking in their tiny village near the far Northeastern city of Harbin, the terminus of the Trans-Siberian railroad. She dreams of someday opening a restaurant on a farmhouse, using vegetables from the farm the same way she used to pick ingredients from the local fields. In the meantime, Wendy says, they’d love to add labor-intensive baozi and

green-onion pancakes to the menu. But for now, Wendy says they’ll have to hold off on adding to the menu because it’s so hard to find kitchen help. “The younger Chinese people,” she says, “They don’t want to work in kitchens.” Staffing their kitchens is a problem for all of these restaurants, with experienced East Asian chefs in short supply. It’s the thing that held back other kitchens we’re recognizing as part of the Year of the Rooster, which have since rounded into shape. “We had a well-documented rough opening,” Shen says about XLB, his casual counter-service spot on North Williams. Dumpling-crazed diners mobbed the former Aviary chef in droves, taxing his kitchen to the breaking point. But eight months in, XLB’s soup dumplings are marvels of consistency: lovely, delicate kisses bursting with deep-flavored broth whose aroma blossoms out of the hole made by a curious fork. The rest of the menu, culled from Shen’s childhood memories eating around town and in his own family’s restaurants, has also been dialed—whether juicy meat-filled baozi, or shrimp and pork Shanghai noodles that might as well be shiu mai dumplings exploded into pasta.

WILL AMETTE WEEK

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Chin's Kitchen | Emily Joan Greene

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

Chin's Kitchen chef Cindy Li, with a plate of her trademark dumplings.

YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

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YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

This is especially true of the wok-kissed flat noodles of Shen’s beef ho fun, fired in the wok until they’re steeped in the the flavor of the sauce and meat. “Every big Asian family that comes in, everybody orders the beef ho fun,” says Shen. “That’s the one thing everybody knows, that everybody grows up with.” Kyo Koo’s Danwei Canting, across from packed bar the Slammer on Stark Street, has also evolved after a tough opening into a fast-casual corker with two beautiful signature dishes. One is the pungent, saucy Beijing-style jja jiang mian black bean dish made with house-made noodles—shaken from the Korean-border version Koo grew up with by the addition of the soy beans and mushrooms that are a Beijing trademark. The other is that la za ji pepper-bath chicken. Though it started out mild, Koo turned up the dish’s heat by chopping up the fiery red chilies amid scallion-and spicecrusted chicken, releasing the capsaicin that makes for pepper heat and toasting the seeds into warm smokiness. Meanwhile, Lin Chen, a veteran of Chinese kitchens who everyone at Danwei knows as “Auntie Lin” is making her own trademark dumplings.

Koo gets comment cards from nativeChinese students at PSU who come in every week to eat his chicken and dumplings. “The hongshao rou, the braised pork belly—they came in and said, ‘This is amazing, it reminds me of my mom,” Koo says. “That’s one of the best compliments we can get, if it takes you back to 15 years ago to when your mom was cooking for you.” But just as much, these restaurants act as ambassadors to American diners unfamiliar with the beautiful variety of Chinese and Korean food—diners who may have been less likely to venture out to 82nd Avenue or Beaverton in the past, but now may do so. After the elated response of Portland to Chin’s Kitchen, Wendy Li says she gets a lot of visits from owners of other Chinese restaurants—and thinks maybe more Chinese people may be inspired to cook the food they know best, from their home regions and their home kitchens. “You know, we are the first Dongbei restaurant in Oregon,” she says. “Next year, maybe there will be two. And next year? Maybe more than that.” 

Chin's Kitchen | Emily Joan Greene

XLB | Joe Riedl

Han Oak | Thomas Teal

Danwei Canting | Aubrey Gigandet

WILL AMETTE WEEK

Year of the

VEGETABLE PORTLAND HAS LONG BEEN A HAVEN FOR PLANT-BASED FOOD, BUT THIS WAS THE YEAR IT BROKE BIG. by MARTIN CIZMAR photographs by thomas teal

Clay's Smokehouse was a landmark. For nearly 20 years, the barbecue pit stood in a ramshackle red building on Division Street that looked like it'd been decorated by Keith Haring's country cousin. Clay's witnessed a sea change in the neighborhood and the city's food scene during its run—and not without comment. Owner Mike Slyman, selfidentified "restaurant scum" from an era when the business was dominated by "ex-cons, dropouts, pot smokers and drifters," famously voiced his displeasure with the city's "too cutesie" food scene by erecting an anti-small plates sign on the sidewalk. Last summer, Clay's vacated the space. The replacement? Kati Portland (see page 56), a rustic vegetarian Thai spot from newcomers Nan Chaison and Sarah Jansala that combines soy and unusual salt blends to recreate the flavor of fish sauce in dishes like their excellent pad cha, a stir fry with green peppercorns, pumpkin, kaffir lime leaves and Thai eggplant.

year of the vegetable

"We had some customers who stopped by and said, 'I've lived in this neighborhood and never stepped foot in here because I'm vegetarian,'" says Chaison. "When we moved to Portland, we had no idea that there was going to be a big population of vegetarians. We just knew that we're right down the street from Pok Pok and other Thai places, and we did not want to compete with anybody around us. We want to just be us." As it turns out, there are a lot of vegetarians and vegans in Portland—it’s the second most veganfriendly city in the country behind New York, according to PETA. But 2017 was the year they asserted themselves in the city's restaurant scene. Not only has Portland seen an influx of a half-dozen notable veggie-centric openings this year, from tiki bars to emo-blaring coffee shops, but our restaurant scene has seen a sharp uptick in the quality of its plant-based cuisine. It’s a trend we’re excited about, and proud to recognize in the space we annually give to the our Restaurant of the Year runner-up.

Will amette Week

AVIV

Restaur ant Guide 2017

year of the vegetable

KATI THAI

TUSK

AVIV

Pressed to identify the major catalyst for foodies taking plant-based cooking more seriously, I’d point to Tusk (page 34). Tusk’s impressive selection of vegetable dishes and its stylish dining room have made it the city’s hottest reservation for the past year—if you haven’t Instagrammed one of their vividly colorful, nut-speckled salads, you’re not living your best life. Though the restaurant does serve some meat, the Mediterranean spot from Ava Gene’s alums Joshua McFadden and Sam Smith captured the city’s imagination with its whipped feta, technicolor carrots, exotic grains and puffy pitas. “The first restaurant I learned to cook in was a French place, Pif (in Philadelphia). The whole menu was like, rillettes, foie gras, steaks, mashed potatoes,” says Smith. “The things that interested me more were cooking the green beans, potato purée, beets—I was more interested in those than the meat.” Smith’s moment of clarity came while he was working at Oliveto in Oakland. “I was working, watching the farmer come in with a case of chicories,” he says. “She grew and harvested them,

year of the VEGETABLE

and when we tasted them, it was the best chicory I ever had. It was an eyeopening moment to see that connection with the person who grew it.” Smith started at Ava Gene’s (page 52), where he designed the restaurant's stellar menu of vegetable dishes, or giardini. When it came time to launch the follow-up, he and Mcfadden tapped two things Smith was very familiar with: Mediterranean flavors and vegetables. Smith is an alum of Philadelphia’s standard-bearing Israeli restaurant, Zahav, where he worked closely alongside chef Michael Solomonov. Though Smith says the restaurants are very different, he also says “Tusk wouldn’t exist without my time there.” At Ava Gene’s, he began working closely with Oregon farmers. He’s since gone deep, following farmers on Instagram so he can line up great fresh produce. He’s also involved with the Culinary Breeding Network, which connects farmers and seed breeders with chefs for a yearly showcase of innovative new veggie dishes. “I saw that farmers dedicate their life to doing something really special,” he says. “I was thinking, ‘What’s the next WILL AMETTE WEEK

AVIV

Restaur ant Guide 2017

year of the vegetable

V thing for me, how can I highlight what farmers do, but with my own voice?’” Though they don’t eat much meat, Chaison and Smith aren’t vegetarian. Neither was Tal Caspi. But when Caspi opened his new vegan Israeli spot, Aviv (page 76), Caspi decided he needed to immerse himself in the community by giving up all animal products. “I am 100 percent vegan. I have been vegan on and off for about a year and half, but when we decided to open the restaurant I decided that if I was going to be a member of the community I needed to really do it, I should really be a member of the community…I just jumped right in.” Caspi says it’s “a little bit of a spiritual thing” and came from a moment

where he had a realization about the interconnectedness of beings. At Caspi’s food cart, Gonzo, he served shawarma. But while planning Aviv, which won our hearts with its eight-deep lineup of crazy good hummuses, he got rid of all of his leather. “As much as I ate meat—and at this point have very meat-centric tattoos on me—I never felt right about it,” he says. “I would often discuss it and argue veganism while having friends over to barbecue. They’d be like ‘You’re cooking meat right in front of my face!’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, I’m cooking meat, but I don’t think it’s right.’” He’s now planning to get his butchery-themed tattoos incorporated to a new design. “It’s just not part of my life anymore,” he says.

MARUTI

TUSK

Caspi points out that the culinary scene’s renewed focus on vegetables isn’t a Portland thing. The number of vegans around the world has shot up in the past few years. According to a food trend report, the number of American vegans has exploded by 500 percent in the past four years, and six percent of the country is now vegan. Caspi notes that Tel Aviv has more vegans per capita than any other city in the world. In Portland, that’s meant that Caspi pretty much now only eats at other vegan restaurants. It’s just easier, he says, and it’s a way of supporting his new community. Limiting his dining to vegan spots hasn’t been a problem. Thanks to a rash of new openings, Caspi year of the VEGETABLE

can start his day with doughnuts from Doe and coffee at Jet Black, then grab pizza at Virtuous Pie or samosa chole at Maruti (page 62) and drinks at vegan tiki bar No Bones Beach Club. “The big difference is you can get great vegan or vegetarian stuff, whereas back in the day there were not a lot of great options. I don’t know what happened, because we didn’t discover something that didn't exist,” he says. “A lot more people have adopted a plantbased diet, so there are a lot of chefs out there who are eating that way and just making that food. There are a lot more options, a lot more people involved, so the level has just gone up.” 

WILL AMETTE WEEK

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

year of the VEGETABLE

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

PORTLAND

RESTAURANTS IN

BEST

FIFTY

50 T

he cornerstone of this guide is our annual list of the top 50 restaurants in Portland. This year, we opened the list to all eateries, including carts and weekly pop-ups.

Above all, we judge restaurants on the quality of their food. We grant extra points for uniqueness, rewarding those who make beautiful versions of rare cuisines over very good sushi spots, steakhouses and French bistros. We also consider the value of the meal. Are you happy, even grateful, for what you've received after paying the bill?

We appraise service based on how an eatery stacks up against others with comparable service models. A clubby prix-fixe dinner can be priestly and glacial, or it can be a warm and intimate privilege. A food cart can be fast and friendly, or a long wait in cold rain for a brusque shout announcing your meal. Based on the needs of our readers, when other things are equal we give preference to eateries that serve walkins, offer table service and have heat and flush toilets.

Our goal in naming Portland's 50 best restaurants is to provide you with a genuinely useful list of great places to eat.

So we spend a lot of time and money exploring this city, finding the best places. We pay our own way, try to ignore the hype and don't announce our presence. It should go without saying, but we don't favor advertisers.

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Le Pigeon

a watermelon dashi, a fruity summer version of the bonito fish stock in Japanese soup. Then he dropped out the bottom with the unlikely addition of Parmesan, a detail not even mentioned on the menu.

738 E Burnside St., 503-546-8796, lepigeon.com, 5-10 pm nightly. $$$.

Le Pigeon is Portland. It’s the image in my head when somebody asks what a “Portland” restaurant is and what it can be—not twee or self-indulgent, but personal in a way places in bigger cities can rarely manage. [BIG BIRD]

Gabe Rucker’s punky decade-old nook on East Burnside Street is experimental and loose in mood but exacting in every detail, animated by a tossed-off majesty that’s hard not to call genius. It’s a point of pride, maybe, that the finest restaurant in Portland feels almost casual. The brick walls are exposed, the tables are shared and a menagerie of pots and pans wreathe the open kitchen. Domestic shelving shows off esoteric booze the way your mom shows off her thimble collection, from yuzuaccented Danish beers to obscure quince cider from the Swiss alps. Rucker is the finest chef of his generation in Portland, and has been outthinking everyone else since his spot opened on a once-crusty stretch then populated by prostitutes and now home to the city’s most impressive new architecture. Without being showy, the menu can sometimes read as deadpan wit, taking whatever everyone is talking about in the Portland foodosphere and making tweaks that elevate it from interesting to transcendent.

L E PI top 50

restaurants in portland

The relaxed intimacy and grace at Le Pigeon is the kind you earn over years of pushing, building an arsenal of weapons like that stacked-up burger that’s routinely named one of the best in the country. That burger is thought through down to the finest detail: the onions both grilled and pickled, the ketchup housemade, the aioli distributed evenly on shredded iceberg. A recent maple-dripped smoked-foie gras eggs-and-bacon dish is treated like an old family hash because it is. Rucker honed it in the trenches when his restaurant was young, serving brunch to keep his restaurant alive. Day after day, week after week, Rucker is still juicing the curve, unafraid to make mistakes while making very few mistakes. Le Pigeon makes me proud to be a Portlander. And when people ask us for the best restaurant in Portland, we’re proud to tell them it’s Le Pigeon. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

N IS POR

Gabe Rucker is the finest chef of his generation in Portland.

ND.

As with most things that look easy, it’s not. The unhurried open kitchen hides a much bigger basement kitchen, where the staff does the grunting prep on laborious dishes like the beef-cheek bourguignon that first made the restaurant famous.

TLA

Le Pigeon wasn’t the first or 15th to put watermelon and tuna together in a tartare and dress it up with lime aioli and pepper spice, but Rucker’s version was deepened into ecstasy by

An avocado-garnished vadouvan curry fried chicken plays with the same Bollywood-viaNashville hot chix as new Indian spot Tiffin Asha or just-closed Taylor Railworks, except Rucker balances that fattiness and earthiness with bright honeydew and the slight sour tang of a lime-and-melon-rind raita that’s like a light switch flipping on the flavor.

Will amette Week

Pro tip: The left side of the menu is usually composed of specials, the right side standbys. Always order from both columns. On the right side, the beefcheek bourguignon ($35) and burger ($17) remain world-beaters. On the left side, look for a seasonal plate that resembles your favorite dish elsewhere: Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be that, but better.

Emily Joan Greene

Restaur ant Guide 2017

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restaurants in portland

2. Langbaan 6 SE 28th Ave., 971-344-2564, langbaanpdx.com. 6 pm and 8:45 pm Thursday-Saturday, 5:30 and 8:15 pm Sunday, by reservation only. $$$$. [ B A C K TO S N A C K ] Two bites into a meal at Langbaan and you’ll give up on everything you thought Thai food could be, and especially everything you thought it couldn’t be. The first bite will always be miang som, the explosive, palate-cleansing burst of shrimp, citrus and bitter betel leaf that begins every meal at Earl Ninsom’s tiny, reservation-only restaurant, which you enter by tripping a hidden latch on a bookshelf door at the back of Northeast 28th Avenue Thai spot PaaDee.

By the time the three-plate main savory course rolls around—an explosion of searing red curry and pepper pods, fermented ground-beef relish and squid soaked in garlic-chili vinaigrette—you’ve been lulled into a luxuriant stupor. That bright, wild spice comes on like sex after a wholly different meal, a fireworkfilled climax that’s eased back into soothing sweetness by an ungodly delicious coconut-ash dessert touched by warming grapefruit meringue. When they bring your second dessert, made with banana-leaf ice cream, it’s hard to believe you’re still alive and that the rest of the world remains unchanged. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

But if the first bite is an explosion, the second is a revelation. Kanom krok is usually a humble coconut-milk-filled rice pastry served on the streets of Thailand. But at prix-fixe Langbaan, the ancient dessert has been transformed into a savory ode to creaminess itself, served on an outsized scallop-shell plate like Venus in miniature. As your teeth crack a little rice cup as delicate as French pastry, your tongue meets a hillock of kaffir-accented scallop so tender it melts almost imperceptibly into sweet, galangal-deepened coconut milk. It’s sensuous bliss, a wake-up caress to senses unprepared for such loveliness. In the three years since chef Rassamee Ruaysuntia left Bangkok to join Ninsom at Langbaan, that dim, reclaimed-wood room has evolved from a disarmingly casual ode to Bangkok’s legendary Nahm restaurant to a spot that stakes its own claim as one of the greatest Thai restaurants in the world, complete with expert wine pairings from Shift Drinks’ Anthony Garcia that run from France to Oregon and back to write a new book on wine pairing. And unlike nearly every other $70 prix-fixe restaurant of its caliber, Langbaan never feels priestly or staid: The mood is too much fun, the pacing too brisk, the colors and flavors too bright and surprising.

Pro tip: Langbaan is famously reserved out months and months in advance, but if you diligently check the website each day in the morning and follow the Facebook page for updates, you can probably score a cancellation table within the week.

While the September menu paid tribute to Nahm chef David Thompson, it also showed just how much Langbaan has left that influence behind, from those appetizer standbys to a world-changing yum makhua pao tomato-eggplant plate straining the possibilities of both ingredients: Langbaan soaks the eggplant in bright tomato water and sounds the depths of eggplant with a charred purée that’s like eggplant napalm, a chef ’s weapon gone nuclear.

"IF THE FIRST BITE IS AN EXPLOSION, the SECOND IS A REVELATION." Christine Dong

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restaurants in portland

Will amette Week

3. Coquine 6839 SE Belmont St., 503-384-2483, coquinepdx.com. Dinner 5-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday. $-$$$$.

Coquine offers very short staycations. At least, that's how I've always felt about a meal at Katy Millard's exceedingly gracious French restaurant, which sits in an unassuming corner space on a quiet stretch of Southeast Belmont Street up on the shady northern slope of Mount Tabor.

[NIGHT TRIP]

The French-trained Millard and her partner, Ksandek Podbielski, have created the most nourishing dining experience in Portland, so far removed from the troubles in the city below as to be transportive. As soon as you begin perusing the drink menu, with its "rare and ancient" pre-phylloxera sherries and well-chosen aperitif vermouths, you've entered a protective bubble in which all will be effortlessly pleasant. Millard's cooking, like everything about this busy bistro, is deceptive in its simplicity thanks to deft attention to minute detail.

"YOU've ENTERED A PROTECTIVE BUBBLE IN WHICH ALL WILL BE EFFORTLESSLY PLEASANT."

Across the hyper-seasonal menu, she takes great ingredients and gives them room to sing. Examples on a late-summer visit included a salad of arugula and "spicy greens" topped with shaved Parmesan and bee pollen, and a celtuce salad with the fat stems of the Chinese lettuce cut into thin strips and artfully mixed with nectarines, nut butter, a sprinkling of exotic seeds and preserved cherry blossoms. The menu flows naturally into pastas and proteins. The sturdy little orecchiette are highly recommended, and you can trust the plate to be built into something special using nuts, cheese, acid and Millard's uncanny sense of balance. The signature dish is roasted, pasture-raised chicken, served whole or half, with perfectly moist flesh and crisp skin. The dish evolves every few months, but on our most recent visit it was plated perfectly with charred Padrón peppers and pole beans atop Carolina Gold rice, a cherished heirloom varietal known for its chameleonlike ability to adopt the flavors around it. Coquine is open for breakfast and lunch daily, so the pastry program is also strong, which you'll discover at dessert, where offerings range from pavlova to all-American chocolate chip cookies. But those cookies are unlike any I’ve had, upping the game with smoked almonds and salted caramel. MARTIN CIZMAR.

Pro tip: Coquine is the only restaurant in our top five that’s open for breakfast and lunch. The menu’s more casual during the day, with a roasted-beet open face ($10), a rustic halibut stew ($16) and perhaps the best and rarest tea in Portland from Totem teas. Depending on the time of year, another great way to land a table at this tiny restaurant is to call at about 4 pm and ask if the patio is open. If it is, it’s open seating and they’ll hold your spot for a few minutes.

Katy Millard gets great ingredients and gives them room to sing.

Christine Dong

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restaurants in portland

Will amette Week

T E Y L T

4. Castagna

[ M I G H T Y F I N E ] People in Portland like to tell you: “This town does mid-level dining great, but there’s no high end.” The next time you hear this, smile politely. Then ask if they’ve been to Castagna.

Braun’s beverage program is easy brilliance throughout, pouring a complex La Cigarrera Amontillado sherry with a densely conceptual dish of glossy, opaque white-bean purée and shallot foam concealing a perfect blistered heirloom tomato. It was the top dish of the night, and my favorite glass of sherry I’ve had poured for me anywhere in Portland.

U S B N

pickled suspension, more packed with flavor and texture than I could have ever dreamed possible.

In the restaurant’s serene, unobtrusive, sandalwood-beige dining room, chef Justin Woodward offers surprises, risks and that rarest of qualities in this city: elegance.

AND I N

1752 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-7373, castagnarestaurant.com. 5:30-10 pm Wednesday-Saturday. $$$$.

After a high-wire act of subtlety and invention throughout the dinner, dessert is where this restaurant explodes into full color. It’s a riot of bold, sweet flavors no longer holding back, such as the Doug fir ice cream with strawberry and sancho pepper garnishes dancing with a fizzy, sweet moscato d’Asti. It’s pure earned pleasure.

V ETI O

Over the course of a 90-minute meal, small portions contain multitudes and Brent Braun’s wine pairings astonish with some of the city’s rarest bottles. At a recent dinner, I was served a beet chip stuffed with beef tartare; dehydrated sea beans with egg dip; a perfect, tiny brown dinner roll by pastry chef Geovanna Salas (accompanied by brown butter floated with a dusting of suspended brown-butter solids and herbed lard); tilefish tartare; a crispy radish snack; and a piece of amberjack sashimi from Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji fish market. That was the first 20 minutes. It was followed by an Oregon albacore tuna belly, gently and carefully just grilled, with caper cream and a cusp-of-autumn heirloom tomato and squash salad, the squash compressed with tomato water into a state of near-

With drink pairings and a tip, the 14-plate extravaganza approaches $200 a person. And while it may seem strange to say $200 is “worth it,” the meal silences any thought that it isn’t. Castagna inhabits the toughest, tiniest part of the Venn diagram, the one that balances restraint with experimentation and technique with verve, humbly boxing your ears and making you say, as I said repeatedly throughout my own meal, “Holy shit.” JORDAN MICHELMAN.

PRO TIP: The “small” 14-course meal for $100 is enough for everyone not on an expense account. If there are two of you and you’re looking to save on budget but still get the whole experience, split the $55 drink pairing and get a cocktail apiece on the side.

Christine Dong

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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5. Kachka

A shotgun blast of drinking boards

720 SE Grand Ave., 503-235-0059, kachkapdx.com. 4 pm-midnight daily. $$-$$$.

In Russia, to dine is to drink, and a restaurant is always a party. And in Portland, there’s no food party quite like Kachka.

[ D U M P L I N G PA RT Y ]

An ode to her own nostalgia for her parents’ Soviet memories, chef Bonnie Morales’ Southeast Grand Avenue Russian spot, nestled in the central east side’s bar district, combines classic Continental food training with Russian vigor to create a dining experience unlike any other in the United States. Here, humble pelmeni dumplings become tender delicacies in “fancy broth” made with beef tongue and veal terrine, and even humbler cabbage-roll golubtsi are coaxed into a beyond-the-pale comfort food that lingers both in memory and on the palate. The Soviet imperial past even resurfaces as a deeper-than-history beef shashlik bursting with plum barbecue sauce. A cold sorrel soup augmented by the briny shout of cured mackerel is simultaneously an exercise in subtlety and a workout for the senses. With a rich clay-pot rabbit doubling down on umami with porcini mushrooms and tarted up with sour cherries, it’s possible to have just as delicate and rich a dining experience here as at any French restaurant.

Pro tip: Arrive just before 10 pm happy hour to avail yourself of the full menu, particularly that “Herring Under a Fur Coat” Russian seven-layer dip ($9), and a golubtsi cabbage roll ($17) or one of the shashliks ($21-$25). Then, avail yourself of $9 infused-vodka refills and low-priced drinking boards and dumplings.

"chef Bonnie Morales’ Southeast Grand Avenue Russian spot combines classic Continental food training with Russian vigor ."

But in a busy hallway of an eatery designed like a Russian dacha and scored with the thumping beats and gravel-voiced howls of a Slavic soul party, Kachka is also fueled by more vodka than you could find anywhere within hundreds of miles, stocking potato tipples from Japan to Kaliningrad. That list is bolstered by a 12-deep menu of house infusions, from the heavenly comforts of horseradish or dill to exotic buckthorn berries and bracingly tannic beet fernet. At happy hour, before 6 pm or especially after 10, those infusions drop to $9 for a little 100-milliliter flute that’s the equivalent of three 1-ounce shots. It’s vodka as tasting menu, propped up by a shotgun blast of drinking boards: a caviar plate, a heavenly pickle plate with tomatoes and watermelon, and Morales’ own father’s picks of Druzhba cheese, salami and what are maybe the brightest pickled cukes in Portland. At once some of the city’s finest dining and its liveliest vodka madhouse, Kachka will expand this year into an even bigger space on Southeast 11th Avenue, with an open-flame grill, deli and expanded menu. But the original house on Grand is still where you’ll take a cue from Robbie Williams and party like a Russian. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E . Thomas Teal

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Will amette Week

6. Holdfast 537 SE Ash St., No. 102, 503-504-9448, holdfastdining.com. Seatings at 7 pm Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Ninecourse tasting menu with pairing is $105 before gratuity. $$$$.

Will Preisch is one of Portland's best comeback stories. In 2011, the talented young chef brought high-modernist molecular gastronomy cuisine to Bent Brick. Portland wasn't quite ready for the Cleveland-raised chef's clever and playful powders, gelées and housemade fruit roll-ups. Preisch left and Bent Brick retooled, then closed unceremoniously.

[FISH LAB]

intimate experience where the chef ’s passion for the food is readily on display and where every question is greeted with an enthusiastic and detailed response. On the other hand, the operation doesn’t have a big team of specialists to buff out every smudge, as you’d find at a place like Castagna (page 31). Personally, I find Holdfast’s approach even more endearing. Rather than take cues from elBulli and Moto, Holdfast found a way to make techy modernist cooking feel organic and Portlandy—that’s truly a special feat. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

Out in the wilderness, Preisch connected with Portland-born wunderkind Joel Stocks, whose childhood hobbies included making recipes from the French Laundry cookbook and catering parties for his mother and older sister. Together, they found a way to make highbrow food-nerd fare work well in a city that tends to latch tightest onto "authentic" ethnic and fancy burgers. Holdfast succeeds by masking their geeky impulses with fresh seafood and local produce, then presenting courses too quickly for diners to think too hard about how closely the little red duck hearts on their plate resemble the little red cherries also on their plate. A pop-up in name only, the long-running series has been in the tasting room of Fausse Piste winery since 2014. The menu changes every meal, but tends to combine science-y preparations like a round sheet of spiced and frozen watermelon, or Nancy's Organic Yogurt in powdered form with more approachable ingredients like a narrow steak of seared albacore surrounded by Smurf-sized pickled shimeji mushrooms. Holdfast’s greatest limitation is also its strength: Preisch and Stocks are your cooks, servers and dishwashers. The only other party is natural wine darling Dana Frank, who now does the pairings. That means that you get an

Pro tip: The Holdfast guys also host an industry-friendly party called Deadshot in the same space from 5 to 11 pm on Mondays. It’s a lively bar night with loud music, exotic liquors and à la carte bites that show Preisch’s longstanding love of high-low mashups—think nachos made with puffed beef tendon, shredded brisket and kimchi cheese sauce or fried calamari with ramp tartar.

Emily Joan Greene

Restaur ant Guide 2017

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restaurants in portland

UTS F

2448 E Burnside St., 503-894-8082, tuskpdx.com. 5-10 pm MondayWednesday, 5-11 pm Thursday and Friday, 10 am-2 pm and 5 pm-midnight Saturday, 10 am-2 pm and 5-10 pm Sunday. $$$.

U IT, S Q

7. Tusk

SH FR E R

U A S H, N

[ S E C O N D H A N D N E W S ] It took me a long time to figure out Tusk. Like others, I got hung up on comparisons to familiar Mediterranean fare, had trouble navigating a menu with so little meat and found the flavors too subtle in places where I wanted some pop. I’d derided it as Instagram food; more pretty than tasty, seemingly composed for the feed instead of feeding.

I was wrong. Yes, the gorgeous white-on-white room on East Burnside Street has made some changes to the broad Middle Eastern menu, adding more options for the insistently carnivorous and punching up the flavor on dishes like the the sprouted barley, which on our most recent visit benefited from brightening nectarines and spicy Aleppo that replaced the flat flavors of carrots and argan oil. Also, the tasty new classic hummus has tahini and cumin, whereas the old version tried to fly by with fancy olive oil. And, sure, the pita is now served hot out of the oven and puffy, whereas it was previously flat and cold. But the biggest difference between Tusk now and a year ago isn’t any of the tweaks, it’s the city around it. Tusk’s light, veggie-focused menu has proven wildly influential, with its

Thomas Teal

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

U IT, S Q

plates that blend fresh fruit, squash, nuts and earthy Mediterranean spices spreading like wildfire. The second restaurant from Ava Gene’s Joshua McFadden is that rare restaurant that bends tastemakers to its will. We should have known from the name: Like the Fleetwood Mac album, Tusk was a hotly anticipated offering that met polarizing opinions upon release, before its charms finally emerged. I tend to order the way I do at other Mediterranean restaurants, ordering the mezza, hummus and dukkah dipping sauce, followed by a few vegetable dishes and one larger protein plate. But I’m increasingly convinced the way to go is to order the $50 omakase-style chef ’s tasting menu, now called the “Deluxe Edition.” The best item I’ve had, a crazy craveable green sauce called tehina, is a sesame paste which on our visit was herbed with sesame, parsley, cilantro, basil and mint. Just over a year in, Tusk has earned the right to be itself by demonstrating a clear vision and an ability to change the conversation. If it continues to innovate and evolve, there’s no telling what it could become. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

Pro tip: It’s really, really difficult to get a table at Tusk. If you haven’t made a reservation, and there’s not a huge snowstorm, you should be prepared to find a bar and wait it out. Holman’s on Southeast 28th Avenue is a friendly dive with a legendary patio, and the cart pod at Southeast 28th Avenue and Ankeny Street is one big patio with good, cheap beer. Once you get in the door, order the mezza platter ($16 small, $27 large) while you look over the rest of the menu.

Hotel restaurants, happy hours and a few spots keeping Portland weird.

Omertà 614 SW Park Ave., 503-294-9700, omertaportland.com. Dinner daily. $$$$. This new “Old World Italian” spot is a throwback to the candle-lit ristorantes of The Godfather. It’s a dimly lit nocell service zone where hardbound menus are the size of a microwave. The quality has whipsawed a bit early on, but we’ve loved the return to red sauce and thick-cut steaks.

Maurice 921 SW Oak St., 503-224-9921, mauricepdx.com. Lunch daily. $$. Kristen Murray’s twee Kinfolkian “luncheonette” is a world of the bespoke, the pretty and the rustic. There is a daily open-faced smørbrød that may feature watercress, and a daily quiche that may feature squash blossom and chèvre, plus the pastries and cakes she became known for at Paley’s Place, from composed desserts to lovely little scones.

Imperial

slab built with a steroidal Porterhouse, sliced from the bone à la Peter Lugar.

Clyde Common 1014 SW Stark St., 503-228-3333, clydecommon.com. Lunch, dinner and latenight daily. $$-$$$. Clyde Common has remaind a beacon of late-aughts Portland foodie culture in the hippest of downtown hotels. Sip Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s bourbonbarreled negroni while noshing on culture-hopping seasonal cooking from togarashi-spiced popcorn bar snacks to goat steak drizzled in green curry.

Higgins 1249 SW Broadway, 503-222-9070, higginsportland. com. Lunch and dinner MondayFriday, Dinner weekends. $-$$$. This storied institution is more inviting if you sit in the back bar and order from the seasonal specials. Recent standouts include a salmon fillet in a chanterelle broth, and a white bean soup with smoky ham. The grass-fed burger and beer list are both legendary.

410 SW Broadway, 503-228-7222, imperialpdx.com. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$$.

Dil Se

Under chef Doug Adams, Vitaly Paley’s Imperial was our 2015 Restaurant of the Year. It remains one of downtown’s busiest and impressive rooms, a hearthed hall of wood-fired meat. The post-Adams era lacks cheffy flair, but it’s still the finest late-night happy hour in town, with a lovely burger, honey-fried chicken and vieux carre taptail all for less than $6 apiece.

In the strange church-filled blocks near the art museum, Dil Se serves our favorite South Indian dosas we've had within Portland city limits, and also what's likely the best vindaloo in town.

Jackrabbit 830 SW Sixth Ave., 503-412-1800, gojackrabbitgo.com. Breakfast and lunch MondayFriday, happy hour and dinner daily, brunch and late-night weekends. $$$$. This palatial meatery from San Francisco celebuchef Chris Constantino outperformed expectations with its balanced menu and great service. Line up a couple friends and splurge on the $120 "pin bone steak," a meal on a

1201 SW Jefferson St., 503-8045619, dilsepdx.com. Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday. $$.

Dar Salam 320 SW Alder St., 503-444-7813, darsalamportland.com. Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday. $$. The Iraqi immigrants behind Dar Salam quickly grew from a food cart to this opulently decorated downtown location with a towering mural of the Ishtar Gate. The food combines Middle-Eastern staples (baba ganoush, lamb kebabs, baklava) with less-familiar dishes like pickled mango salad and a pretty pink beet and yogurt dip.

In our top 50: Little Bird (page 55) Restaur ant Guide 2017

PHOTO: Emily Joan Greene

Thomas Teal

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restaurants in portland

Will amette Week

8. Hat Yai 1605 NE Killingsworth St., 503-764-9701, hatyaipdx.com. 11:30 am-9 pm SundayThursday, 11:30 am-10 pm Saturday. $. [ F RY G U Y ] Maybe it’s no surprise that the best fried chicken in Portland is inspired by the South. But at North Killingsworth Street’s fast-casual Hat Yai, in a neighborhood that’s suddenly the fastest-growing restaurant district in town, the inspiration is the south of Thailand. That crispy-skinned, tender Hat Yai fried chicken, named after the food-rich metropolis in Thailand’s southern tip near Malaysia, is served with a sweet chili sauce that adds just enough juicy spice to complement the floral notes of the coriander without overpowering it. It’s like Tennessee heat gone subtle and aromatic—more gain than pain.

Not only was Hat Yai recognized as one of the top new restaurants in last year’s guide, it’s the second restaurant in our top 10 (see page 28) helmed by chef Earl Ninsom. But each restaurant he’s made, from PaaDee to Langbaan to Hat Yai, is a wholly separate production, bolstered here by the cocktail skills of partner Alan Akwai. In the spring and summer, get the tamarind whiskey smash accented with mint and lemon; in the colder months, go for the comfort of the coconut mango horchata.

Start with the steak or chicken “Golae-style” skewers, marinated in coconut milk and chili paste, for a succulent morsel that's perfect for sharing...or not. The turmeric curry, described on the menu as “very spicy,” delivers hard on that promise, but the slow, buttery burn of the curry is punctuated with pungent, salty mussels. The bitter betel leaf serves as a perfect conduit for the curry, drawing it in and absorbing its flavors while keeping the dish in proper proportion. That’s the wonder at Hat Yai—that a restaurant could pack in so much flavor, yet retain such a gentle balance. C RY S TA L C O N T R E R A S .

PRO TIP: For two, if you can handle the spice, get a half-chicken ($12), the turmeric curry ($14) and the blazingly spicy ferment of the southern Thai ground pork ($12). Augment with roti ($3).

Hat Yai shames fullservice restaurants with three times the staff.

You'll be amazed by the whirl of activity coming from behind the counter at the wildly popular restaurant, which runs lines out the door every evening, but even more impressed at the depth and balance of flavors in the dishes that emerge from the compact, bustling kitchen. In a tiny, wood-slatted hall of a space with plastic, blue-checked tablecloths, Hat Yai shames full-service restaurants with three times the staff.

9043 SE Jannsen Rd Clackamas, OR 97015 discoverafricanart.com 503.305.7288 Call for an appointment Thomas Teal

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

9. St. Jack 1610 NW 23rd Ave., 503-360-1281, stjackpdx.com. 4-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 4 pm-midnight Friday-Saturday. $$-$$$$. [ M R . F R E N C H ] St. Jack is a miracle on 23rd Avenue, a restaurant and bar where you can somehow get both the city’s finest and most adventurous French-bouchon fare and also dollar Hama Hama oysters and a killer $12 burger at happy hour. It’s a place that devotes equal effort to lowbrow food and extravagant highbrow, with the patience to spend three days fat-skimming, boiling and drying its $5 Espelette-pepper pork rinds into fluffy and decadent sheets.

There’s no way of doing St. Jack wrong, and even a simple-seeming, delicious steak-frites ($31-$110) is made with luscious béarnaise and a red-wine demi-glace reduced for three days into flavorful richness. But St. Jack’s best dishes highlight not simplicity but rich complexity, especially a pastured Oregon lamb brought in whole and butchered in-house, made with luxuriantly tender shoulder, cured overnight and sunk into a bath of pork fat in a three-day process. It’s brined and charred beautifully and served with a salad of tiny tomatoes, mint, fennel turnip, peppers, pluots and ancient grain freekeh. And while the wine list is 10 pages deep, allowing you to plumb the depths of the Loire should you desire, the cocktail list is both fun and surprisingly democratic. You can, of course, feel fancy with a Perfectly Pink vodka, lime and hibiscus cocktail. But depending on the season, you can also get a blackberry and vodka slushie.

Pro tip: Though the full experience happens in the restaurant, happy hour at the St. Jack bar remains an overlooked and opulent pleasure: If you’re able to show up by 5 pm, select oysters are a buck and might be Blue Pool, an extravagant bowl of mussels are available at $14 instead of $31, and you can score the city’s best chickenliver mousse for a cool $6.

There's no way of doing St. Jack wrong.

Treat yourself to the oysters with a fantastic pickled shallot mignonette, and definitely order at least three unpasteurized cheese wedges, almost all of which are unavailable elsewhere in the city. They’re served with a summer apricot jam, pluots and a quarter of a French baguette that reappears on your table just as fast as it’s gone. Sink your teeth into chicken liver mousse or seared foie gras with tobaccoaged maple syrup. St. Jack was also the first Portland restaurant to gain access to Oregon river trout many restaurants don’t have. On a recent visit, a seared salmon dish, which takes two entire days to create, came steeped in an octopus vinaigrette with basil aioli, intensifying the often-subtle fish with deep umami notes alongside a whitebean ragu, roasted cherry tomatoes, fennel and heirloom onions. St. Jack is simultaneously the most traditional and most adventurous dedicated French spot in town. Yet the reward waiting for you at the end of each meal is wonderfully simple: a delicate, beautiful stained-glass crème brûlée. S O P H I A J U N E .

Emily Joan Greene

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Will amette Week

10. Poke Mon When Poke Mon opened last year on the bottom floor of a sparkling new apartment building on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, it seemed like the ultimate New Portland nightmare.

[ P OW E R E D U P W I T H S TA R D U S T ]

Here, on the hallowed ground of what was once a bad Ethiopian restaurant that also operated as a dingy party bar that hosted the occasional punk show, some seeming yupsters erected an eye-bleedingly bright little pop-in with a forehead-smacking pun for a name. The spot serves up a trendy (and maybe ecologically unsustainable!) foodstuff and has an encyclopedic collection of canned La Croix. But as any honest longtime Portlander will tell you, living here now means coming to terms with the fact that new isn’t always bad, and not everything from a sunny place counts as an invasive species. Over the past year, Poke Mon has shown itself to be one of the very finest casual restaurants in this city, a reliable source of excellent fish carefully prepared and served at Old Portland prices.

You really can’t go wrong with any of the six standard bowls, though the Pikachu of the bunch is the garlic salmon poke, which plays Yoshimoto’s salty ponzu sauce off sweet bites of grapefruit for an especially enlivened combination. If you go with the spicy ahi donburi, spend the extra $2 to swap the slightly mushy minced ahi for the cubed variety.

ROOST

1485 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-894-9743, pokemonpdx.com. 11 am-9 pm daily. $.

OuR 8Th YeaR

And for those still unconvinced that Poke Mon is a special place despite the casual vibes and low prices, peep that sake menu, careening from wild-style Hannya Tou plum liqueur to a silky, quaffable Yuki No Bosha honjozo to a rare junmai-grade, unpasteurized “Dreamy Clouds” sake mixing high polish and swirling rice haze. It’s a sake-by-the-glass menu that would make most sushi spots blush, presented in a totally unassuming way. MATTHEW SINGER.

Pro tip: The seating, both inside and out, is a little uncomfortable, so don’t be afraid to take your poke and sake bottle to go. Turns out chilled salmon ($11.75) and donburi ($10.75) taste just as good after a 10-minute drive home.

Poke originated in Hawaii centuries ago as an improvised snack for fishermen, who’d cut off and season chunks of their catch while on the job. It arrived at its current form as a raw-fish salad after reaching the mainland and getting thrown into a bowl with rice, avocado and other fixings. Opened in the Great Summer of Pokemon Go, Poke Mon may have ridden in on several fads, but it transcends them in large part due to exNodoguro cook Colin Yoshimoto, who brings sushi-chef precision (and Japanese-inspired sauces) to what is essentially a quickie lunch counter. Poke Mon has shown itself to be one of the finest casual restaurants in this city.

DinneR $9-$27 BRunCh “egg’S Till 2” $11-$16.50 ROOSTPDX.COM Shaun Daley

Restaur ant Guide 2017

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11. Renata

12. Trifecta Tavern

626 SE Main St., 503-954-2708, renatapdx.com. 5-9 pm SundayWednesday, 5-9 pm Thursday-Friday, 5-10 pm Saturday. $$$.

Like the new Comiskey Park and Michael Jackson’s Bad, Renata was a throwback before it even opened its doors. When this contemporary Italian spot set up shop in the spring of 2015, the city was moving away from large, full-service restaurants and toward intimate pop-ups and cheffy pop-ins.

[ T H E Y C A M E A S RO M A N S ]

But what really stands out, and what accounts for Renata’s lofty place on this list, are the pastas, which have set a new standard for Portland with chef Matthew Sigler’s knack for delivering an umami punch balanced with a little brightness on perfectly al dente noodles. Those pastas change often, but on our visit they featured a pork-filled agnolotti bathed in butter with walnuts, cheese and sultanas and fat strips of maltagliati tossed with woody chanterelles, fresh white corn and a little lovage.

e p r f s e

o d o l n

After a rocky start—including some issues that were beyond their control—Renata has rounded into my favorite Italian spot in the city. Renata has an excellent and diverse cocktail menu, which eschews the current custom of tripling down on one or two spirits and instead builds a list that allows you to pick your poison from recipes built around many of the world’s great distillates. The $10 bread plate was a minor scandal when Renata opened, but I’ve grudgingly come to accept that the quality and portions, plus the housecultured butter, justified it. The antipasti have been uniformly impressive, especially an early-summer plate built with burrata, shaved squash and crunchy chunks of gnocco fritto standing in for croutons.

The pizzas are still the weakest part of the menu, but have markedly improved from the early days. They’ve dialed in the crust, but our Bolognese pie was unbalanced, with a stewy meat sauce and bitter broccolini overwhelming the delicate ricotta.

e ctly a

Renata is perhaps the biggest stand-alone dining build-out we’ll see for a generation. These days, few restaurateurs have the stomach for 3,000 square feet of pink granite with 110 old-school chairs imported from Amsterdam and *lights cigar with $100 bill* its own parking lot. Worse, the room is anchored by a wood-fired oven, and a wide swath of Renata’s menu was dedicated to wood-fired pizzas just as every neighborhood in the city was getting its own Forno Bravo.

Happily, you can now get great pizza all over town, while nowhere else can match the rest of the Renata experience. It might be a while before a new spot even tries. MARTIN CIZMAR.

[ T H E O N E T H AT I WA N T ] Set in a former auto-upholstery shop called Spike’s, Trifecta is where Rizzo and Kenickie would’ve gone for dinner and drinks if they’d grown up, put all that high school bullshit behind them and gotten jobs in advertising. In keeping with its roots, the cavernous inner-eastside restaurant manages to feel raucous but intimate at the same time, with a lively bar that gives way to big, cushy booths.

Trifecta is so named not just because it’s the third restaurant project from Ken Forkish of bread and pizza fame (see page 70), but because it was conceived as three things at once: a bar that could stand alone as a cocktail haven, an eastside bakery for Forkish, and a restaurant helmed by Higgins alum Rich Meyer devoted to hearth fires and the deeply American comforts of the mid-Atlantic, from baked oysters to ham and hot rolls to wood-fired chicken with white-corn grits. It’s hard to make a mistake when ordering, but in deference to the large, white, wood-burning oven that dominates the open kitchen, aim to order anything that’s been touched by fire. That includes bar manager Colin Carroll’s spectacular “wood-fired” cocktails, which hasten the barrel-aging process by sousviding mixed drinks with charred wood or bone marrow.

n l de te

Sam Gehrke

Emily Joan Greene

Pro tip: Renata also operates a casual breakfast and lunch spot, Figlia. It’s expensive and not very good. Avoid.

726 SE 6th Ave., 503-841-6675, trifectapdx.com. 5-9 pm Monday, 5-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 4-10:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 4-9 pm Sunday. $$$.

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restaurants in portland

Will amette Week

The seasonal romano, yellow wax and dragon’s tongue beans snapped perfectly to the tooth, with a char so perfect it looked painted on. A bright citrus tang from the lemongrass and cilantro leavened the hot and savory oysters Trifecta, baked with pork sausage under a crust of bread crumbs. Sop up the oysters’ salty, briny juices with a complimentary plate of bread (the butter is $4) from Forkish’s bakery empire. But you can also go lowbrow and feel great about it. The pimento double cheeseburger and smoked, smashed and fried potatoes are as good a dinner as any in town. And in case you somehow missed that the owner is a baker, don’t skip dessert—there was fork-clashing over the seasonal wood-fired millefeuille, a puff pastry served with maple ice cream and layered with custard and peach compote. ADRIENNE SO.

PRO TIP: Trifecta is one of the best walk-in restaurants you’ll find in Portland, with a good chance a party of two can skate in on a Thursday. Trifecta reserves half of its seating for people who come in off the street.

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

13. Aviary 1733 NE Alberta St., 503-287-2400, aviarypdx.com. 5-10 pm MondaySaturday. $$$.

The three birds you see on Aviary’s sign and menu are symbolic of the original triumvirate of chef-owners, who moved to Portland from New York with big ambitions and a lot of fun ideas about how to bring the city a new breed of Asian fusion cuisine.

[ALBIRDA STREET]

Blazing trails is tough work. Aviary had a slow start, with chef Sarah Pliner once joking to us about hanging a fake menu “with five different burgers and three charcuterie plates” in the window to induce customers. And then there was the 2011 fire caused by a Fourth of July firework, which closed them for six of the busiest months of the year. When Aviary rose from the ashes, we named it our 2012 Restaurant of the Year, recognizing the like-minded “inauthentic Asian” spot from fellow New York transplant Johanna Ware (page 69) as our runner-up. The original Aviary trio has since split up, with Jasper Shen moving on to open his excellent soup-dumpling spot, XLB (page 64), and his wife, Kat Whitehead, now helping develop flavors for Salt & Straw. Sarah Pliner remains, as does the excellent food made with Asian flavors, European technique and creative flair. Many of the dishes that made us fall in love with the place are still there, too, such as the salad of watermelon, bitter greens and fried chicken skin; the tempura green beans with green curry dipping sauce; and the crispy pig ear made with sticky rice, avocado and Chinese sausage. But about half of the menu is constantly shifting, with fun and satisfying dishes like a flatiron smoked over Douglas fir and served with a bone marrow custard. Thomas Teal

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

14. Matt’s BBQ If you’re one of those people still walking by without popping in, the happy hour is highly recommended. There, you’ll find deft versions of the high-low mashups that so often go awry in town, like gobsmacking Brussels sprouts nachos with crumbled cotija cheese and herbal creme fraîche, and a banh mi burger that’s won dedicated fans. Yes, Aviary now has a burger—it’s priced to satisfy even the crustiest Last Thursday fire juggler at $8, or $10 with an Old German tallboy. After all the work Pliner has done clearing space for restaurants like this in the city where she settled, she deserves one. MARTIN CIZMAR.

Pro tip:

The secret back patio is the place to sit for happy hour, and that rear-bar menu hides delights like a $7 slaw-topped and house-smoked Olympia Provisions dog (see page 62) and the only banh mi burger in Portland worth a damn: Kewpie and hoisin swirl into umami ecstasy atop lemongrasskaffir-seasoned beef, pickled carrots and jalapeño, plus a deep-fried egg with warm, barely liquid yolk within.

4709 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., 5503-504-0870, facebook.com/ mattsbbqpdx. 11 am- 7 pm WednesdaySunday, or until sold out. $. [ ’ C U E K I N G ] Remember the barbecue boom? Just a decade ago, your average American didn’t know that Texas made the best, and that St. Louis and Memphis were sad imposters. Then, suddenly, everyone wanted slow-smoked and sauceless brisket served with white bread and pickles.

Well, welcome to the bust. After a rash of new openings, Portland has whipsawed to vegan spots (see page 16). Reo’s burned down. They put Darren “Botto” Bottinelli in jail for stealing $3 million to buy cocaine and stays at the Chateau Marmont. The once-elite pitmaster behind Podnah’s Pit, our 2011 Restaurant of the Year, let his product drift down into mediocrity.

As the smoke has cleared, we’ve found there’s really only one barbecue spot we’re excited about. That’s this cart, in the parking lot of H&B Jewelry and Loan between the two Popeyes on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The hand-lettered menu from pitmaster Matt Vicedomini has the same offerings you find elsewhere—brisket, dry-rubbed ribs, pulled pork, sausage—and yet the pulled pork is the only meat on the menu here that you can find done better elsewhere. The sliced brisket is the showstopper, with thick, smoky black bark and a texture that usually perfectly straddles the line between moist and sloppy. The ribs are taut, with a peppery crust that yields to the tooth in the most satisfying way. Then there’s the sausage. The links are made in-house and, in a town with a lot of good sausage, the smoky heat of the jalapeño cheddar is peerless. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

Moist and sloppy!

"AS THE SMOKE HAS CLEARED, WE'VE FOUND THERE'S REALLY ONLY ONE BARBECUE SPOT WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT."

Pro tip: You can try everything with “the whole shebang for two” for just $23. That’s insane. There’s no booze on site, but there’s also no one to bust a discreet BYOBer. Christine Dong

Restaur ant Guide 2017

top 50

restaurants in portland

Hogan’s goat pizza

Wednesday-sunday 4pm-9pm 5222 ne sacramento st 503-281-9008 dine-in/take-out

TOP 50

Open for Brunch 7 Days a week! 8:00 am - 2:00 pm

2801 SE Holgate 503 954-2801 // birdbearpdx.com Closed Tuesday,Wednesday Thursday-Monday 9am-9pm

2801 SE Holgate Blvd.•503.954.2801 Wednesday-Saturday 11:30am-10pm • Sunday 3:00-9:00pm

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

4741 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-2331286, apizzascholls.com. 5-9:30 pm Monday-Friday, 11:30 am-2:30 pm and 5-9:30 pm Saturday-Sunday. $$.

As someone who has lived in New York and New Haven, the two pizza capitals of America, I find it’s difficult for a pizza anywhere else to make me happy. And so for years I was a skeptic about Apizza Scholls, even though for a decade and a half pizza lovers have beelined to this pizza spot on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard named after its original location in the tiny town of Scholls, Ore. And for a decade and a half, those New Haven-style pies have won plaudits for being good enough to compete with pies from the great pizza cities of the Italian diaspora.

[THE FAVORITE IS THE BEST]

Well, the Apizza margherita is indeed a thing of technical excellence. The crisp crust is charred just enough to add taste but not overpower the tongue with burned-up crust. The sauce is neither too salty nor too sweet. The cheese is plentiful enough without overwhelming the crust or the sauce. And that technical perfection is backed up by house policy. Owner Brian Spangler insists that customers not overdo it on the toppings—no more than three, only two of which can be meat—ensuring that the pies arrive to the table perfectly fired. But what I didn’t know until this year is that the cheese pie is still a blank canvas waiting for its artist. Unless you’re vegetarian or allergic to pork, fuhgettaboutit, as they say in cities that haven’t paved over their Little Italy. Order the sausage and Mama. That sausage and Mama is the pinnacle of perfection, the meat and pickled Mama Lil’s peppers spreading out seemingly sparsely across the pizza and yet flavoring every bite, mixing the bright acid of peppers and the deep cure of that fennel-rich housemade sausage. I don’t know what took me so long to try it. R A C H E L M O N A H A N .

Pro tip: So long as there are fewer than eight of you, Apizza Scholls will take reservations online for you to sit down to a beautiful sausage and Mama pie ($26) and side salad ($11), with no hassle. Walk jauntily past the inevitable families standing in line as if it were still 2011 or something.

Tunnel under the West Hills to find the region’s best Korean, Hawaiian and Szechuan.

Paiche

Amelia’s

4237 SW Corbett Ave., 503-403-6186, paichepdx.com. Breakfast and early lunch Monday-Friday. $.

105 NE 4th Ave., Hillsboro, 503-6150191, ameliasmexicanfood.com. Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday. $$.

Paiche was our 2016 Restaurant of the Year because of its stunning ceviches and potato plates from wild-eyed Peruvian surfer-chef Jose Luis de Cossio. When de Cossio had a crisis of conscience about culling from our overfished seas, Paiche transformed into a coffee shop with a menu hand-written on notebook paper featuring a tiny collection of vegan dishes, like tamales rich with corn and pepper spice, beautiful purplepotato causa and an eggplant cake like nothing else on Earth. It’s all outrageously good— de Cossio could butter toast and make art.

The mustard yellow building in spiffed-up downtown Hillsboro offers Mexican family favorites and lessfamiliar fare like chamorro de cordero, a divine platter of tender lamb shank in chili-and-tomatillo sauce.

Spring 3975 SW 114th Ave., Beaverton, 503-641-3670. Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday. $. Hidden away above a ramshackle grocery store that looks like it may have once housed a bowling alley, Spring offers a steaming bowl of their sujebi and the cleanest-tasting sundubu jjigae soft-tofu stew broth we've encountered.

Kama’aina 1910 Main St. A, Forest Grove, 503430-0465, kamaainacfoh.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$. Pacific University brings a lot of Hawaiian students to the mainland, so it makes sense that Forest Grove now has Oregon’s best kalua pork, lau lau and mac salad. Kama’aina can turn out a stupefyingly good teriyaki chicken plate, but service is spotty and, occasionally, comically bad.

Tastebud 7783 SW Capitol Highway, 503-245-4573, tastebudpdx.com. Dinner nightly. $$. Tastebud Pizza saved the restaurant desert of Multnomah Village with fine wood-fired pizzas topped with peaches and pancetta. There’s an hour wait on a Friday, but once you’re seated, you can sate yourself with warm marinated olives.

Taste of Sichuan 16261 NW Cornell Road, Beaverton, 503-629-7001, beaverton.tasteofsichuan. com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. The menu has the heft of a family photo album, but all you need is the “Wild Side” section, with melt-your-face-off stews, jellyfish, pickled frog and irresistibly enigmatic soups like “The Great Fire Pot Debate” and “The Other Parts of a Pig.”

DJK 12275 SW Canyon Road, Beaverton, 503-641-1734. Lunch and dinner daily. $-$$$. Once you over-order at this grill-topped hall of Korean BBQ it’s arts-and-crafts time, unfurling spare rib or pork belly with your tongs. Don’t sleep on haemul dolsot bibimbap, a Far-East paella with squid and shrimp in a screaming-hot stone bowl.

Yuzu 4130 SW 117th Ave, Beaverton, 503350-1801. Lunch and dinner MondaySunday. $-$$. Beaverton’s hidden Yuzu izakaya serves delightful small bites and a wonderful ramen tonkotsu broth devoted to excessive pork-sweet fatness, a butterball of pure comfort for which no other broth in town substitutes.

Beaverton Sub Station 12448 SW Broadway St., Beaverton, 503-641-7827, beavertonsubstation.com. Breakfast and lunch Monday-Friday, lunch Saturday. $. The “sub” in the name is short for sublime. The only truly great classic deli sandwiches in the metro area comes from a downtown Beaverton strip mall. Coffee costs a quarter, rolls are baked fresh down the block and the subs are perfectly built from perfect things.

Shaun Daley

Restaur ant Guide 2017

PHOTO: Thomas Teal

15. Apizza Scholls

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WILL AMETTE WEEK

LE T

I IS SO

UN E H Nodoguro 16.

2832 SE Belmont St., nodoguropdx.com. Reservations only, Wednesday-Sunday. $$$$.

[ F I S H C H U RC H ] Don’t go to Nodoguro for the sushi. That’s not because the nigiri aren’t terrific at chef Ryan Roadhouse’s Southeast Belmont Street church of Japanese prix-fixe, whose hardcore and superhardcore sushi nights sell out each month within hours of going online. Because, dear god, the sushi is tremendous: At Nodoguro’s large-circumferenced, 13seat horseshoe bar, Roadhouse presides with Buddhist calm over each plate, dressing each ethereal cut of fish from Hawaii or the Tsukiji fish market with bespoke care approaching obsessiveness. Expertly butterflied scallop is butter-tender, while salt-cured sardine greets the tongue with surprising sweetness before settling into an earthy funk almost painful in its richness. The uni is so gentle it might as well be foie gras.

G E NT

But no matter how good the sushi, Nodoguro isn’t about sushi. And even on those Wednesday and Thursday sushi nights, the sushi is not what will linger longest in memory. If you’re looking for nigiri, chef Cody Auger’s blazingly excellent Fukami pop-up—in transition to a new Nimblefish space on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard as this guide prints—can equal Nodoguro. But nowhere in the city, or maybe even the country, can approach what Roadhouse achieves with his otherworldly sousaku (“creative”) plates. Served on Nodoguro’s themed dinners from Friday to Sunday, innovative composed plates also amount to about half the 20 courses on a hardcore sushi night.

A smoked, miso-glazed eggplant was a miracle of texture, a wafer-thin shell of caramelized char that cracked like brûlée into deep-brined soft fruit beneath, attained over a days-long preparation that required the eggplant to be dehydrated, rehydrated and shocked with a bath of hot miso. A tomato and groundcherry salad comes doused in egg yolk that’s been set into gel with fish-stock dashi, then high-speed sheared into rich and luxuriantly silken dressing. A prawn-and-geoduck dish in sake-miso sauce is a piece of lovely modernist whimsy, adorned with crossed, crisped shrimp antennae that eat like alien snack food; the dish somehow manages to combine the heavenly subtlety and aromatics of sushi with the deep, buttery comforts of a mid-Atlantic seafood house. Plate after plate at Nodoguro, it feels like you’re discovering new kinds of transcendence. Each dish arrives with a soft-worded introduction as it’s delivered to each dining group along the bar, in a lengthy and perpetual round-robin. This has the side effect of keeping the pacing of the meal very slow. In its hushed tones and reverent patience, the meal takes on the character of an arcane religious ceremony. But whatever your religion, you will worship here. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

PRO TIP: The $35 drink pairings can be paced awkwardly; on sushi nights they end just as the sushi starts, leaving you ordering more booze. At the sushi dinner at least, you might be best off just ordering a bottle from their wellcurated selection to share.

Thomas Teal

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

17. Pok Pok NW 18. Paley’s Place 1639 NW Marshall St., 971-351-1946, pokpoknw.com. 5-10 pm Monday-Friday, 11:30 am-10 pm Saturday and Sunday. Other Pok Pok locations on SE Division Street and NE Prescott Street, both open 11:30 am-10 pm daily. $$$. [ W I N G D I N G S ] Andy Ricker’s back, baby. The Pok Pok chef-owner has had a weird few years, opening and closing restaurants in New York and Los Angeles and struggling to translate his signature fish sauce wings to quickservice at his new wing spot off Southeast Powell Boulevard.

But the new Pok Pok Northwest might be his best-ever project. In fact, this year I’m not sure I had a single meal better than an earlysummer visit to to the former Bent Brick, where we encountered the classic menu along with some fun new appetizers like lemongrassspiced, chopped smoked catfish salad, and a sour-cured pork sausage served with a creamy coconut dip with citrus that you scoop up with fried betel leaves and rice crisps. My favorite find was the miang kham, betel leaves rolled into cones and filled with peanuts, toasted coconut, diced ginger, lime and Thai chilis. They also do a great job with my alltime favorite Pok Pok dish, thin strips of flank steak doused in fish sauce then body-slammed with fried shallots, lemongrass, mint, cilantro, lime and chili powder. The wings, too, have returned to form.

1204 NW 21st Ave., 503-243-2403, paleysplace.net. 5:30-10 pm MondayThursday, 5-11 pm Friday-Saturday, 5-10 pm Sunday. $$$.

Noodles didn’t put Vitaly Paley on the map. His 20-year-old Northwest 21st Avenue bistro was one of the fathers of the city’s current foodscape, and his kitchen tree has sprouted a number of other talented chefs around town.

[ R E V I TA L I Z E D V I TA LY ]

But those noodles have given Paley a passport back to his Ukrainian childhood. The farm-totable staples of the menu are now augmented with a list of unfamiliar stews and dumplings that arrive in steaming pots or in a pile of delicate dough, transforming Paley’s Place into one of the less-heralded beachheads of Portland’s Soviet invasion. Lazy cheese dumplings burst with a fresh white cheese called tvorog, while eggplant pelmeni float amid summer squash pickled into a citrus tang.

The menu swims with tiny grace notes—like the whole fig, split in two and lightly grilled, that accents the pork tenderloin—so it’s best to pick and choose from the approximately halfprice smaller portions with costs in the midteens, to better sample the miniaturist’s touches. The restaurant encourages that idea with a menu that detours into categories like “more vegetables,” which turns out to be a walking tour of different preparations of fresh corn. For a restaurant steeped in Continental tradition, there’s a playfulness here that borders on the giddy. Where else will you find a sorbet sampler that includes both toastedmarshmallow ice cream and an actual toasted marshmallow? Only in a place Paley invents. A A RO N M E S H .

Pro tip: Select a plate off the veggie list ($8-$13 an item), then get the lazy cheese dumplings ($19). Pair your meal with a barrelaged Paley’s Manhattan ($12), perfectly balanced between Buffalo Trace and bitters. Note that while the Wagyu steak ($21-$42) remains the restaurant’s most popular dish, a noodle soup called lapsha ($25) is catching on.

Just as impressive as the food is the atmosphere, which is more welcoming than at Ricker’s previous spots. To build his original location, Ricker erected a shanty village of tents and tarps. Here, he’s had to go the opposite direction, livening up a dark-and-bricky former gastrolab with Christmas lights, plastic tablecloths and loud Thai pop music. It’s decidedly west side, but in the good way; if you’re paying $15.50 for wings, why not enjoy temperature control? M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

Pro tip: You know what you never regret having on the table? Those glorious little baggies of sticky rice ($3 each). So, so long ago, the way people reacted to the no-such-thing-as-freerice phenomenon was interesting. Now, it’s how you show you’re a pro, since savvy consumers order at least one rice baggie per dish.

"The Menu Swims With Tiny Grace notes."

Henry Cromett

top 50

restaurants in portland

Will amette Week

Fillmore Trattoria

Italian Home Cooking

Tuesday–Saturday 5:30PM–10PM closed Sunday & Monday

1937 NW 23RD Place Portland, OR 97210 (971) 386-5935

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Portland’s original hipster neighborhood continues to expand and evolve with new-wave Korean ‘cue a few blocks from the city’s first slice.

Kim Jong Smokehouse

Gastro Mania

413 NW 21st Ave., 503-477-9364, kimjongsmokehouse.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $.

986 NW Pettygrove St., 503-689-3794, gastromaniapx.com. Lunch and early dinner Monday-Saturday. $.

Smokehouse Tavern’s barbecue and Kim Jong Grillin’s casual Korean merge at this fast-casual spot. Honey-gochujang spareribs and scorched-rice bibimbap bowls served with a rainbow of kimchi in steaming cast-iron pans, with smoky brisket or pulled pork.

For deli prices, Gastro Mania’s Alex Nenchev makes swooningly tender octopus salad, the city’s best gyros and a stunningly rich foie gras burger. In a tiny shoebox of a space, Gastro Mania puts restaurants with brigade service to shame.

Please Louise

PHOTO: Thomas Teal

1505 NW 21st Ave., 503946-1853, please-louise. com. Lunch and dinner MondayFriday, dinner weekends. $$. This bright little neighborhood spot uses its wood-fired Hobart oven to crank out thin, lowtang pies that deny any specific geographic lineage. The rest of the menu is simple (arugula salad, blistered padron peppers, charcuterie place) and wellexecuted.

Kung POW 500 NW 21st Ave., 503-208-2173, kungpowpdx.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. Inside a large corner restaurant, the owners of Shandong have made a world of lemon chicken, Mongolian beef and searing Sichuan chicken, that’re all way better than you’d expect.

Bamboo Sushi 836 NW 23rd Ave., 971-229-1925, bamboosushi.com. Dinner daily. $$$. More than any other Bamboo location, this one’s the heart of its ‘hood: a neutral-toned palace of refined protein that splits its menu between sustainably caught sushi and extravagant meat plates like an XO-spiced flank steak.

Kell’s Irish 210 NW 21st Ave, kellsbrewpub.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. At night it’s a meat market, but Kell’s is a sleeper pick for some of the best comfort lunch in the hood, with excellent fish and chips and shepherd’s pie.

Escape from New York Pizza 622 NW 23rd Ave., 503227-5423, efnypizza.net. Lunch and dinner daily. $. Old school owner Phil Geffner is a legend—the inventor, he says, of the Portland unisex bathroom and the first to sell pizza by the slice. When we stop in for a quick slice and some gossip, we look for something with the terrific house-made sausage.

Ringside Steakhouse 2165 W Burnside St., 503-223-1513, ringsidesteakhouse.com. Dinner nightly. $-$$$$. Ringside’s dry-aging room is one of the marvels of the city, backed up by an infinite wine room filled with bottles. This 73-year-old steakhouse is the city's most hallowed hall of highend meat, but while filet mignon can climb to $74, happy hour-steak bites are a mere $4.75.

In our top 50: St. Jack (page 38), Paley’s Place (page 48), and AtaUla (page 74).

19. Ox 2225 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., 503-284-3366, oxpdx.com. 5-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 5-11 pm FridaySaturday. $$$$. [ M E AT A N D TAT E R S ] At a steakhouse, you expect the big chunk of meat to be the star of the show. At Greg and Gabrielle Quiñónez Denton’s Argentine-inspired Ox, steak is only a player in a meal whose gargantuan flavors present with admirable balance.

In the spacious, exposed-brick and wood-table dining room on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, almost everyone orders the chowder. The soup is a masterpiece: rich from milk, cream and the smoked marrow bone that sits atop a pile of fat clams, and heated gently with slivers of jalapeño. Cocktails are dark-liquor heavy and there’s a preponderance of fernet and other bitter liqueurs, thanks to the fact that Argentina is the fernet-sippingest country in the world. And on the asado Argentino cast-iron grill plate, an $82 feast made to feed two generously, the sausage and sweetbreads are the stars. The chorizo is airy and rounded with warm spice, and the sweetbreads are like umami gumdrops. The morcilla blood sausage is striking, potently savory and rich with cumin. The taters, even, are terrific. Each one is topped with aiolispiked horseradish, a development in mayo so brilliant it ought to be mandatory. And even if the flat-iron is a little blandly beefy, the skirt steak is set off with a masterful chimichurri. Though the ox at Ox feels like it takes a back seat to everything else, the Dentons remain two of the few chefs in Portland who can make a 1,200-pound cow dance. WA L K E R M A C M U R D O .

Pro tip: Ox doesn’t take reservations, and so even with the large dining room, expect a wait either at Ox’s own oysterand-cocktail bar, Whey—ingeniously created to soak up cocktail dollars from customers waiting for seats—or much more economically on the down-home back patio of Billy Ray’s Dive Bar across the street.

"Almost Everyone Orders the Chowder. The Soup is a Masterpiece." Will amette Week

[ S E E F O O D , E AT F O O D ] Jacqueline is currently the best answer to an age-old visitors’ question: “Where should I go in Portland for a really good seafood dinner that’s not sushi?”

Portland has always been more a river town than a coastal one, but until recently you’d have to send your guests to one of the mid-tier fish halls downtown. Now, head down to the year-old Jacqueline on Southeast Clinton Street, which has evolved into Portland’s best home for seafood. Helmed by former Broder Nord chef Derek Hanson, the cozy bistro has shed a lot of its early Nordic influence in favor of creative accents like the true-to-its-name wasabi arugula alongside the fresh, savory Jimmy Nardello peppers in a charred octopus starter. That arugula is a startling plant, a rarely seen green that packs the same heat and sinus-tingling punch of its namesake bulb. Also surprising are the $1oyster dozens available during the restaurant’s happy hour. The restaurant has also shed a little of its theme: Though it’s named after Bill Murray’s submarine in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the painting of Murray that once graced the bar in the sunny main seating area has been taken down, leaving only the subtly Andersonian sky-blue wall of decorative painted fish in the more intimate rear dining room. But wherever you end up, the menu focuses on the bounty of the sea. Scaling a meal is simple, with menu divisions for small plates, entrée-sized portions and “family style” offerings suitable for a pair and possibly a third. Among RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

the long list of starters, a pair of grease-free, batter-fried squash blossoms plumped full of Dungeness crab showed a kitchen firing on all cylinders. Both an Oregon albacore entrée, accompanied by marinated cherry tomatoes bursting with summer, and Alaskan halibut also sided by a seasonal ensemble, were right on point.

2039 SE Clinton St., 503-327-8637, jacquelinepdx.com. 5-10 pm TuesdaySaturday. $$-$$$.

TH E SE

Y T O N 20. Jacqueline F U

Cocktails are equally creative, with a diverse slate including an El Borrachito (literally, “the little drunk”) cocktail mixing mezcal with amaro and apple and orange spirits, and a quaff called Calgon, Take Me Away, frothing up egg white with tequila and hibiscus. A top-notch wine list is strong on bubbles, rosé and white to pair with your sea creatures. Though you’re probably fine to walk in as a party of two, larger groups may want to score a reservation: Despite its diminutive size, Jacqueline burbles with joyful noise even on an early weeknight. MICHAEL C. ZUSMAN.

PRO TIP: Can’t decide? Jacqueline offers a $55-per-person chef’s tasting menu.

Christine Dong

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Smoked ham, housemade pappardelle and authentic moles tucked amongst the city’s shiniest glass condo towers and drunkest dance clubs.

Mediterranean Exploration Company 333 NW 13th Ave., 503-222-0906, mediterraneanexplorationcompany.com. Dinner daily. $$$. John Gorham’s upscale Israeli spot has lately found its groove with Mediterranean classics, like the addictive spicy s’hug and Greek fried potato wedges doused in fragrant herbs. The lamb kebab pot pie with a baked bread top and the Moroccan brick chicken remain favorites.

Pearl Tavern

Red Robe 310 NW Davis St., 503-227-8855, redrobeteahouse.com. Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday. $$. Red Robe is the city’s best Chinese tea house, pouring Gongfu tea rituals of beautifully smoky roasted Tie Guan Yin teas. But it also serves our favorite hot pot in town—a subtle, aromatic, vegetable-rich broth without the bathwater tepidity or angry spice of most versions. Make sure to include both wonton and dumpling in your hot pot order.

Irving Street Kitchen 701 NW 13th Ave., 503-343-9440, irvingstreetkitchen. com. Dinner daily, brunch weekends. $$$.

PHOTO: Henry Cromett

231 NW 11th Ave., 503-954-3796, pearltavernpdx.com. Lunch, dinner and late night daily. $$$. Former Oregon Ducks quarterback Joey Harringon’s woodgrained steak den is outfitted as a manly study, with big screens and booths you can reserve in advance. They’ve pulled former Spago chef Thomas Boyce off the bench and he’s both doubling down on burgers and upping the gamewith dishes like halibut with cherry tomato vinaigrette.

Mi Mero Mole 32 NW 5th Ave., 971-266-8575, mmmtacospdx.com. Lunch and dinner daily, breakfast Monday-Friday. $. This Old Town counter-service spot from occasional WW contributor and always-outspoken foodie Nick Zukin serves burritos and tacos with nixtamal tortillas, slow-cooked meats and the stewy guisados of central Mexico, including a beautifully deep lamb mole negro. They’ve recently added breakfast, including chilaquiles.

Oven & Shaker 1134 NW Everett St., 503-241-1600, ovenandshaker.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$. This pizzeria from the proprietor of Nostrana (page 78) serves up artfully charred wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas. Order bolder, speciality pizzas like the spicy salami with provolone, mozzarella and wildflower honey, or whatever currently has pork belly on it.

At chef Sarah Schafer’s sevenyear-old comfort spot, the musthave dishes are southern-tinged staples: Benton’s smoked ham with fluffy biscuits, fried chicken with smashed potatoes and tasso ham gravy, and a best-in-town butterscotch pudding with gooey vanilla-caramel topping.

Piazza Italia 1129 NW Johnson St., 503-478-0619, piazzaportland.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$. Portland long-ago lost its Little Italy to urban renewal, but you’d never know it from Piazza Italia. Here, soccer plays on the TVs, soccer jerseys hang from the walls and Italian regulars speak in their native tongue. Gino’s Favorite squarciarella is a favorite, though you should sub in the housemade pappardelle.

21. Ava Gene’s 3377 SE Division St., 971-229-0571, avagenes.com. 5-10 pm MondayThursday, 5-11 pm Friday, 4:30-11 pm Saturday, 4:30-10 pm Sunday. $$$.

Resplendent in marble, brass and dark wood, Ava Gene’s is perhaps Southeast Portland’s closest analog to a clubby institution nestled against the West Hills, except with Roman-inspired Italian fare instead of, say, steak.

[ G A R D E N PA RT Y ]

Chef Joshua McFadden does not mess around when it comes to vegetables—he literally wrote the book on modern preparations of seasonal produce, and his Burnside Mediterranean spot Tusk is at the forefront of a green revolution in Portland (see pages 16, 34). So it comes as no surprise the Giardini section of Ava Gene’s menu reads like the ingredients from a particularly challenging episode of “Chopped”—celtuce, fennel, colatura, sprouted barley—yet the dishes come out as perfectly composed fine art. Such as a recent tomato-and-basil salad that incorporated

"chef joshua mcfadden does not mess around when it comes to vegetables."

Roll with the housemade pastas.

Andina 1314 NW Glisan St., 503-228-9535, andinarestaurant.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$$. This white-tablecloth Peruvian behemoth may have been eclipsed by newer, hipper options, but still holds its own with generously sized staples like fruity ceviches, rellenos and empanadas, all best paired with a caipirinha or two.

Pro tip: Sit at the chef’s counter to watch the show. Order anything from the Giardini section and a pasta, and pair it with a housebottled Negroni Sbagliato with campari, vermouth and prosecco ($12): It complements just about anything on the menu.

In our Top 50: Bless Your Heart (page 64), Olympia Provisions (page 62)

Will amette Week

lovage, compressed orange honeydew melon and roasted Tropea onion for sweet and herbal notes, or a raw kale salad balanced with salty Sarvecchio cheese and crunchy bread crumbs. There are also meat and seafood entrĂŠes, but roll with the housemade pastas, some of which are made with house-milled flour. Especially, get the cavatelli with ricotta-enriched dough and a butter-and-cheese sauce studded with roasted fennel, lamb sausage and mint. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just like your nonna would make, if she maintained an open kitchen staffed with highly choreographed, unflappable cooks in matching ballcaps. K AT M E RC K .

Henry Cromett

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

22. Mae Portland’s food and party frontier is home to the city’s best restaurant, peanut-brittle fried chicken and all the ramen.

Associated 2131 SE 11th Ave., 503-231-2809, associatedpdx.com. Lunch, dinner and late night daily. $$. The loss of Biggie-bumping Neapolitan pizza spot P.R.E.A.M. hurts. But Associated is a good consolation, sitting in the same location, with the same pizziola using the same oven. This casual bar’s Neapolitan pies rival Ken’s Artisan (see page 70). Get the sausage-and-basil pie walloped with fat and herbs.

PHOTO: Henry Cromett

Revelry 210 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-339-3693. Dinner daily. Late night TuesdaySaturday. $$. With loud hip-hop and a wall of vintage ghetto blasters, acclaimed Seattle chef Rachel Yang’s Portland outpost feels more New York than Little Beirut. Among the artfully plated Korean drinking snacks, get Ms. Yang’s spicy fried chicken tossed with crumbled peanut brittle. It tastes like See’s Candy in your favorite Chinese takeout.

Marukin 609 SE Ankeny St. Suite A, marukinramen.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. Every single day at its east and westside locations, Tokyo-founded Marukin serves our favorite ramen in Portland: a tonkotsu shoyu pork-bone broth light for the style yet still buttery in its depths. Additional broths rotate among miso made from thousand-year-old recipes and ridiculously rich paitan shio chicken broth. All can be made spicy. All are excellent.

Afuri 923 SE 7th Ave., 503-468-5001, afuripdx.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$. Tokyo-born Afuri is like a ramen joint married an izakaya and gave birth to a sushi joint. There are sake somme-

liers, miso black-cod plate, spoonfuls of composed crudo and artisan cocktails. And yet the best thing here is still their aromatic yuzu miso ramen, a fish-flake and chicken broth that blooms with vegetable flavor.

Nicholas 318 SE Grand Ave., 503-235-5123, nicholasrestaurant.com. Monday-Saturday: 11 am-9 pm, Sunday: noon-9 pm. $$. One of the most comforting restaurants in the city, Nicholas is beloved for its generous portions of smooth hummus, huge puffy pitas and wellseasoned meats.

Danwei Canting 803 SE Stark St., 503-236-6050, danweicanting.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. Danwei Canting’s la zi ji chicken, aka hot pepper chicken bath, is easily the best version of this Sichuanese dish to hit town since Lucky Strike's tearjerkingly hot rendition.

[ S W E E T C A RO L I N A ] The actual American South—like most of the actual America— is not a nice place. It is beer breath and Christian-only motels and fried chicken that gets the grease up under your fingernails and makes you wish you had not ordered the fried chicken. It is disappointment.

Maya Lovelace’s fried chicken, by contrast, is so immaculate that in hindsight it seems imaginary: No way did a platter of thighs and legs really arrive at your table by the dozen, each piece lacquered with a shell of three fats that somehow managed not to seep into the bird, but instead protect the meat like a little birthday present. Lovelace brings these gifts personally to each table with an anecdote about what they meant in her North Carolina childhood, and one suspects that her talents as a storyteller have helped propel her to a James Beard nomination after just two years running a pop-up in back of a Cully butcher shop. The acclaim is deserved. At least two dishes on a recent Monday night—the pimento mac ’n cheese and an iceberg salad—had patrons talking semi-seriously about licking the bowl clean. And that salad did taste like a Thomas Kinkade vision of heaven painted in ranch dressing. But Lovelace is also conjuring a world we wish existed, clean and generous and warmed by a bottle of brown-bag whiskey. For two hours, nothing disappoints. AARON MESH.

Nong’s Khao Man Gai 609 SE Ankeny St. Suite C, 503-740-2907, khaomangai.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. This famous Thai spot slipped a bit when kitchen manager Colin Yoshimoto bounced to start Poke Mon (see page 39), but with founder Nong Poonsukwattana back in the kitchen most days, that trademark tender chicken is again exploding with garlic, chili and ginger.

Pro tip: Getting a ticket to Mae isn’t easy, whether the $40 Monday meals or the full $75 Wednesday ones: Sign up for the mailing list to know when sales go live. Also, it’s BYOB, so take note that bourbon mixes especially well with the sweet tea you’ll be served.

Biwa 215 SE 9th Ave., 503-239-8830, biwarestaurant.com. Lunch, dinner and late night daily. $$-$$$. Last year, basement Biwa Izakaya splintered into a fine-dining side and a casual bar side. The mistake didn’t last. Since recombining in July, the restaurant might be better than ever, blending its menu to add flaky-gooey okonomiyaki and an unbeatable burger to its murderer’s row of sashimi options and God-level ramen.

In our top 50: Le Pigeon (page 26), Kachka (page 32), Holdfast (page 33), Trifecta (page 40), Renata (page 40).

5027 NE 42nd Ave., maepdx.com. Dinners at 6 and 8:30 pm Mondays and Wednesdays. $$.

Thomas Teal

Will amette Week

T CO U O R

A fuller exploration of the artfully terse menu, typed in Courier, is also rewarding, as the veggie sides are accented in just the right ways and proteins like a lightly salted whole trout impress with their directness. In this light there’s nothing to hide, and nothing that needs to be hidden. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

PRO TIP: This tiny checkerboard-floored room fills up fast in the evenings, but you’ll almost always be able to waltz right in at lunch.

RIE D T

The second restaurant from Navarre’s John Taboada succeeds with simplicity—every ingredient used is obvious on the plate, and all show an eye for detail. It’s a place you don’t need to think too hard about—a perfect meal for two might be spongy focaccia, olives, a large salad and a generous half-order of the tagliatelle with a ragu of beef and pork, all of which will set you back less than $40. Get two glasses of the house red, and you’re still out the door for $65 with tip.

Chef Gabriel Rucker’s other restaurant might just be one of the best date spots in downtown. With deep red banquettes, pressed-tin ceilings, plants and a smattering of taxidermied quails, the vibe is part Paris, part Joanna Newsom album cover.

[A LA FOIE]

N- F

At Luce, all is light. That starts with the small, bright room, which is artfully cluttered with imported olive oil and dry pasta in the manner of a very chic nonna’s pantry. That continues with the Italian fare, which shows admirable restraint in all things.

215 SW 6th Ave., 503-688-5952, littlebirdbistro.com. 11:30 am-midnight Monday-Friday, 5 pm-midnight SaturdaySunday. $$-$$$.

CHIC K E

2140 E Burnside St., 503-236-7195, luceportland.com. 11 am-10 pm daily. $$. [ F I AT L U X ]

24. Little Bird ND

23. Luce

U VI N A A Q

The most popular dishes are a toss-up between the coq au vin and chicken-fried trout, but at a French bistro owned by the chef behind our No. 1 restaurant (page 26), you get the foie gras. It’s hard to go wrong with either the seared lobe or torchon, but liver newbies may want to start with the chicken liver mousse that comes with the charcuterie plate. Pair it with a fumée Old-Fashioned, sweet from fernet and smoky from an infusion of lapsang souchong tea; it’s a strong, bright foil for the meat-heavy menu. The rest of the concise menu leans heavily on bistro staples like steak frites and duck breast, but most people don’t leave without the charcuterie board and double-Brie burger, and neither should you. The former is an Instagram-ready trove of bitesized treasures, from thick slices of chicken liver mousse over Port-glazed shallots to towering deviled eggs spiked with smoked cod and puffy fried pork skins drizzled with truffled honey mustard. The burger, meanwhile, comes a l’Americaine, reassuringly greasy and served on a gingham paper basket liner with fries. Come during Little Bird’s justly famous happy hour and it’s just $6—literally cheaper than Burgerville. K AT M E RC K .

PRO TIP: The all-day Sunday happy hour (also available 2:30-6 pm in the bar and after 10 pm every night) is one of the finest in the city, with $3 off those sterling cocktails, half-priced oysters, a $6 burger, $4 liver mousse and steep discounts on the charcuterie board and foie gras.

Thomas Teal

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Dig a little and you’ll find outstanding mussels and a pop-up pizzeria amongst the local chains.

Kati

The American Local

2932 SE Division St., 503-477-6059. Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday. $$.

3003 SE Division St., 503-954-2687, theamericanlocal.com. Dinner TuesdaySunday. $$.

Vegetarian Thai eatery Kati has wowed us with bold flavors, bright colors and fun snacks like wrap-em-yourself betel leaves with roasted coconut, ginger, lime and palm sugar syrup.

Ranch

PHOTO: Thomas Teal

Deliveries to Beermongers, Apex, Baerlic and Grixsen. Order by phone at 503477-6481. Ranchpdx.com. Thursday-Sunday dinner, late night Friday-Saturday. $$. This pop-up delivers hearty nonna-style squares exclusively to nearby beer bars and breweries. The perfect crust is chewy in the middle and crispy on the sides, but the secret is raw sauce, applied twice during baking.

Abyssinian Kitchen 2625 SE 21st Ave., 503-894-8349, abyssiniankitchen.com. Dinner Tuesday-Sunday. $$. It lacks the punchy flavors of Enat (page 60) but this homey, earthtoned space serves very nice Ethiopian and Eritrean dishes like tilapia stew and sauteed lamb on tangy injera.

OP Wurst 3384 SE Division St., 503-384-2259, opwurst.com. Lunch, dinner and late night daily. $. Olympia Provisions’ (see page 62) white-on-white sausage shack sports a seriously great beer list and dogs stacked with mac and cheese. But the classic OP dog is the Platonic ideal of frankfurter, the one God would grill in heaven's backyard.

Nuestra Cocina 2135 SE Division St., 503-232-2135, nuestracocina.com. Dinner TuesdaySaturday. $$. The name means “Our Kitchen” and that’s what it feels like inside this warm, tile-heavy room on Division Street. It shines brightest on seasonal plates like grilled asparagus with palm hearts and bacon in a pumpkin-seed vinaigrette.

American Local evolved into a fine gastropub of Asian-accented comforts, with a great Americancheese burger backed up by skewers, seasonal salads and the occasional wonderful surprise like a cod collar topped with shiso and fried onions.

Southeast Wine Collective 2425 SE 35th Place, 503-208-2061, sewinecollective.com. Dinner daily, lunch weekends. $$. This working urban winery is a clubhouse for the Oregon progressive wine scene. Great wine is made in back, but food in the tiny tasting room threatens to steal the show, with a crispy prosciuttotopped deviled egg so voluminous you're forced to deconstruct it in sheer wonderment.

Woodsman Tavern 4537 SE Division St., 971373-8264, woodsmantavern.com. Dinner daily. Breakfast, lunch and dinner weekends. $$. Debuting as a rustic chic supperhouse with serious culinary ambitions, the Woodsman abandoned its roasted whole trout to become a clubhouse for owner Duane Sorenson, who founded Stumptown Coffee next door. The hangout version has fried chicken artfully presented in a paper bucket and a killer double cheeseburger.

La Moule 2500 SE Clinton St., 971-339-2822, lamoulepdx.com. Dinner and late night daily, Sunday brunch. $$$. At this casual sister of swanky French spot St. Jack (see page 38), the long copper bar fills at early and late happy hours, when $12 gets you a bowl of plump, pillowy mussels swimming in broth rich with chile and tarragon, plus a tangle of frites.

25. Expatriate 5424 NE 30th Ave., expatriatepdx.com. 5 pm-midnight daily, brunch 10 am-2 pm Saturday-Sunday. $$$. [ E L E G A N T J U N K ] Dim, clubby cocktail bar Expatriate began as a jaunty side project to chef Naomi Pomeroy’s high-brow Beast across the street (see page 79. But if Beast is Blur, then Expatriate is Gorillaz, making hash of the world with a sly wink.

In this colonial drinking den, it feels as if all the detritus of human culture has washed ashore and been made elegant. The waffle beneath your exquisite chili-butter fried chicken is made delicate with rice flour, while happy-hour fried-wonton nachos flatter your palate with lemongrass beef and a decadent “Thai chili cheese sauce” that pays homage to a world that never existed. The twinned burger plate is styled after a quarter pounder with much better ingredients, and tastes like the fast food in heaven. “Laotian tacos” are a play on miang som—nectarine, shrimp, chili-lime and tuna belly wrapped in the pungent bitterness of betel leaf. Lowbrow comfort food is made into art and highbrow drinks are made entirely of booze: It is a place where all culture seems flattened. The liquor shelves are framed by a massive dragon-and-eagle rimmed circle borrowed from a Chinese restaurant, and the chairs sport elaborate subcontinental patterns. Old editions of Henry Miller and Graham Greene stack on one end of the bar, while above the house vinyl collection, an ecstatic Garbo stares at God from underneath a concert poster for German electronica. Your bartender might ask you about the new book by a Swedish memoirist while pouring a mezcal cocktail called the Gazelle that both looks and tastes like pink clouds, swirling combier liqueur with genever and hibiscus cardamom syrup. Meanwhile, a White Puma is as smooth as the shoe it describes, mixing Martin Miller gin with a pair of caramel amaros and an orange liqueur first made for Napoleon himself. Expatriate is the dream of the expatriate, an expansive ideal of civilization only disappointed when you exit and discover yourself back in the familiar, now bland-seeming streets of America. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

Pro tip: Never skip the James Beard’s Onion and Butter Sandwich, consisting of its name plus parsley and sel gris. It costs $6, and is one of the simplest expressions of refinement life has to offer. While eating it, you’ll feel like the world’s smartest child.

In Our Top 50: Jacqueline (page 51), Broder (page 73), Aviv (page 76)

Will amette Week

uncommon cards & curious finds

A thoughtful collection of uncommon greeting cards•candles•jewelry•journals & other curious finds. 6656 SE Milwaukie Ave., Portland, OR 97202 503-235-7124

nicholasrestaurant.com

Voted Best Mediterranean restaurant in Portland, 3 years in a row! -Willamette Week Best of Portland readers’ Poll

since 1987 nicholas’ has provided

the area’s finest Lebanese and Mediterranean cuisine for 30 years. three Locations:

318 se Grand ave, Portland. // 3223 ne Broadway, Portland. 323 n. Main ave, Gresham.

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Nodoguro (p. 47) | Thomas Teal

Will amette Week

Achieve noodle Nirvana! Each and every day, our noodles are created from scratch and pulled by hand in the LaMain method to make the base for the much of the most succulent delicious and fresh asian food.

As seen on Food Network’s “Drive-ins, Diners and Dives

822 NE Broadway St Portland, OR 97232 | Phone: 503-288-1007 15950 SW Regatta Lane Beaverton, OR 97006 503-430-0901 Hours of Operation: Monday - Saturday 11am - 3pm & 5pm - 9pm

franksnoodlehousepdx.com

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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26. Enat Kitchen 27. Toro Bravo 300 N Killingsworth St., 503-285-4867. 11:30 am-9 pm Monday-Saturday. $.

5pm - 10pm Daily

And yet the food at Portland’s best Ethiopian restaurant is opulent. As you should at most Ethiopian restaurants, order a family-style platter. Enat’s platters are gorgeous and overflowing with colorful piles of stewy vegetables and meat on a massive sheet of spongy injera. Nestled between each you’ll find another bundle of the bread, ready to be unspooled and used as a fork, napkin and salve from the occasional bite of crispy jalapeño. Enat’s injera is so silky it’s tempting to just bite straight into a roll instead of pinching it around the slowcooked vegetables.

Feast Moroccan style! Featuring Belly Dancing (Wed. - sun.) ReseRvations Recommended

201 NW 21st Ave 503.248.9442 marrakeshportland.com

!!!

This is a restaurant where you can happily go vegetarian or vegan without missing much. The berbere sauce on the dinch wot potatoes is warmly spicy, richly earthy and the tiniest bit sweet. The kik wot split peas are creamy and deeply comforting, and the refreshing ground chickpeas are so fluffy they’re almost the texture of scrambled eggs. Wash it down with one of Enat’s malty Ethiopian lagers—we recommend the Meta—which pair well with the rich food. And when you think you’re done, there’s still one last treat: Even after soaking throughout the meal at the bottom of the platter, the baselayer injera is still sturdy enough at the end of the meal to mop the platter clean. S H A N N O N

Get Busy Sign up for our gET BuSY nEwSlETTEr! Sign up for Get Busy to receive WW’s weekly music + entertainment picks!

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At Toro Bravo, there are both kisses and a kissing room. The “kisses” on the menu at chef John Gorham’s decadeold tapas bar are little bites like the tease of a lover: the beestung smoke and honey of a bacon-wrapped date, or the rich undertow of a foie-stuffed prune.

[ O L D RO M A N C E ]

Y INJE

serviNg NorthWest siNce 1989

N G O P

Enat Kitchen feels like eating in someone’s home. The food is served on wide, ceramic platters. A TV in a corner plays Ethiopian music videos at a low volume. The long tables and chairs are inlaid with fabric cushions. And there’s often someone who stopped by and sidled up to the bar to chat with an acquaintance.

[ A RO U N D T H E I N J E R A ]

120 NE Russell St., 503-281-4464, torobravopdx.com. 5-10 pm SundayThursday, 5-11 pm Friday-Saturday. $-$$$.

G O R M L E Y.

But the Northeast Russell Street space, tucked demurely under the Secret Society ballroom, also sports a “makeout room.” Adorned by a painting of foolish romantic Don Quixote, the closet-sized, wallpapered nook has its own mythology: If you’re caught making out there, your next cocktail is free. But as WW ’s 2007 Restaurant of the Year, your private ecstasies will likely be reserved to the small plates, whether a $12 half-plate of the dry-aged, almond-garlic-chili coppa steak that made Gorham’s name in this city, or crisp patatas bravas that come on as the world's most delicate dirty fries. Croquetas are breaded-bechamel depth charges that burst into lovely warmth, while Toro’s rich romescomanchego-bacon burger is one of the best we’ve had in the city—which should come as no surprise if you’ve tried the burgers at Gorham’s world-beating Bless Your Heart (see page 64). Amid two Tasty restaurants, Middle Eastern fare both fancy (page 52) and fast casual, and massive event space Plaza del Toro in the central east side, Toro remains Gorham’s signal achievement as a restaurateur—amid ups and downs, multiple chefs and multiple remodels, it’s still one of the most singular dining experiences in Portland. I’ve fallen out of love with Toro in the past: Consider the affair rekindled.

M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

PRO TIP: The $40 family platter easily serves five and comes with every vegetable option on the menu. For a decadent meal that serves two or three people, order one veggie combo and one beef combo.

Enat's injera is so silky it's tempting to just bite straight into a roll. Shaun Daley

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

PRO TIP: Toro is still famous for its lines, and reservations go only to groups of seven or more. But two years ago they installed a couple of standing "tapas bars" by the door. Even on a Friday, if you're willing to stand while you eat, you can waltz in to immediately enjoy a $5 glass of Asturian Trabanco sidra, patatas bravas ($5) and maybe rawcured sobrasada with light honey ($8). And then you can bounce.

28. Han Oak 511 NE 24th Ave., 971-255-0032, hanoakpdx.com. 5:30-9:30 pm FridayMonday. $-$$$. [ W E L L - A G E D ‘ OA K ’ ] When a menu says “homemade,” it’s usually a euphemism. At Han Oak, it’s literal. The side-yard Korean spot behind the Ocean on Northeast Glisan Street is half open-kitchen restaurant, half modernist loft where chef Peter Cho and his family actually live. And so Han Oak’s fridge is Cho’s fridge. The toddler cheerily attacking the bubble machine on the patio is Cho’s son, Elliott, whose scattered toys turn the yard into a romper room. And pay no attention to the room beyond the curtain: That’s Cho’s bedroom.

In its early months, the now-one-year-old Han Oak was a much more tightly controlled experiment. And Oregon-raised, New York-trained Cho still turns out a $55 cheffy, ingredientforward prix-fixe meal that might include ume-shiso asparagus banchan, a very grown-up buckwheat soba, and ssam lettuce wraps with koji-marinated pork belly.

Nashco

"THESE DAYS, THE JOINT MIGHT AS WELL BE A HOUSE PARTY."

But the mood is looser since Cho merged his justly famous noodle and dumpling menu into the everyday experience. These days, the joint might as well be a house party—especially on Sunday and Monday, when off-shift chefs and seemingly the whole rest of the Portland service industry show up to mow down an à la carte menu of wild flavors and rich homestyle comforts. Most of the ever-changing menagerie of plates hovers around $10, and always seems to include a plate of thick-breaded and juicy Korean fried chicken so laden with fat and spice our server said she sometimes just noshes on the dredged skins.

For more than 80 years, Otto’s Sausage Kitchen has been using the same traditional techniques to make delicious high-quality sausage. The secrets to Otto’s sausages are in the handcrafted artisan techniques, recipes and, of course the one-of-a-kind smokehouse - with each secret handed down for four generations. Every sausage is gluten free, with high-quality beef, pork or chicken. See for yourself what Otto’s has to offer. For those who are unable to visit, check out Otto’s e-store to buy your favorite sausage or apparel.

4138 SE Woodstock Blvd. ottossausage.com • 503.771.6714

Elsewhere are chive-pork dumplings so delicate I almost cried the first time I tasted one, a beautifully salty and crispy blood sausage drenched in over-easy egg, and a KoreanChinese jja jang myun hand-pulled noodle dish made with fermented black beans. On the right night, when those thickly al dente noodles come with butternut squash that melts into the bean sauce, that jja jang murders every other version in town. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

PRO TIP: Bent Brick alum Michelle Ruocco is not-so-secretly one of the best cocktail-smiths in Portland, so order the shit out of her $11 booze menu. Each drink is an amusement-park ride, whether a tequila-spiked Kimchilada served with Japanese Orion lager, or a tequila-soju-midori Paper Crane with bar foam made from Korean ice pops.

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

The restaurant-rich zone between Hawthorne and Burnside now has Peruvian street food and Vietnamese drinking food.

Farmhouse

La Leña

3354 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-432-8115, farmhousepdx.com. Lunch and dinner Wednesday-Monday. $$$.

1864 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-946-1157, lalenapdx.com. Lunch and dinner TuesdayFriday, dinner weekends. $$.

This new Thai spot comes from San Francisco, where $10 vegan salad rolls are “inexpensive” and Hat Yai-style fried chicken (page 37) isn’t a competitive category. The breakout star is a Flintstones-style beef short rib dressed with a punchy orange panang curry served over a bed of bright blue jasmine rice.

Peruvian fast-casual spot La Leña opened on Hawthorne this July with a focus on simple rustic foods. It’s worth a visit for beef-heart anticuchos, fried yucca and especially the chupe de camarones seafood chowder.

Tarboush 3257 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503235-3277, tarboushbistro. com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$.

Rue

PHOTO: Thomas Teal

1005 SE Ankeny St., 503-231-3748, ruepdx.com. Dinner Tuesday-Saturday. $$-$$$. With windows looking out on the Ankeny bicyclists, Rue is bathed in light and devoted to fresh garden brightness. In the best plates meat is an accent to vegetables and not vice versa. Get the $7 pork-pattied “Jersey burger” at happy hour.

If you want soundly solid Middle Eastern fare, you want to be inside this old house on Hawthorne. Tarboush stands out in a crowded field by doing almost everything right—puffy pitas fresh out of the oven, smooth hummus, crisp and salady tabouli, juicy kufta. The only thing to avoid is the dry chicken.

Cafe Castagna

Maruti

1758 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-9959, castagnarestaurant.com. Dinner TuesdaySunday. $-$$$.

1925 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-236-0714, maruti-restaurant.com. Dinner Wednesday-Monday. $$.

The casual cafe adjunct to one of the city’s top prix-fixe meals (see page 31), serves elegant fare like roasted halfchicken, panzanella and grilled pork chops. Their brioche-bun burger has been famous for a decade.

Vegan Indian spot Maruti is devoted to ayurveda, the ancient Indian health practice that believes every meal should be sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent, and pungent. Well, apparently we do too: The garbanzo-bean chole here is the best we’ve had in town.

Short Round 3962 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-384-2564, shortroundpdx.com. Lunch to late night daily. $$. Anyone remember Wafu? Trent Pierce brought pubby, clubby loosely Japanese drinking food to the whitebread Richmond neighborhood. Short Round finally brings back oil, heat and tunes at this new Vietnamese street food pub. Mark up the sushi-style menu to order fish jerky, pan-fried sticky rice cakes and lemongrass-heavy chicken banh mi then grab cocktails from their wide list.

Roost 1403 SE Belmont St., 971-544-7136, roostpdx.com. Dinner Tuesday-Sunday, brunch weekends. $$-$$$.

Roost offers perhaps Portland’s most slept-on brunch, with stunningly toothsome rye pancakes, near-perfect home fries and some of the finest steak and eggs in town, with precisely cooked bites doused in creamy mushroom sauce.

29. Olympia Provisions 1632 NW Thurman St. and 107 SE Washington St., 503-894-8136, olympiaprovisions.com. 11 am-10 pm daily, 9 am-10 pm Friday-Saturday. $-$$$.

You could be forgiven if the only thing you think of at Olympia Provisions is the meat. At Oregon’s first and best certified dry-cure salami house, Elias Cairo’s meat wizardry makes for a nonstop holiday celebration for your taste buds, earning fans all over the world: His sausages and pâtés are sold as far away as Japan.

[ M O R E T H A N M E AT ]

And if you appreciate charcuterie, you should always start with the French, Spanish or Italian board, which respectively brings that mighty salami into relief against rillettes, the city’s best house chorizo, or lovely mortadella and capicola. Pair that board with the wonderful cheese from top makers from both Europe and the States, whether a fruity raw cheese from Oregon’s Ancient Heritage washed in merlot wine, or a milky and nutty majorero from Spain. If Olympia excelled only at meat and cheese, that would be more than okay. But the menu at the Northwest Portland location goes far beyond that world-class baseline. Chef Eric Joppie’s root-vegetable soups make the winter bearable, and the summertime fruit gazpachos (plum was recently replaced by watermelon) are the stuff of which dreams are made. Meanwhile, the beer and wine menus are eccentric and wide-ranging, from a world-beating Bordelet perry to Belgian krieks and acidic, earthy Plavina wine from Croatia. It’s hard to believe a restaurant this good is hiding underneath the Fremont Bridge. N I G E L J A Q U I S S .

Pro Tip: Though the large meat entrées are good here, they aren’t the reason this is one of the best places in Portland to get a meal. Treat the restaurant as an elegant picnic. Those $19 charcuterie plates are the main event, garnished with that beautiful cheese ($15 for three, $25 for five), pickles, great vegetable plates and grilled sausages from andouille to luscious käsekrainer.

In our top 50: Castagna (page 31), Coquine (page 30), Poke Mon (page 39), Nostana (page 78), Nodoguro (page 47), Ken’s Artisan Pizza (page 70), Chicken and Guns (page 71) and Langbaan (page 28).

Will amette Week

30. Nak Won 4600 Watson Ave., Beaverton, 503-646-9382. 11:30 am-2 pm MondaySaturday, 5-8:30 pm Monday-Thursday, 5-8 pm Friday-Saturday. $$. [ S P E C I A L K ] Since the ’80s tech boom changed the demographics of Beaverton, the suburb has slowly become Portland’s only home for Korean food. And for the past 23 years since transforming the family bakery into a full-service restaurant, chef Tao Ok Lee has presided not only over Nak Won restaurant, but also K-Town.

At Nak Won, Lee cooks every dish herself with the individual attentiveness usually reserved for home cooks. All the classic dishes are solid here, whether a dolsot bibimbap with rice lightly kissed by stonepot char, the rich comforts of chili-doused tteokbokki rice cakes, or a spicy octopus stir-fry tinged red with sweet-hot flavors from the wok. Choose something that looks good on the picture-heavy menu and it will taste as good as it looks. But often it’s the little details that set Nak Won above everyone else. Seafood pancakes, for instance, are a staple in Korean food, and Nak Won’s are as stellar as they come, but their oft-ignored green onion-only cousin is revelatory here. The lack of extra moisture from the seafood allows the pancake to retain its crusty crunch longer, and a few splashes of the super-salty dipping sauce that accompanies it makes for some phenomenal mouthfuls. Nak Won also sports the only gamja (mashed potato salad) banchan really worth eating in town—tangy, sweet and salty. B R I A N PA N G A N I B A N .

Sandwiches. Delivered. Late. PRO TIP: Bring friends. Though your meal will start with an array of lovely (and complimentary) banchan sides, from gamja to pungent kimchi and deepmarinated spinach, the $13-$20 menu is most rewarding in sampler form, which is only possible in large groups. In particular, don’t miss the scallion haemul pancake or the kimchi samgyupsal, a spicy kimchi and pork-belly stir-fry.

Order: 503-236-8067 1711 SE Hawthorne, Blvd. Open Daily 5pm - 3am

"A DOLSOT BIBIMBAP WITH RICE LIGHTLY KISSED BY STONE-POT CHAR..."

Killer Sandwiches Breakfast Lunch and Dinner Breakfast All Day Brunch Sat & Sun 9–3pm

SE 29th & Belmont 503-719-7128 Barebonespdx.com Liz Allan

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

www.shandongportland.com

3724 NE Broadway St • 503-287-0331

x o a

Early on, the namesake dumplings were inconsistent. An early visit found them too dry, a common complaint. We didn’t give up, and have been rewarded. Recent visits have shown www.shandongportland.com them to be dialed in—bursting with lovely, [ S O U P E R S E R I O U S ] Back in 2012, Portland's savory, herbal, warming broth, accented with farm-to-table movement felt like a prison an on-point vinegar-shallot dipping sauce. made of fennel and salmon. So when Northeast Alberta Street's Aviary and Northeast Other entrées have been successful from the Fremont Street's Smallwares both leapt onto start, in particular a light-battered five-spice the restaurant scene with their refined, fun popcorn chicken that was sweetly clove and takes on Asianish food, the only debate was cinnamon heavy with a slight afterglow of which one to name Restaurant of the Year (see numbing Sichuan pepper. A ho fun noodle page 10). stir-fry was upgraded with beautifully steaky beef strips. From slightly dim beginnings, XLB Former Aviary co-chef Jasper Shen took a has turned the lights on: It’s now a powerbuyout with an eye toward starting this place, house. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E . the city’s first serious soup dumpling house. www.shandongportland.com Ask anyone who’s lived in a city with more Chinese restaurants, and they’ll complain that Portland lacked a credible version of xiao long bao, those little dough pockets filled with broth and meat. So Shen spent years practicing the deft twist of the wrist required Pro tip: XLB has added a half-plate to make the dumplings before opening XLB option allowing you to get $5 app-sized in the old Lardo space on North Williams portions of the otherwise $9 five-spice Avenue in January. 4090 N Williams Ave., 503-841-5373, xlbpdx.com. 11 am-3 pm and 5-10 pm daily. $-$$.

Shandong

lo n

o a 31. XLB i

Shandong XLB's open-kitchen, fast-casual space is a clean-lined hall of ironized Asiatic kitsch, complete with stylized kung fu paintings, Qing dynasty lights hung at varied heights and a gold-painted wallpaper pattern of Chinese zodiac silhouettes—perfect dog, perfect snake, perfect rooster.

popcorn chicken, excellent sautéed chinese greens and a fried-tofu garlic eggplant plate. For two people, score at least two of these alongside a wicker basket of newly lovely, broth-filled soup dumplings ($11) and wonderful Shanghaistyle pork-and-shrimp udon ($11).

32. Bless Your Heart Burgers “Farina makes magic and we will eat anything she bakes” -WWeek 2/17/15

126 SW 2nd Ave., 503-719-4221, byhpdx.com. 11 am-10 pm daily. $.

John Gorham’s projects don’t always age well. The globe-hopping restaurateur’s debut, Toro Bravo, is a classic (page 60), but we’ve lately been less enthused about other spots in his empire, even including the Tasty N Sons bruncherie, a former Restaurant of the Year.

[ B U RG E R K I N G ]

Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s us, or maybe it’s the city—the loud rooms, fire-at-random coursing and relentless barrage of buzzy ingredients that once seemed to embody Portland’s chill vibes now just seem like symptoms of late capitalism.

1852 SE Hawthorne 971.279.5939 farinabakery.com 64

top 50

But you know what? The guy just keeps making hits. Like Kanye, he’s on to the next thing before people are even over the last thing. And his latest project, BYH Burgers, a kiosk inside Pine Street Market, is a banger. It might be the best burger in the city right now.

restaurants in portland

Gorham knows burgers, as evident at Toro Bravo. At Bless Your Heart, Gorham has teamed with former employee Drew Sprouse. Together, they made a blend that's one-third each of short rib, chuck and brisket. That beef is caramelized to juicy perfection, showing a steaky character you'd expect from a burger cooked on an older, more well-seasoned grill. Then, it gets an incredible bun—Martin's potato rolls purchased in bulk from the Pennsylvania company and frozen until needed. When that bun is heated on the steam-powered griddle, it becomes delightfully crisp with a great snap. My favorite is the double cheeseburger with American cheese, but the speciality of the house is a Carolina-style diner burger. What's Carolina style? Well, it seems to involve a dark-brown meat chili that could pass for finely ground Manwich, yellow mustard, a dash of Texas Pete and crisp slaw. Get either with the animal-style fries called "down and dirty,” which are sopped with the house beer-cheese and barbecue sauces and topped with onions, peppers and mushrooms. MARTIN CIZMAR. Will amette Week

33. Taqueria Nueve 727 SE Washington St., 503-954-1987, taquerianueve.com. 5-10 pm TuesdaySaturday, 5-9 pm Sunday. $.

Portlanders will endure all manner of indignities for great tacos, as is obvious from the line snaking down the block at ¿Por Qué No? and the number of people who brag about driving to Woodburn or Hillsboro to get their fix.

[LUCKY NINE]

Taqueria Nueve succeeds largely by dispensing with all that. The new location of Portland’s original bougie taqueria (est. 2000) not only has the best upscale Mexican food in the city, but manages to make it pleasant to procure said food thanks to its comfortable digs, the former Beaker & Flask space at Southeast Sandy Boulevard.

The original T9 was in business for roughly the same run as the Bush regime, closing after a downtown spinoff, D.F., failed. In 2013 it returned, bringing back its $4 tacos, including slightly crispy wild-boar carnitas, rich and fatty pan-fried brisket and spice-kissed grilled organic chicken. T9’s super-smooth and lime-heavy guacamole is the best in town, and if the margs are maybe a scooch better at Xico, they’re $2 cheaper and noticeably stronger here. Next to those tacos, you’ll find a handful of entrées, including a chile relleno in ultra-fluffy batter and a grilled hanger steak in a robust pasilla sauce. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

Pro tip: My favorite thing on the menu is actually a dessert, a tres leches cake. Ask for it extra soggy—they sometimes skimp on that third milk, perhaps because too many gringos don’t get that it’s supposed to be borderline puddingy.

ONLINE CLASS

O.L.C.C. Special: $14.99

OLCC approved courses offered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Initial & Renewal Alcohol Servers Education Classes & Exams. www.ASEPDX.com

www.MOMENTSNOTICEOREGONTESTING.com

Pro tip: Pine Street Market has settled into a groove after 18 months. My favorite neighbors are the crazy hot dogs at OP Wurst, the ramen at Maruken and the soft-serve sundaes at Whiz Bang. As of press time, there is no code required to access the Pine Street Market restrooms.

That beef is caramelized to juicy perfection.

Thomas Teal

Restaur ant Guide 2017

top 50

restaurants in portland

34. Laurelhurst Market 3155 E Burnside St., 503-206-3097, laurelhurstmarket.com. 10 am-10 pm Monday-Sunday. $$$.

A lot of restaurants in Portland can get by on whimsy. But like golf and swimming, steak rewards technical excellence. So don’t expect tweezer-plated micro sculpture from chef Ben Bettinger at New American steakhouse Laurelhurst Market: Expect execution with simple garnishes and saucing, like a classic bearnaise adorning cuts from the Snake River farm in Idaho that grew America’s answer to wagyu.

[SAFE BETT]

Happy Hour 4pm-7pm Daily COME PLAY WITH US

But hiding under technique like the rest of the iceberg, there’s art. Our cocoa-and-chicoryrubbed hanger steak, an umami bomb with flavor akin to short rib, had its corners brightened with acidic chimichurri and pickled onion, while a much more delicate teres major was rounded and deepened with with buttery vichyssoise soup and sautéed chanterelles. But that’s just the steak: Laurelhurst Market’s beef tartare—made from unaged New York strip and chopped with mustard, Tabasco and emeralds of cornichon—strikes a symphonic balance of richness, salt, spice and pickled brine that catapults it to a status among the best in the city. Meanwhile, sides like green

beans fried and served with chili aioli and bacon bits ($8) will be the richest thing you eat that month. Those big, meaty flavors are backed up by the cocktails from Shipwreck bar pop-up captain Erik Nelson. Most lean bold and boozy, like the Hook Line and Sinker: It tastes like hard candy for adults thanks to bourbon, raspberry syrup and Clear Creek pear brandy. The group behind Laurelhurst Market and Simpatica—along with less-acclaimed spots like Ate-Oh-Ate and Reverend’s BBQ—hit a major setback this year when chicken restaurant Big’s Chicken went up in a fire in July. That project, which briefly returned this year to the Laurelhurst Market parking lot where it was born, is on hiatus until they find a new spot. So you’ll just have to content yourself with some of the finest steak in Portland. WA L K E R M A C M U R D O .

PRO TIP: This is not a steakhouse where you gorge yourself on a huge slab, but rather a place to sample uncommon cuts made with uncommon delicacy ($30-$45), alongside a small scattering of à la carte meat or veggie sides like that world-changing tartare ($16). Also note that although reservations aren’t hard to come by even on the day of your meal, you might be greeted by an hourand-a-half wait if you try to walk in off the street.

Hilary Sander

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

BEER FINE FOOD COCKTAILSÂ EST 2013

825 NORTH COOK ST. PORTLAND, OREGON. EARTH.

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

LUNCH & DINNER 7 DAYS A WEEK PRIVATE PARTIES ALL DAY HAPPY HOUR MONDAY & 3-6 TUESDAY-FRIDAY

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

—

The ArT of BeTTer BuTTer — A Sellwood specialty butter and wine shop featuring sweet and savory compound butters made with the richest and creamiest dairy from grass fed cow's milk.

Wines by the glass • garden Patio • great date night sPot

6664 SE Milwaukie Avenue • buttercraftpdx.com

Horse Brass Pub Best Beer on Tap Best Fish & Chips Best Place to Play Darts WW Best of Portland 2017 Readers’ Poll Portland, Oregon USA Est. 1976

59 Craft and Specialty Beers on Tap • Celebrating 40 Years of Craft Beer

TradiTional English Pub 68

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

4534 souThEasT bElmonT sTrEET WILL AMETTE WEEK

35. Chin’s Kitchen

Güero

4126 NE Broadway, 503-281-1203. 11 am-9 pm Tuesday-Thursday & Sunday, 11 am-10 Friday-Saturday. $-$$.

200 NE 28th Ave., 503-887-9258, gueropdx.com. Lunch and dinner TuesdaySunday. $.

It's also known for dumplings. And Cindy Li's eight-deep menu of handmade dumplings ($10.95 for 10) is nothing short of a revelation. Her Dongbei-style take is a thicker and denser country cousin to more delicate Shanghai fare, a spongy exercise in extreme comfort that melts tenderly into the bright dipping sauce and then across the palate, like tired shoulders into a hug. The fresh, thick noodles are an equal comfort, especially when soaking in umami-drenched beef broth blooming with anise. And, if you'd like, you can watch Li through the restaurant's interior glass window as she hand pulls those noodles. But you'll be too busy eating the starter that begins each Dongbei meal: a bowl of roasted peanuts and a daikon-and-carrot white kimchi, a palate cleanser pairing earthy nuts with light, bright acidity. Among two visits and many dishes, nothing failed—whether a surprisingly flavorful cold plate of wok-kissed tofu silk tossed with charred red chili and cilantro, or a wildly spicy and saucy plate of cumin beef. The sauce on the latter was viscous, with ground spice; the fiery mix of cumin, chili, red pepper and garlic was like a fresh take on Lawry's taco seasoning. Meanwhile, a beef-and-potato pot roast was richer and fattier than most French fare, the short rib in the pot lightly crisped. Meanwhile, neon shop Neon Gods has taken up an online collection to restore the Chin's Kitchen sign to its full glory, so the animated neon figure of Mr. Chin will once again eat brightly from his bowl. You should probably join him. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

Pro tip: Chin’s Kitchen doesn’t take reservations, and it’s small and unholy busy these days —the secret’s pretty much out. If you can get out here for a late lunch, that’s your best bet.

Restaur ant Guide 2017

In a sunny room with pottery from Jalisco, much-loved former food cart Güero serves mammoth carnitas and pollo pibil tortas slathered with lime-chili mayo on telera bread. The menu is bolstered by new favorites like an egg-and-braisedbeef breakfast desayuna torta.

Wares 2713 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-954-1172, warespdx.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. At Johanna Ware’s new fast-casual spot at the Zipper, that bold fish-sauce fried kale is back, yuzu-miso rice bowls are terrific and Chinese-sausage congee at brunch on weekends is a goddamned revelation.

Pollo Norte 2935 NE Glisan St., 503-719-6039, pollonorte.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$. Mexico City-inspired rotisserie chicken spot Pollo Norte may have closed its original northerly location, but this one’s better anyway. The slow-cooked chicken still drips onto the cabbage beneath, and that green salsa is still one of the freshest things in town. But now there are margaritas and a patio.

Stammtisch 401 NE 28th Ave., 503-206-7983, stammtischpdx.com. Dinner and late night nightly. $$. At the younger, better-behaved sibling of Prost, owner Dan Hart has built far more than a world-class German beer hall. It’s home to excellent Riesling braised trout, Portland’s finest spaetzle and light, subtle Maultaschen dumplings filled with leek fondue.

The Sudra 2333 NE Glisan St., 971-302-6002, thesudra.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$. Unlike most vegan restaurants, nothing on the Sudra’s western-influenced Indian menu seems like a substitute. For the most variety and some seriously fresh chutney, order one of the plates.

The fried chickpea “cutlets” are pillowy and the black lentil kofta balls have a nice crispy shell.

Tapalaya 28 NE 28th Ave., 503-232-6652, tapalaya.com. Dinner nightly, brunch Saturday and Sunday. $$. At bright-walled Tapalaya, chef Anh Luu mixes the food of Vietnam and New Orleans. Try anything fried, or the creamy Crawfish Étouffée over grits with an Abita Purple Haze. Brunch and happy hour are great times to visit.

Dove Vivi 2727 NE Glisan St., 503-239-4444, dovevivipizza.com. Dinner nightly. $$. Some insist that Dove Vivi’s thick, lovely cornbread-crust pies are more casserole than pizza. To them we say: Who cares, and what’s wrong with you? They’re delicious and gooily cheesy, with topping combos like thyme, yellow onion and blue cheese. The two-tap beer selection is always somehow perfect.

Screen Door 2337 E Burnside St., 503-542-0880, screendoorrestaurant.com. Brunch and dinner daily. $$. Most famous for its huge fried chicken and waffles at brunch, Screen Door’s Southernish home cooking also brings lines out the door at dinner with a sampler plate that lets you mix up wings, catfish and a pork chop.

Navarre 10 NE 28th Ave., 503-232-3555, navarreportland.com. Dinner MondayFriday, brunch and lunch weekends. $$$. You can order à la carte, but the $32 tasting menu at chef James Melendez’s pan-European bistro brings you 10 courses of ultra-seasonal small plates like French radishes with cultured butter, chicken livers in mustard crème fraîche sauce and cod confit. Enjoy them with a three-wine pairing with unusual glasses like a jammy sparkling red from the Loire.

Nearby in Our Top 50: Luce (page 55), Langbaan (page 28), Davenport (page 74), Han Oak (page 61), Laurelhurst Market (page 66)

PHOTO: Hilary Sander

At nearly 70 years old, Chin's Kitchen is a gaudy neon monument tucked away on a Hollywood District side street. It's one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in Portland, and since July 4 of this year, it's also one of the best. Quietly this spring, Chin's was bought by Chang Feng (Wendy) and Change (Cindy) Li, two sisters from the city of Harbin in China's far northeastern rust belt, known for the breads and soups and sweet-and-sour flavors of Dongbei cuisine.

[DUMPLING GANG]

This dense food ’hood has city-beating tortas, inauthentic Asian and Mexican rotisserie chicken.

“The Best Korean

36. Ken’s Artisan Pizza 304 SE 28th Ave., 503-517-9951, kensartisan.com. 5-10 pm Monday-Friday, 4-10 pm Saturday, 4-9 pm Sunday. $-$$$.

Teriyaki

in the Known Universe”

- WWeek, Best of Portland 2016

Everything about Ken’s Artisan Pizza is remarkably consistent. That starts with the line, which forms upon opening every night of the year. It continues with the pies that come out of the Le Panyol wood-fired oven master baker Ken Forkish had installed, which sits among tables built from the remains of the roller coaster that once clicked up a track at the now-disappeared Jantzen Beach amusement park.

[TWO TIMES A MILLION]

The city has changed a lot since 2006, when wood-fired pies like Ken’s were a novelty. But nothing really changes at Ken’s, which sits just southwest of the leafy Laurelhurst neighborhood and amasses a crowd that could double as Patagonia catalog models. The salad options include greens and Caesar. The pies are built with perfect dough and bake in about two minutes. They’re never burnt or undercooked—the dough has a delightful tartness and tears like layered-up tissue paper. Toppings trend toward classic, with the most exotic offerings being pickled jalapeño and

5365 NE Sandy PDX 503.284.1773 dusgrill.com

sweet onions. On a midsummer visit, we got what might be the restaurant's most adventurous pie, topped with kernels of fresh sweet corn, pickled jalapeño and ricotta. And yet, despite an influx of competitors, Ken’s still stands as the best wood-fired pizza in town, second in our hearts only to the electro-perfectionist Apizza Scholls (page 45). Boring? Very. As much as I like Ken’s, I keep hoping someone will knock him off so there’s a new spot to write about. And yet, here we are. Again. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

PRO TIP: Among the exciting new developments Ken’s has seen in the past year: opening an hour earlier on Saturday and the addition of what’s been described as a “small but appropriate” list of Italian cocktails, including several different Negronis. Slow it down, buddy!

The pies are built with perfect dough.

Henry Cromett

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

37. Chicken and Guns 1207 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-234-7236, chickenandguns.com. 11:30 am-1 am daily. $.

Chicken and Guns isn’t just a food cart, it’s a whole damned ecosystem.

[ B OT H B A R R E L S ]

Located in the Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard Cartopia pod that invented the Portland food cart, our 2016 co-Cart of the Year makes wood-grilled Latin chicken with sauce like crack—a crispy-skinned, tender-fleshed bird laid on top of fried potatoes laden with bits of char, whose crisp edges are covered with a jalapeno-vinegar sauce that stuns the senses. The little cart churns through up to 750 whole chickens in a week from Scratch Farms, a freerange chicken operation whose farmer owns part of Chicken and Guns and vice versa. And Guns uses that same Scratch chicken on their new smoked wings, seasoned and charred to perfection and smothered in a riotous lactofermented habanero sauce that rivals the green stuff on the potatoes. But if for some reason you skip that heavenlytextured potato side in favor of a healthy salad, those ridiculously fresh greens will come from cart co-owner Todd Radcliffe’s Basan Farms near Mulino. There, he and his wife also raise the free-range chickens that lay the rich, farmy eggs you can order sunny-side up atop your potatoes. Between those two farms and the cart, Chicken and Guns is a self-contained food utopia— one they plan to expand out to brick-andmortar locations around Portland. “It started off as a pipe dream, but things just kind of fell into place,” Radcliffe told WW this summer. “We had the momentum. We're going for it." M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

PRO TIP: Next to the chicken cart, Chicken and Guns co-founder Dustin Knox now has a nice little cart with beer. Pick up a bottle of Pfriem Pilsner to pair with your chicken.

Rachael Renee Levasseur

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Traditional Exotic Fare | All you-Can-Eat Buffets & Menu Orders Vegetarian, Vegan & Gluten-Free Options Locally Owned & Operated by the Chand Family from India

Parkrose

Lloyd District

8303 NE Sandy Blvd 503-257-5059

1403 NE Weidler 503-442-3841

Vancouver 6300 NE 117th Ave 360-891-5857

Namaste Bazaar 10306 NE Halsey 503-253-1380

NamasteIndianCuisine.com | 971.319.6176 72

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Namaste

WILL AMETTE WEEK

d li n g

2508 SE Clinton St., 503-736-3333, broderpdx.com. 8 am-3 pm daily. $$.

[ O U R B RO ] Like his viking forebears, Peter Bro has long had expansionist urges. After modestly successful attempts to branch out from brunch into dinner, he’s since settled on a simple strategy: Open more Broders! Near Washington Square mall! Out in Hood River! Everywhere Broders!

on b e rr

On one hand, Broder is now a borderline chain of stylish Scandinavian bruncheries. On the other, you’d probably never notice given the personal service and excellent food. A midsummer visit to the original cafe at the idyllic intersection of Southeast Clinton Street and Everything Portland Was in 2006 Avenue showed that the formula still works well and they haven’t slipped on the small details, offering a little cup of warm, frothy milk with your coffee and playing Weezer’s Blue Album all the way through from the kitchen. Those taut lefse remain a perfect balance between potato heartiness and crêpe airiness. The globular pancakes with lemon curd and lingonberry remain a delight for kids and a curiosity for the un-Danish. The openfaced sandwiches still hit all the right notes, especially an avocado toast with dill aioli. The Broder Bord remains a perfect breakfast, with gooey and hard cheeses, salty smoked trout, fibrous brown crackers and a little parfait of fresh fruit, toasty granola and sour yogurt. Not everything is perfect, as the pastries on a recent visit were overly dense and dry even by Danish standards, and the drip coffee, which runs a princely $4, was watery with an offputting herbal bitterness. Still, it’s perhaps the most reliable brunch in town. And it makes sense to bring it to other towns—expanding to Bend or Ashland requires only the same coldly rational calculation as pillaging provisions from defenseless Irishmen. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

Pro tip: Weekdays are the new week-

ends—at least, for those people who don’t want to wait an hour for brunch.

Where to find nose-to-tail beef butchery, fusion dosas and Jersey-style pizza.

Grand Army Tavern

Du’s Grill

901 NE Oneonta St., 503-841-6195, grandarmytavern.com Lunch, dinner and late-night Monday-Friday, brunch weekends. $.

5365 NE Sandy Blvd,, 503-284-1773, dusgrill.com. Lunch and dinner MondayFriday. $.

In the former Bushwhacker on Dekum, lovely new Grand Army Tavern serves excellent palomas spicy-ranch pork rinds and nose-to-tail-butchered pork sliders, from a truly excellent spicy kielbasa to a deep-flavored butt roast, served with fatty butter, house pickles and live lettuce.

Bollywood Theater 2039 NE Alberta St., 971-200-4711, bollywoodtheaterpdx. com. Lunch and dinner daily. $$. Fast-casual Bollywood has supernaturally good chutneys and achaar, and a terrific pork vindaloo. Our visits have been up and down—and prices can seem high on bar snacks like the excellent fried okra—but the highs at Troy MacLarty’s fast-casual Indian spot are very high indeed.

Pizza Jerk 5028 NE 42nd Ave., 503-284-9333, pizzajerkpdx.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $-$$$. Bunk Sandwiches’ Tommy Habetz now has an old-school Jersey-style pizza spot. We like the It's Always Sunny In Cully slice, which combines beef pepperoni from Old Salt across the street with house-pickled pineapple and local honey for a neighborhood potluck.

Muscadine 1465 NE Prescott St., 503-841-5576, muscadinepdx.com. Brunch WednesdayMonday. $$. The fried chicken gets national plaudits, and it’s no slouch. But pay attention to the pastries: Beignets explode in a cloud of powdered sugar and steam, and the highlight of every Meat+Three platter is a biscuit served with butter and grape jelly.

Megan Nanna

Restaur ant Guide 2017

Du’s Grill is the finest Korean-owned, Mexican-staffed teriyaki joint on an I-5 corridor stacked with such places: a wonderland of perfectly grill-kissed beef, pork and chicken served with salad topped with lovely poppy-seed dressing. Du’s is a Portland treasure.

La Taq 1625 NE Killingsworth St., 971888-5687, lataqpdx.com. Dinner daily, late-night Friday-Saturday. $. The best way to get brisket from Podnah’s Pit boss Rodney Muirhead is on a puffy taco at La Taq, his festive barroom ode to Texican excess. Get it paired with great margaritas culled from a 30deep tequila menu and kick-ass queso.

Angel Food and Fun 5135 NE 60th Ave., 503-287-7909. Lunch and dinner daily. $. AF&F is a no-frills Mexican roadhouse run by a former fine-dining sous chef Manuel Lopez, formerly of Bluehour and a native of the Yucatán peninsula, who eschews gringo staples for Yucatecan specialities like an explosively flavorful pork platter called poc chuc and fried tostadas stuffed with black beans.

Pho An Sandy 6236 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-2990, phoansandy.com. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $. Portland’s pho fortunes can rise and fall with the tides, but this year as last, the best bowls we had were at Sandy spot Pho An. Their special bowl is a lovely balance of sweetness, salt, herbal earthiness, floral star anise and a deep beefy fattiness.

In Our Top 50: Hat Yai (page 37), Mae (page 54), Expatriate (page 56), Chin’s Kitchen (page 69), Beast (page 79), Old Salt (page 81), Zilla (page 81), Grain & Gristle (page 75), Acadia (page 84)

PHOTO: Hilary Sander

e m L o y

rd u c n Broder 38.

39. Ataula

40. Davenport

1818 NW 23rd Place, 503-894-8904, ataulapdx.com. 4:30-10 pm TuesdaySaturday. $$$.

2215 E Burnside St., 503-236-8747, davenportpdx.com. 5-9 pm TuesdayThursday, 5-10 pm Friday-Saturday. $$$.

“Welcome to Barcelona,” the server says as downtempo club lounge music thumps across the modern-minimalist, open restaurant. Located at the edge of Slabtown, Jose Chesa’s Ataula is a transportive take on Portland Spanish, and a major node in our newfound status as a North American tapas town.

[ O U T O F T H E B OT T L E ]

[HAMMING IT UP]

Dinner here might start with a small Estrella Damm lager from Barcelona, paired with a goat cheese-stuffed chorizo “xupa-xup” lollipop, or a tiny “bikini” brioche ham sandwich with tomato jam, Mahon cheese and savory truffle butter. From there a house gin and tonic is in order—it’s one of the city’s best, a rotating dealer’s choice of flavors and influences from around the world, built bespoke each night by Ataula’s capable bar staff. Jose Chesa’s much-loved sous-vide patatas bravas sadly failed on our recent visit, but do definitely snack your way through the chef ’s take on a classic Spanish tortilla de patatas, a dish that is all execution from humble ingredients, layered with unctuous jamon de bellota for a modest upcharge (worth it). Add an order of croquetas—salt cod fritters—that are an exercise in duality, with crystalline crunch on the outside meeting creamy-smooth salt-cod umami on the inside. Order more Damm lager or explore the bar’s well-curated sherry selection, including a couple of oloroso options that pair beautifully with the house-special xuixo dessert, which is something like a custard-filled sugar-breaded croissant. JORDAN MICHELMAN.

Pro tip: Here’s your baseline for an ideal meal at Ataula. Get the bikini brioche ($8), a tiny symphony of Spanish flavors that’s required. Then try the subtly excellent tortilla de patatas ($19) and split the arros negre ($39) with the table—Barcelona’s squid-ink-tinted “black paella” served with Spanish octopus, calamari and charred alioli. Pair with the house gin and tonic ($12) and finish with some sherry.

Davenports.

One version of Kevin Gibson’s East Burnside Street restaurant happens at the tables in the neutral-minimalist dining room, where older couples who remember the esteemed chef from Portland landmarks Zefiro, Castagna and Genoa hover over subtle, beautifully tender pork loin with lightly acidic cabbage and apples roasted just to the point of caramel. Steak is served to light char at its edge with aching red within, and comes with potatoes and green onions. Beautifully sourced ingredients are less spiced than lovingly evoked, and wine is often ordered by the bottle. Then there’s the other Davenport, which you’ll find at the bar. The food menu is exactly the same, but different things are ordered from it: high-wire small plates with both deft balance and intense flavors. You’re always sitting next to at least one off-shift chef or bartender, and the atmosphere is playful and possibly even a little off-kilter. Ask the restaurant’s co-owner and bartender Kurt Heilemann for a recommendation on bubbly, and he might flash out an already open bottle, declaring it the “worst wine from the best producer.” He then pours a tasting glass in passing for a visiting wine steward, asking her to guess what it is. “Not even close!” he tells her. If you’re at that bar, always ask what to drink: It’ll be better than the idea you might have had. A grilled eggplant stuffed with Thaispiced sausage is a seeming nightmare for wine pairing—an herbal, bitter-savory balancing act of lemongrass, chili and tamarind. And yet upon inquiry, it turns out there’s just the thing: an Arbois La Fauquette natural chardonnay from the upper Loire valley that somehow tastes like tamarind. Amid other adventurous items, an albacore crudo marries coconut and bird’s eye chili with tomato and sesame to somehow create an unholy and surprising balance. A negimaki dish moves from Thailand to a goofball take on Japan, with grilled beef strips wrapped around the end of late-summer scallions like steakswabbed arrows, next to a miso-ginger sauce complemented warmly by a lightly acidic glass of rosé. Each unlikely plate has its perfect beer or wine, and only your bartender knows it. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

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Thomas Teal

"Each unlikely plate has its perfect beer or wine, and only your bartender knows it."

Pro tip: Davenport’s dishes, almost all $12-$18, split a funny middle ground between small plate and entree, but the meat plates toward the bottom tend to be heftier. For two, split a steak or pork, then throw in a delicate live butter-lettuce salad, the crudo and then the two weirdest-looking things on the menu. Whatever the ingredients, the balance and poise will surprise you.

Will amette Week

41. Grain & Gristle 1473 NE Prescott St., 503-288-4740, grainandgristle.com. Noon-midnight Monday-Friday, 9 am-midnight SaturdaySunday. $-$$. [ H O O F TO G R I L L ] To understand Grain & Gristle, consider the burger. At this no-frills box of a blonde-wood gastropub on Northeast Prescott Street, the burger is simple. It’s just bread, mayo, lettuce, pickle and meat. But the thick, half-pound patty comes from a line of Hereford cows cultivated since 1856 at Oregon's Hawley Ranch, butchered by sister restaurant Old Salt in Cully (page 80) and fresh-ground each day by chef Greg Smith. The pickles are housemade, as is the garliclemon aioli, and the green lettuce is shocked in frigid water for crispness. The brioche bun is baked specially for the burger by Grano Bakery’s Ulises Alvarez, who got his start baking in Old Salt's back room. You could argue that other burgers are better, but none achieve such richness with this level of elegant concision and humility.

The burger is simplicity as virtue, with all things made only for their purpose. And as a bar and a restaurant, Grain & Gristle is the same. With near-exclusive access to some of the best ingredients in the city—meat from Old Salt, beer from co-owner Alex Ganum of Upright—Grain & Gristle is a dream of farmto-table come to humble life. The pigs used to make Grain & Gristle’s kielbasa plate are fed on the wort from the same triticale beer used to brine the sausages, and the skin from those pigs go to make the bar’s justly famous pork rinds. The French dip makes use of long-

tenderized sheets of lamb neck, while thicker cuts from the whole-butchered lamb may end up in the daily special. The meat-and-cheese Grand Board mixes the cured meats and prime cuts of Old Salt with coastal oysters, esoteric cheeses and Smith’s own rillettes, pickles and house mustard. And yet at a hall devoted to meat, the micro-seasonal salads offer some of the most profound delights, whether a wildly herbal heirloom-tomato take on caprese or a peachand-apple salad with an undertow of cilantro. Sister restaurant Old Salt is a flashier showcase for the ingredients, but at half the price, Grain & Gristle has some of the city’s most solid execution, offering not only fine rustic meals but a genuine service to the city. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

PRO TIP: Every single day, Grain & Gristle offers a $25 meal for two that includes two 10-ounce beers from Upright; recent meals have included a deep-brined lamb and polenta, and even a cut of rib-eye. Each plate has a fresh vegetable accent, and is served from animals butchered in-house at Old Salt or Ben Meyer’s new meat-processing hall in Canby. That meal is a marvel.

The burger is simplicity as virtue.

Thomas Teal

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

42. Aviv Portland’s finest home to Vietnamese and Chinese noodles.

Teo Bun Bo Hue

Pollos A La Brasa El Inka

8220 SE Harrison St., 503-208-3532. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $.

48 NE Division St., Gresham, 503-491-0323, elinkarestaurant.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $.

Two-year-old Teo Bun Bo Hue already bursts with Vietnamese customers clamoring for complex, bun bo hue and the city’s best chicken soup, a bonein pho ga bowl with aching purity of chicken flavor. The restaurant will soon expand into the space next door and add beef pho.

Taipei Noodle Haus

PHOTO: Sam Gehrke

11642 NE Halsey St., 503-206-5090, taipeinoodlehaus.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $. The real action on the menu is in the noodle section. Anything with their chewy hand-pulled “house noodles” is a guaranteed winner, whether black-beanfermented ja jiang mian or fiery dan-dan mein, served in a pork and shrimp sauce redolent with numbing Szechuan peppercorns.

El Inka is magical, but call ahead before trekking to Gresham near 9 pm closing, as sometimes they shut down the wood-fired rotisserie early, denying you access to one of their beautifully smoky, tender, Peruvian-style spice rubbed chickens. Down your bird with a frosty, bubble-gummy Inca Kola.

Kenny’s Noodle House 8305 SE Powell Blvd., 503-771-6868. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $. Tiny pink house Kenny’s says noodles, but what we come here craving most is the deep comfort of savory rice congee filled with pork and dried oysters, plus a heavenly tender brisket alongside justso bok choy.

Tienda Y Tortilleria de Leon

HK Cafe 4410 SE 82nd Ave., 503-771-8866. Dim sum, lunch and dinner daily. $. This big and busy room by Walmart is the closest you’ll find to a true Hong Kong dim-sum spot, with crushing waves of mostly Chinese crowds taking numbers for access to clanging carts deep-laden with pork buns, shiu mai, char siu and lovely ginger-scallion chilled tripe.

Pure Spice 2446 SE 87th Ave., Suite 101, 503-772-1808, purespicerestaurant.com. Dim sum, breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $-$$. Spartan Cantonese spot Pure Spice has mastered rice noodles, whether sweet, subtle hand-pulled noodle sheets flavored gently with chive or the finest dim-sum dumplings in town, served à la carte rather than off the cart.

Portland went nutty for plant-based cuisine this year, with a host of new vegan and veggie-driven openings (see feature, page 16). Our favorite of the plantbased crop is Aviv, the new vegan Israeli spot from the Gonzo food truck's Tal Caspi. Aviv was a pop-up before taking over the space inside Southeast Division Street's Banana Building with a hummus-heavy menu that makes sparing use of tofu feta, cashew labneh and soy curls. Aviv builds much of its seasonal and constantly updating menu from hummus, labneh, carrots and eggplant.

[HOUSE OF HUMMUS]

If Tusk—which is ranked No. 7 on our list—is the runway version of a bright Mediterranean future, the much more accessible Aviv is the prêt-à-porter version, where two can pop in and out for under $50. An appetizer of harissa-spiced Moroccan carrots is pleasantly earthy; a beet salad made with roasted beet puree, cashew labneh and crushed hazelnuts is pleasantly hearty. The large salad is everything you want in a big Mediterranean salad, with crisp greens, sweet tomatoes, a little cucumber and some avocado, plus garbanzo beans, herbs and tahini.

Shawarma fries!

16223 NE Glisan St., 503-255-4356, salsaslocas.com. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $. East Portland’s two best taco carts, El Amanecer and Los Michoacanos, have sadly closed. But guisados at de Leon are forever. Our last visit found the carnitas a rich and heavenly ode to porky flavor, while the pork nopales was a storm of spice.

Black Rabbit (at Edgefield) 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale, 503-492-3086, mcmenamins.com. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$$. At the western gateway to the Gorge, the fine dining restaurant at McMenamins Edgefield is chock-full of murals and stained glass, with solidly executed dishes that might include produce grown onsite, like seared tuna with tempura trumpet mushrooms and watermelon radish.

In OUR Top 50: Ha VL (page 86).

1125 SE Division St., 503-206-6280, avivpdx.com. 11 am-10 pm Monday-Friday, 10 am-10 pm Saturday-Sunday. $.

Thomas Teal

Will amette Week

My favorite thing at Aviv is the hummus. That’s good, because it takes up about a quarter of the menu and includes eight distinct versions. The base hummus is great, striking a perfect balance of smooth and substantial, with a pleasant nuttiness from heavy use of Soom tahini, which is made of single-origin Ethiopian sesame processed in Israel. The wide variety of well-chosen add-ons (think Hatch chilies, harissa, avocado) are what make it special. My favorite is the spicy, with fiery green zhoug—a perfect blend of cilantro, garlic, cloves and green jalapenos. Get a few hummus plates to share, served with fresh-baked pita as needed. Get a very respectable house pickle plate ($5) for a touch of acid and you have a wonderful start to your meal. Don’t fear the soy curls on the shawarma plate, which are curry-spiced, sautéed and topped with tahini and pickled mango. That shawarma is combined with hummus, tahini, that spicy zhoug and a topping for fries. On chilly days, I'd opt for the shakshouka, the classic tomato stew that here has a nice herbal depth and doesn't suffer from the use of "tofu eggs." M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

PRO TIP: The Israeli iced tea is the only real extravagance—$4 per glass at a restaurant where you can get a substantial platter of hummus for $8. I still order it, though, as it’s a wonderfully complex, herbed blend with lemon, thyme, sage and mint.

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

43. Nostrana

Just crispy enough to avoid the soggy center you find on lesser versions.

1401 SE Morrison St., 503-234-2427, nostrana.com. 11:30-2 pm Monday-Friday, 5-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 5-11 pm FridaySaturday. $$$. [ B O OT U P ] Nostrana’s staff and menu make a point of letting you know which local farms supplied the food on your plates. That’s important, because the plates themselves feel like they’re straight out of the Piedmont region.

After 12 years in business, Cathy Whims’ busy Italian bistro inside a Buckman strip mall has won a lot of fans. Included among them are the people who get Beard Award ballots— Whims has been nominated for best chef in the region an astonishing six times. Nostrana succeeds by giving its audience what they want. That starts with a stellar two-page wine list that manages to venture out into orange wines and to the island of Sardinia while also offering up those pricey Ribbon Ridge pinots and a modest $38 bottle of prosecco.

The ambience of the room is established in large part by the wood-fired oven cranking out super-soft Neapolitan pies. They’re just crispy enough to avoid the soggy center you find on lesser versions and need to be snipped up with the provided scissors. If you want to stray from simplicity, look out for the alla fiamma pizza, which combines tomato, red onion, Mama Lil’s peppers, wild oregano, spicy oil and black olives. It’s also a great choice for vegetarian diners, since it packs on enough flavor to satisfy any meat eater sharing a slice. KATIE SHEPHERD.

The food is refined and simple, making good use of all that local produce. The radicchio with a Caesar dressing is a longtime favorite, so much so that a salad is actually a happy hour draw at just $5 from 9 pm to close.

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PRO TIP: The best day to go is Thursday, when you can get the gnocchi. They’re fluffy little clouds in a ragu of beef and pork.

Joe Riedl

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

44. Beast

Last year, Pomeroy rejiggered the order of her courses to have a softer opening and a slower build. Recent menus, including our late-summer visit, start with a fish crudo, in our case a few chunks of bright-pink salmon, lightly cured and served with pickled mustard seeds and corn. Then, a light pasta with fresh vegetables. Then, finally, some red meat—on our visit, a rare wagyu hanger steak with heirloom beans and a blistered pepper in a rich, translucent brown sherry sauce. Then, it’s time for more lightness—in our case, a summer salad with blackberries, followed by a cheese course, followed by a light dessert.

5425 NE 30th Ave., 503-841-6968, beastpdx.com. Dinner 6 pm and 8:45 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 7 pm Sunday; brunch 10, 11:30 am and 1 pm Sunday. $$$$. Six-course dinner is $117 per person with wine pairings available for $48. Three-course brunch is $35 per person with wine pairings available for $18. [ S O F T E R B E A S T ] Pacing is the most underrated part of the high-end dining experience. Most prix-fixe spots will deliver a few special bites. The ones that really stand out manage to elevate the experience with surprising and playful twists that build toward a thundering crescendo.

Though Beast’s menu changes every two weeks, Corvallis-born, self-taught chef Naomi Pomeroy has developed a distinctive style over the course of a decade—pick the chicken up at the farm, buy the beans at the farmers market, prepare the sauces for lots of braising and glazing. Pomeroy is a bold chef, and didn’t always finesse things so that she could later awe with thumping decadence.

That’s a setup, of course. Pomeroy has carefully constructed a ramp to deliver diners exactly where she wants them—ready to be awestruck by the richness of her signature foie gras bonbon, a little mound of fat served on shortbread with a little hat of gelatinized wine. Previously, this little treat was buried in the middle of the menu. Now, it’s in its rightful place, as an unforgettable closer. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

PRO TIP: You can save a little money by splitting the wine pairings and ordering a beer on the side. Then, spend that money at Expatriate (page 56).

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RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

It might be named after a sailor, but Old Salt is more tied to the land than any other restaurant in Portland. In a Cully neighborhood evenly split between auto repair shops and urban farms, co-owner Ben Meyer has fashioned himself as Portland’s version of a woodsman.

[ S A LT O F T H E E A RT H ]

Old Salt’s butcher shop, bar and “supperhouse” is decorated with exposed beams, frontier pantry shelving and pictures of horses. Meyer spends weekend mornings chopping cords of firewood out back, for use in the restaurant’s mammoth brick hearth, where Old Salt chef Ben Shade cooks pig, lamb and cow the restaurant butchers whole and sells in a case out front. The restaurant’s ricotta cavatelli pasta is made from triticale wheat the restaurant’s pig farmer uses as feed for its pigs, while the autumn delicata squash served with those pasta shells may come from any of four different Oregon farms.

For a butcher shop restaurant that cures its own ham and grinds its own sausage, Old Salt is uniquely reliant on local farm vegetables— green beans giving way to wax beans on a salad made with ham and lightly pickled peaches. On that dish and others, the restaurant’s love of seasonal veg, house-cured charcuterie and gamy meat can lead to a certain inconsistency: Old Salt is part restaurant, part rustic-foods art project designed to make diners confront their ingredients with unusual intensity. But when Old Salt is good, it’s not merely good but great. A marbled tri-tip made from Hawley Ranch heirloom Hereford beef— exclusive to Old Salt and sister restaurant Grain and Gristle (see page 75)—had the most intense beef flavor of any beef I’ve had in Portland. On a Sunday mixed-grill platter, that perfect steak nestled against a lovely hearth-fired pork tenderloin seasoned to carnal ecstasy, and Flintstones-sized beef-marrow bones that found their counterpoint in pungent mustard greens steeped in bone juice. The pure barbaric meatiness of the Old Salt mixed grill is unparalleled in Portland. After cleaning your marrow, drink herbal German liqueur from the luge of your bones. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

"part restaurant, part rustic foods art project."

Pro tip: For the best experience, order the $40 a person “omakase” to get a stuttering succession of intense, vegetable-intensive bites. On Sundays, order the protein-loaded $60-$65 mixed grill, a plattered menagerie of three meats and sides that will stuff two and easily satisfy three.

Nolan Calisch

1806 NE Alberta St., 503-288-8372, zillasake.com. 4-10 pm Monday-Saturday, 4-9 pm Sunday. $$-$$$.

Amid the Portland hype cycle, newly expanded Zilla Sake is weird as all hell. Rather than make a huge splash and then coast on rep, this sushi spot slowly and surely picked up serious steam. Now, it's a tiny juggernaut punching well above its weight.

[BOMB SAKE]

s s s e c n r

5027 NE 42nd Ave., 971-255-0167, oldsaltpdx.com. 11 am-11 pm MondayThursday, 11 am-midnight Friday, 9 ammidnight Saturday, 9 am-11 pm Sunday. $$-$$$.

46. Zilla Sake p s o l al The once-cramped spot renovated this spring to include a full bar space, and celebrated by carving up an entire maguro tuna with Japanese knife shop Seisuke Knife. They've built their bottle collection to a near-insane 90 sakes by the glass, more options than almost anywhere in the U.S, including alcohol-added honjozos, old-school-funky yamahais and an a nine-deep selection of unpasteurized namazakes including a dry, intense and wild Chiyomusubi made with pungent heirloom rice.

te n de

45. Old Salt

The sushi sourcing has also gone nuts—owners Kate Koo and Departure alum Sam Saltos have been gathering contacts in Hokkaido and Hawaii and Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market to net cold-grown scallops of terrifying tenderness and aromatic refinement, and blooming sea urchin that shames the uni elsewhere. One night, Koo might be breaking down a rarely seen Oregon geoduck, or Saltos will pull out an even-more-rare piece of abalone. The specialty maki, even, are extraordinary: The Tsunami rolls up herbal kaiware radish sprouts and green onion with rich Dungeness crab and yellowtail, brightening the composition with a tangy, citric ponzu.

Thomas Teal

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restaurants in portland

Will amette Week

– ADVERTORIAL –

O PS OF

T E R R I FY I

Rum Club's Matt Kesteloot has spruced up the cocktail menu, including a summery gin-cognac Strawberry Magic made with fresh berry pulp. And Koo is encyclopedic in her sake knowledge, telling stories of the strange bureaucratic tax quirk that let a brewer make sake using government samples of Watari Bune, an ancient and prized heirloom rice strain that had long been extinct. It's one of the world's rarest sakes, which you probably couldn't even find in Tokyo, but that junmai daiginjo is here for $28 for 4 ounces and tastes like the purest essence of rice grain. M AT T H E W KO R F H A G E .

PRO TIP:

Fatten yourself up with a thick $15 Tsunami or Zilla roll that are both marvels of balance. Then simply make sure you’re at the sushi bar and ask questions, as Saltos and Koo are both very forthright about the cuts they’re most excited about. So get those, then let them also guide you to a 100-milliliter sake selection. Chef’s menus are available for a reasonably economic $35 or $50 a person.

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

You Can Now Literally Drink Oregon Eastside Distilling’s newly reinvented whiskey and bourbon has been aged in a special oak you can only find on the west side of the Cascade Range, primarily in the Willamette Valley. Despite what you may have heard, Burnside Street is not named after Ambrose Burnside. The Union General with legendary muttonchops had no connection to our thennascent riverport. Burnside Street is actually named after some dude named David Burnside. That’s why Eastside Distilling is changing their beloved Burnside Bourbon— and the sepia-toned photo of General Burnside on its label—to make it all about Portland and the rare Oregon oak. Beginning this fall, three of Eastside’s whiskeys will see their bottles remodeled. These changes won’t be subtle. Civil War imagery is biting the dust in the alcohol industry, as well as in parks across the country. The new Burnside Oregon Oaked Bourbon will have a label that drops old man Burn,

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opting instead for a vintage chic. The new colors will be a teal and red reminiscent of the art deco towers on the Burnside Bridge. Likewise, you might recognize some local geography in Burnside’s Goose Hollow RSV Bourbon and its West End Blend. That curlytailed “R” on the label is pulled straight from the Roseland Theater sign. These changes are a continuation of Eastside Distilling’s dedication to making small batch, hand-crafted spirits with true local flavor. Inspired by Oregon’s original winemakers in the 70s, Eastside Distilling has utilized barrels of Quercus Garryana — more commonly known as Oregon Oak— to finish whiskey since 2012. And now all Eastside’s whiskey will receive this special touch. Our native oak can only be found in a few places in the world. The Willamette Valley is one of them, which is why Southeast Portland distillery might just have the largest collection of Oregon oak casks of any distillery today. Quercus Garryana is soft, white oak containing unique tannins, including an unusually high amount of vanillin. The Garryana aging lends a smoother finish to Eastside’s blended bourbon. These six new small batch whiskeys will each be a different expression of this essentially Oregon flavor. Eastside doesn’t view this as innovation so much as dedication to, sorry for the pun, its roots. Burnside bourbon is all about pride in one’s place. Prize winning Bourbon made for Portlanders—and, well, anyone with a discerning palate—from the wood the spirit is barrelled in, right down to the label.

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

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RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

WILL AMETTE WEEK

47. Autentica 48. Shizuku 5507 NE 30th Ave., 503-287-7555, autenticaportland.com. 5-10 pm TuesdayFriday, 10 am-2 pm and 5-10 pm Saturday and Sunday. $$.

When Autentica opened in 2006, the high-end Mexican game wasn’t very competitive in Portland. Back then, the only other places doing dishes like wild-boar tacos and flan with fresh berries were Taqueria Nueve and Nuestra Cocina.

[ R E - A U T H E N T I C AT E D ]

Former Southpark sous chef Oswaldo Bibiano’s friendly Concordia neighborhood spot immediately made an impact with freshpressed corn tortillas and complex moles made from dozens of nuts and spices. New openings have brought more competition in recent years, and Bibiano has been busy with followup projects like a casual taqueria, a roadside beer garden and the much-missed Mextiza. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover that Autentica is having a renaissance. Just as when it opened, Autentica is now right there with T9 (page 65) as the best of its class. The most impressive thing about Autentica is the amount of flavor it packs into every morsel of food. The trio of salsas served with warm housemade tortillas—no chips here, amigo— had layers of brightness and heat I’d forgotten existed after so many years of living in this misty land. The guacamole is salty and earthy, and worthy of tacofying with a tortilla and a little bright-green salsa verde to counterbalance those good fats.

uacam G e

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At brunch, a smoky grilled ranchera-style hanger steak was served over an inviting acid bath of grilled tomatillo, then garnished with intensely spiced chorizo that also enhanced a runny over-easy egg. A torta with stewy roasted pork leg came on a crisp and buttery bun, with a little pickled jalapeno and some avocado to round it out. M A RT I N C I Z M A R .

nd e

Pro tip: Thursday is pozole night.

Restaur ant Guide 2017

1235 SW Jefferson St., 503-227-4136, shizukupdx.com. 5-9:30 Tuesday-Saturday. $-$$$.

Entering Shizuku is like meeting a match off OkCupid, walking into a bar and finding Kendrick Lamar waiting for you.

[ PA N KO - F R I E D P E R F E C T I O N ]

Lunch 11:30-2:30PM Dinner 5-9:00PM MonDay cLoseD 1201 SW Jefferson st. Portland 97201 www.dilsepdx.com // 503 804 5619

Outside, the Jefferson street storefront is a nondescript box. But within, it’s an elegant wonder designed by Kengo Kuma, the famed Japanese architect who designed Portland’s Japanese Garden expansion and Tokyo’s woodslatted Olympic stadium. Shizuku is all honeycolored wood and natural sunlight, swathed in the folds of organically undulating bamboo screens. In one corner sits a floating table on a stone bed, reserved for tea ceremonies. Naoko Tamura is considered an organic food pioneer in Japan, and the restaurant is so full of Japanese families that all waitresses must speak the language. But for 10 years in Portland, Tamura was more famous for the elegant bento boxes at unassuming Chef Naoko restaurant, made with a strict adherence to Japanese tradition but with fresh, organic painstakingly sourced Northwestern ingredients.

Vegan, Vegetarian, Chicken, Lamb, Seafood, Gluten Free ReseRvation, CateRing & togo available

Tamura still cooks elevated versions of her heavenly pork tonkatsu and organic chicken bento. But Shizuku now offers a sea of à la carte options including a terrific surinagashi, a lovely Japanese oyster bisque that’s a small, creamy mouthful of Willapa Bay oyster, carrots and cream. The panko-fried prawns look architectural and taste wonderful. And every meal should begin with the cool, gummy hazelnut tofu in savory sesame sauce. But the greatest innovation on Shizuku’s new menu is the six-course kaiseki menu, available only by reservation, offering up Japan’s version of haute cuisine. Our final course of the meal was a transcendently wonderful grilled unagi on rice, served with pickled vegetables and miso, and it demonstrated what Shizuku does best. The tender, lightly grilled eel is on the one hand an unassuming plate, but was towering in its restraint and balance—accented but not overcome by the sauce. It was pure, simple perfection. A D R I E N N E S O .

Pro tip: Feel like eating this food in the sky? Tamura’s simple, lovely bento is the Japanese meal offered on the nonstop Delta flight from Portland to Tokyo.

top 50

restaurants in portland

49. Acadia 1303 NE Fremont St., 503-249-5001, acadiapdx.com. 5 pm-close MondaySaturday, 11:30 am-2:30 pm Wednesday. $$.

I once had the dubious privilege of walking around the French Quarter with a bona fide Frenchman who was railing drunkenly about how Cajun food could never be as refined as French food, because of its humble ingredients.

[C’EST BON, LES TEMPS]

Depending on how drunk he was at dinner, Acadia might have changed his mind. Despite the decadence of the ingredients, the execution is elevated, restrained and refined. Drawing from the cuisine of New Orleans, which is arguably the nation’s richest, provides a lot of room for Acadia to shine. That starts with the cocktail list. America's oldest cocktail, the Sazerac, was invented in the Big Easy before the Civil War, and here it’s served exactly as it should be—strong and sweet in a large rocks glass instead of a sweaty, trembling little cocktail glass.

Thai Eatery | Open Every Day | Happy Hour 3-6, 9-Close 3924 N Mississippi Ave | 503-445-1909 | meesendpx.com

Heated Patio  BruncH HaPPy Hour  Live SPortS 4205 N Mississippi Ave - ramblerbar.com

The inch-and-a-half-thick pork chop was tender and perfectly cooked, the inside pink as a kiss and almost painfully delicious against the concentrated sweetness of the seasonal poached peaches. Likewise with the delicately fried soft-shell Louisiana blue crab with creamy crawfish étouffée—the fried crab almost melted in the mouth, a difficult feat with an animal that still has its shell on. Though regulars tend to gravitate toward dishes like the Louisiana barbecue shrimp, you don’t have to spend a lot if you don’t want to—two starters of red beans and rice are $4 each and the $7 housemade andouille sausage is a morethan-adequate entrée. ADRIENNE SO.

PRO TIP : If you’re looking to celebrate

tasty drinks, delicious Food, Great timeS! 84

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

Mardi Gras the way Portlanders do— with food, not beads—Acadia offers up probably the most extravagant special menu in town that’s still affordable. Their $25 three-course meals last year included options on Louisiana catfish with miso-braised greens, smoked pork cheeks with white-bean cassoulet and a jambalaya packed with smoked chicken, andouille and housemade tasso ham.

WILL AMETTE WEEK

Fried egg sandwiches coffee and mimosas

Hawthorne and 32nd

503.702.8374 // ichizakitchen.com 1628 SW Jefferson St

Coming soon to Pioneer Courthouse Square!

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

50. Ha VL Chi-chi Mexican and California Turkish in the fifth quadrant.

Chalino

Tilt

25 N Fremont St., 503-206-6421, chalinopdx.com. Lunch Monday-Friday, dinner Monday-Saturday. $$$.

3449 N Anchor St., Suite 200, 503-2858458, tiltitup.com. Lunch and dinner Monday-Friday, breakfast and lunch Saturday, breakfast Sunday. $.

This upscale tostaderia has modern furnishings, añejo tequila and daily ceviche. Go for dessert: Le Pigeon pastry chef Helen Jo makes treats like a roast pineapple ice cream topped with mezcal-infused dulce de leche.

Spitz

PHOTO: WW STAFF

2103 N Killingsworth St., 503-954-3601, spitzpdx.com. Lunch and dinner SundayThursday, lunch, dinner and late night Friday-Saturday. $. Based on Berlin street food, California-based Spitz is equally Angeleno, with stylish graffitied walls and multiple fruited sangrias. Meat for the döner kebabs is shaved off slowspinning cones in the kitchen and wrapped up tight with sumac-heavy slaw.

At this Swan Island burger shop, the Big Tilt piles on two chuck patties, bacon, egg, American cheese, pickles, tomato, onion, lettuce, Tilt sauce and a threelayer bun, which means that it's literally impossible to fit in your mouth. But the work of eating is worth it.

Interurban 4057 N Mississippi Ave., 503-2846669, interurbanpdx.com. Dinner nightly, brunch weekends. $$.

Alongside killer Manhattans, Interurban offers pure brawn in food form, such as a juicy and peppery boar burger, hen that’s been both smoked and fried, and a crazy-good corn dog made with an Olympia Provisions frank.

Stoopid Burger 3441 N Vancouver Ave., 971801-4180, stoopidburgerpdx.com. Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday. $. At this Vancouver Avenue cart, there's nothing as stupidly good as the Stoopid Burger—a hulking tower of beef, bacon, ham, a hot link, and egg, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles. If you want more, you always will.

Tienda Santa Cruz 8630 N Lombard St., 503-286-7302. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $.

People’s Pig

At Tienda Santa Cruz, the magic is in the back. At the rear of a nearwindowless St. Johns grocery lies a little ordering counter serving some of the finest carnitas, lengua and asada in town, plus an aguacate salsa so addictive a little sign warns you not to run away with it.

3217 N Williams Ave., 503-282-2800, peoplespig.com. Lunch and dinner daily. $.

Ned Ludd

Two years after taking over the former Tropicana soul-food shack, pit master Cliff Allen’s the pork loin has slipped, but that smoked fried chicken is wonderful: juicy, smoky, fatty, crisp and tender. Get that and a side of potato salad.

Sweedeedee 5202 N Albina Ave., 503-946-8087, sweedeedee.com. Breakfast and lunch daily. $$. This twee Albina brunch spot is an alien spaceship from Planet Zooey Deschanel. Pastries like a bee pollen biscuit served with apricot preserves are the big draw, but they do everything from chilaquiles to a trout plate.

2738 SE 82nd Ave., 503-772-0103. 8 am-4 pm Wednesday-Monday. $. [ S O U P A N T I - C O M M U N I S T S ] Ha VL is probably the worst-kept secret in Portland. Sure, the tiny banh mi shack is tucked almost invisibly into the back end of a Southeast 82nd Avenue strip mall, and its exterior looks a bit like an inner-city smoke house. But its rotating menu of meticulously crafted Vietnamese soups, two each day, has become legend.

The meaty, herbal, elegant compositions of turmeric noodles, snail meatball soup and shrimp-cake vermicelli will indeed shock your taste buds like licking a 9-volt battery, but the story behind the place is just as shocking: Christina Ha Luu founded the shop while William Vuong was in prison for helping the Americans fight Communists during the Vietnam War. Luu and Vuong now run sister restaurant Rose VL on Powell Boulevard, passing on Ha VL to son Peter Luu—who makes every broth and ingredient fresh each day, lending to the soups’ famous aromatic richness. “I don’t serve people leftovers,” Luu told us with a shrug. Among can’t-miss soups, the bun cha oc snail soup served Thursdays is an innovation offer the traditional whole-snail original, morphing the dish into lemongrass-scented snail meatballs to help bring out the flavors. Saturday’s bun bo hue is the original one served at Ha VL, with three cuts of meat providing textural dynamics: pork meatloaf has a smooth and even texture, thinly sliced beef round steak is somewhat tougher and pork loin is luxuriant. But maybe the best is the mi quang turmeric soup served on Sundays, made of a riot of pork, shrimp and spice that William Vuong described this way: “Twelve ingredients cooked over low fire for three hours. No one else can make it right." Z A C H M I D D L E TO N .

3925 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., 503-288-6900, nedluddpdx.com. Dinner nightly. $$$. Ned Ludd’s wood-fired meats, housemade pickles and seasonal small plates were once at the forefront of the city’s neo-rustique Americana cuisine. A recent visit found chef Jason French still does wonders with sweetly fragrant rosemary-roasted hazelnuts, or melon and tomato salad.

Pro tip: The restaurants don’t have websites to tell you which two soups are served each day at Ha and Rose VL. But a local good samaritan maintains a website devoted to doing so. It’s at mrgan.com/havl.

Nearby in Our Top 50: Matt’s BBQ (page 43), Ox (page 50), Toro Bravo (page 60), Enat (page 60), XLB (page 64)

Will amette Week

DEVOUR NEWSLETER wweek.com/follow-us

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

TOP 50

RESTAURANTS IN PORTLAND

The Replacements MATCH THE RESTAURANT WITH WHAT USED TO BE THERE

Present-day 1.

PAST

HIGGINS

Langano Lounge ,

KACHKA

Laurelhurst Market ,

1239 SW Broadway, p. 35 2.

720 SE Grand Ave., p. 32

TRIFECTA

726 SE 6th Ave., p. 41

ST. JACK

1610 NW 23rd Ave., p. 38 5.

OLYMPIA PROVISIONS NORTHWEST

AVA GENE'S

1632 NW Thurman St., p. 62

La Luna, legendary all-ages venue. Greb’s Kitchen Kupboard , a spot that

The Broadway Inn ,

LA MOULE

, a much-loved Slow Food restaurant whose food came out so slowly local noted food writer Karen Brooks wrote you could read War and Peace while waiting for plates.

LUCE

LAURELHURST MARKET

, a Wisconsin-happy bar from Broder’s Peter Bro.

COQUINE

, a Manhattan-style fine dining restaurant with chefs Jake Martin and Daniel Mondok.

TUSK

2448 E Burnside St., p. 34 15.

BIWA

16.

MAE/OLD SALT

215 SE 9th Ave., p. 54

5027 NE 42nd Ave., p. 54 17.

POKE MON

19. 20.

N. O.

Potter’s Drug CompanY ,

pharmacy.

an old-time

Savoy

The Carlyle Levant ,

a "French Arabesque” spot whose food WW described as a “symphony of tubas.”

Afares , a catering shop. Spike’s Auto Upholstery ,

detailer.

an auto

Songbird

, a quaint cafe owned by a New Zealander serving grass-fed beef and moules frites.

6 SE 28th Ave., p. 28

, WW’s 2009 Restaurant of the Year.

2039 SE Clinton St., p. 51

LANGBAAN

JACQUELINE

TAQUERIA NUEVE

727 SE Washington St., p. 65

Th e

RE P L A C E M ENTS

Beaker and Flask

Rock Soft Futon , a futon store. S. The Hungry Tiger , which Portland

curmudgeon Jack Bogdanski moaned would get replaced by “Tony Roma's and the Olive Garden."

WW’s 2004 Restaurant of the Year.

1485 SE Hawthorne Blvd., p. 39 18.

Lauro Mediterranean ,

HAT YAI

6839 SE Belmont St., p. 30 14.

Colleen’s Bistro

3155 E Burnside St., p. 66 13.

Studio 30

EXPATRIATE

1605 NE Killingsworth St., p. 37 12.

OneStop

, a little beauty salon that later moved downtown.

5424 NE 30th Ave., p. 56 11.

a dirty low-down

2140 E Burnside St., p. 55 10.

'70s strip club.

LE PIGEON

2500 SE Clinton St., p. 56 9.

held cooking classes in the '70s.

, a legendary R & B and hiphop music store, where legend has it Beyoncé once sang when she was a teen.

738 E Burnside St., p. 26 8.

a grubby convenience store serving the rich.

3377 SE Division St., p. 53 7.

a basement bar owned by an Ethiopian family.

ST. JACK ,

a shoe-string budget bouchon-style restaurant with giant waxed candles.

Will amette Week

La Luna, 19 96 Greb's Kitchen Kup board, 1975

, s Druge

Potter'

1920s

Langano

Lounge,

2006

Savoy Tavern, 2015

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

Hungry Tige r, 2006

, 2013

Levant

THE

ANSWERS: 1. E, 2. J, 3. O, 4. R, 5. L, 6. I, 7. H, 8. K, 9. N, 10. G, 11. F, 12. B, 13. P, 14. M, 15. C, 16. D, 17. A, 18. S, 19. T, 20. Q

IMAGE CREDITS (clockwise from upper left): Courtesy of The Oregonian Courtesy of Aaron Hall Design by Mike King, Courtesy of Monograph Bookwerks Cameron Browne WW Staff Leah Nash WW Staff

REPLACEMENTS

North by Northwest

ON OREG & N INGTO WA S H

Te n R e st a u ra nt s A ro u nd t he Pa c i f i c N or t h w e st That N eed t o Be on Your F ood i e B u c ket Li st

JUNEBABY

2122 NE 65th St., Seattle, 206-257-4470, junebabyseattle.com.

French Laundry alum Edouardo Jordan’s upscale Southern spot is a little more polished than its Portland peers, making food that’s as graceful as it is rich. The pikliz-topped pulled pork sandwiches is a standout, as is the umamidense mac ‘n’ cheese with camembert.

Seattle

STATESIDE ALBATROSS & CO. 225 14th St., Astoria, 503-742-3091, albatrossandcompany.com.

At this rustic cocktail spot you’ll find former Portland chef Eric Bechard—co-owner of sister restaurant Thistle in McMinnville— serving inspired twists on comfort fare like Dungeness-topped deviled eggs and clamgravy oyster "poutine.”

Astoria

300 E Pike St., #1200, Seattle, 206-557-7273, statesideseattle.com.

This wildly creative Asian fusion spot in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district has several showstoppers, including spicy goat curry, Hunanstyle ribs crusted in chili pods and cumin and a shell-cupped coconut cocktail with rum, lime leaf and galangal. Stateside strikes the perfect balance of fun and sophistication.

RUDDICK/WOOD 720 E 1st St., Newberg, 503-487-6133, ruddickwood.com.

Portland

This Newberg bar and bistro is a hipster answer to Nick’s—the party is in the hidden back-room tavern where you’ll find crazy good deviled eggs with salmon roe and a simple burger. The wine-by-the-glass menu has the new cool kids, like Johan Vineyards pet-nat of pinot and Martin Woods gamay noir.

Newberg McMinnville Woodburn Newport

LUIS'S TAQUERIA 523 N Front St., Woodburn, 503-981-8437, luisstaqueria.com.

Eugene

Bend

We’ve eaten our way around Woodburn, home to the state’s best Mexican, and we’ve come around to the conventional wisdom. President Obama was right to eat at this mammoth taqueria, which makes lick-em-up salsas and smokey and wonderful barbacoa.

NICK’S ITALIAN CAFE 521 NE 3rd St., McMinnville, 503-434-4471, nicksitaliancafe.com.

LOCAL OCEAN 213 SE Bay Blvd., Newport, 541-574-7959, localocean.net.

This dockside seafood spot is stocked by some of the boats you'll watch come and go from the big glass windows. Weekend dinner waits can stretch for hours. It’s worth it for seafood of unparalleled freshness and with a little Latin flair. Get the tuna mignon, and raid the to-go counter on your way out.

SORELLA 526 NW Coast St., Newport, 541-265-4055, sorellanyebeach.com.

Chef Justin Wills runs the Oregon coast's fanciest restaurant, Depoe Bay’s Beck. In Newport’s hipster district, Nye Beach, he shows his casual side at this excellent Italian spot with outstanding handmade tagliatelle, very nice pizzas and excellent cocktails. 90

AR O UND T HE R E GIO N

BEPPE & GIANNI’S TRATTORIA 1646 E. 19th Ave., 541-683-6661, beppeandgiannis.net.

Classic red sauce Italian is the order of the day at this long-time Duckland standard. If you stop in after a game or to feed your starving student, ask about the ravioli di giorno and be sure to leave room for a supersized dessert.

Don’t enter through the front like a rookie. To understand why 40-year-old Nick’s is a Beardawarded classic, enter a green-trimmed door at the end of a back alley to eat pizza, pasta and pork sausage with old men in a cushy-boothed pool hall that’s the valley’s best wine hang. Hot tip: Always drink the house Nick’s pinot, made by local wine legend Michael Stevenson.

ZYDECO 919 NW Bond St., Bend, 541-312-2899, zydecokitchen.com.

This Cajunish kitchen in downtown Bend makes scratch classics like jambalaya and pulled pork, plus variations like a fried fish sandwich battered with potato chips and a truffled mac and cheese. We highly recommend the Cuban sandwich made with capicola.

WILL AMETTE WEEK

True New York boiled bagels. Baked fresh daily. Visit our new brick and mortar on NE 6th and Couch #bridgetownbagels

Portlandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Original Wing Joint. potlander newsletter wweek.com/follow-us

3443 NE 57th // 4225 N. Interstate Ave // 1708 E. Burnside St. RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

8028 SE Stark St., Portland, OR • 503.261.1180 • www.tubandtan.com

INDEX

ALPHABETICAL INDEX INDEX A TO Z Abyssinian Kitchen ..............................56 Acadia ................................................84 Afuri ...................................................54 Albatross & Co. .................................. 90 Amelia's ..............................................45 American Local ...................................56 Andina ................................................ 52 Angel Food Fun ................................... 73 Apizza Scholls .....................................45 Associated ..........................................54 Ataula ................................................. 74 Autentica ............................................ 83 Ava Gene's .......................................... 52 Aviary ................................................. 42 Aviv .................................................... 76 Bamboo Sushi .....................................50 Beast .................................................. 79 Beaverton Sub Station .........................45 Beppe & Gianniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Trattoria .................. 90 Biwa ...................................................54 Black Rabbit ........................................ 76 Bless Your Heart ..................................64 Bollywood Theater .............................. 73 Broder ................................................ 73 Cafe Castagna .................................... 62 Castagna ............................................ 31 Chalino ...............................................86 Chicken and Guns ................................71 Chin's Kitchen ................................ 11, 69 Clyde Common ................................... 35 Coquine ..............................................30 Danwei Canting.............................. 11, 54 Dar Salaam ......................................... 35 Davenport ........................................... 74 Dil Se .................................................. 35 DJK Korean .........................................45 Dove Vivi ............................................69 Du's Grill ............................................. 73 Enat ................................................... 60 Escape from NY ..................................50 Expatriate ...........................................56 Farmhouse ..................................... 12, 62 Gastro Mania ......................................50 Grain & Gristle .................................... 75 Grand Army ........................................ 73 Guero .................................................69 Ha VL..................................................86 Han Oak ......................................... 12, 61 Hat Yai ................................................ 37 Higgins ............................................... 35 HK Cafe .............................................. 76

Holdfast .............................................. 33 Imperial .............................................. 35 Interurban ...........................................86 Irving Street ........................................ 52 Jackrabbit .......................................... 35 Jacqueline ......................................... 51 Junebaby ........................................... 90 Kama'aina ...........................................45 Kachka ................................................ 32 Kati.....................................................56 Kell's Irish Pub ....................................50 Ken's Artisan Pizza .............................. 70 Kenny's Noodle House ......................... 76 Kim Jong Smokehouse.........................50 Kung Pao ............................................50 La Lena ............................................... 62 La Moule .............................................56 La Taq ................................................. 73 Langbaan ............................................ 28 Laurelhurst Market ..............................66 Le Pigeon ............................................ 26 Little Bird ............................................ 55 Local Ocean ....................................... 90 Luce ................................................... 55 Luis's Taqueria ................................... 90 Mae ....................................................54 Marukin ..............................................54 Maruti ................................................ 62 Matt's BBQ ..........................................43 Maurice .............................................. 35 Mediteranean Exploration Company ...... 52 Mi Mero Mole ..................................... 52 Muscadine .......................................... 73 Nak Won .............................................63 Navarre ...............................................69 Ned Ludd ............................................86 Nicholas Restaurant ............................54 Nick's Italian Cafe .............................. 90 Nodoguro ......................................47, 58 Nong's ................................................54 Nostrana ............................................. 78 Nuestra Cocina ...................................56 Old Salt ..............................................80 Olympia Provisons ............................... 62 Omerta ............................................... 35 OP Wurst ............................................56 Oven And Shaker ................................ 52 Ox ......................................................50 Paiche .................................................45 Paley's Place .......................................48 Pearl Tavern ........................................ 52

People's Pig ........................................86 86 Pho An ................................................ 73 Pho Oregon ......................................... 76 Piazza Italia ................................... 52, 98 Pizza Jerk ........................................... 73 Please Louise ......................................50 Pok Pok ..........................................12, 48 Poke Mon ............................................39 Pollo a la Brasa El Inka ........................... 76 Pollo Norte .........................................69 Pure Spice........................................... 76 Ranch Pizza .........................................56 Red Robe ............................................ 52 Renata ............................................... 40 Revelry ...............................................54 Ringside Steakhouse ...........................50 Roost .................................................. 62 Ruddick/Wood ................................... 90 Rue ..................................................... 62 Screen Door ........................................69 Shizuku ............................................... 83 Short Round ........................................ 62 Sorella ............................................... 90 Southeast Wine Collective ...................56 Spitz ...................................................86 Spring .................................................45 St. Jack .............................................. 38 Stammtisch .........................................69 Stateside ........................................... 90 Stoopid Burger ....................................86 Sudra ..................................................69 Sweedeedee .......................................86 Taipei Noodle House ........................... 76 Tapalaya .............................................69 Taqueria Nueve ...................................65 Taqueria Santa Cruz ............................86 Tarboush ............................................. 62 Taste of Sichuan ..................................45 Tastebud .............................................45 Teo Bun Bo Hue ................................... 76 Tienda de Leon ................................... 76 Tilt ......................................................86 Toro Bravo ......................................... 60 Trifecta ............................................... 41 Tusk ....................................................34 Wares .................................................69 Woodsman Tavern ...............................56 XLB ................................................ 11, 64 Zilla .................................................... 81 Zydeco .............................................. 90

Illustrations by Vee Chenting Qian

RESTAUR ANT GUIDE 2017

INDEX

I ND E X BY CU I S I N E TWEEZER FOOD Castagna .................................................31 Holdfast .................................................. 33 FRENCH/FRENCH-ISH Coquine .................................................. 30 Le Pigeon ................................................ 26 Little Bird ................................................ 55 Maurice .................................................. 35 Paley's Place ........................................... 48 St. Jack .................................................. 38

BRITISH ISLES Kell's Irish Pub ........................................ 50 GERMAN Stammtisch ............................................. 69 SWEDISH Broder .................................................... 73

RUSSIAN Kachka .................................................... 32 Paley's Place ........................................... 48 MODERN AMERICAN American Local ....................................... 56 Beast ...................................................... 79 Black Rabbit ............................................ 76 Cafe Castagna ........................................ 62 Clyde Common ....................................... 35 Davenport ............................................... 74 Higgins ................................................... 35 Imperial .................................................. 35 Ned Ludd ................................................ 86 Rue ......................................................... 62 Sweedeedee ........................................... 86 S O U T H E R N / M I D -AT L A N T I C Irving Street Kitchen ............................... 52 Junebaby ................................................90 Mae ........................................................ 54 Muscadine .............................................. 73 Screen Door ............................................ 69 Trifecta ................................................... 41 Zydeco ...................................................90 C A J U N /C R E O L E

Visit giveguide.org to get more info!

Acadia .................................................... 84 Tapalaya ................................................. 69 SEAFOOD HALLS Albatross & Co. .......................................90 Jacqueline ..............................................51 Local Ocean ............................................90 M E AT H O U S E S Jackrabbit .............................................. 35 Kim Jong Smokehouse............................. 50 DJK Korean ............................................. 45 Laurelhurst Market .................................. 66 Matt's BBQ .............................................. 43 Old Salt .................................................. 80 Ox .......................................................... 50 Olympia Provisons ................................... 62 People's Pig ............................................ 86 Ringside Steakhouse ............................... 50

@GIVEGUIDE

DELI Beaverton Sub Station ............................. 45

INDEX

WILL AMETTE WEEK

Burgers and Dogs Bless Your Heart.. ..................................... 64 OP Wurst................................................. 56 Stoopid Burger......................................... 86 Tilt.. ......................................................... 86 Pizza Apizza Scholls.. ........................................ 45 Associated............................................... 54 Dove Vivi................................................. 69 Escape from New York.. ............................ 50 Ken's Artisan Pizza................................... 70 Oven And Shaker..................................... 52 Pizza Jerk................................................ 73 Ranch Pizza.. ............................................ 56 Please Louise........................................... 50 Tastebud.. ................................................ 45 I ta l i a n Ava Gene's............................................... 53 Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria........................90 Luce........................................................ 55 Nick's Italian Cafe....................................90 Omerta.................................................... 35 Piazza Italia.. ...................................... 52, 98 Renata.....................................................40 Nostrana.. ................................................ 78 Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean Aviv......................................................... 76 Dar Salaam.............................................. 35 Gastro Mania........................................... 50 Mediterranean Exploration Company........ 52 Nicholas Restaurant................................. 54 Spitz........................................................ 86 Tarboush.. ................................................ 62 Tusk.. ....................................................... 34 Ethiopian Abyssinian Kitchen.. ................................. 56 Enat.. .......................................................60 Spa n i s h / Ta pa s Ataula...................................................... 74 Navarre.. .................................................. 69 Toro Bravo...............................................60 M e x i c a n / T e x- M e x /C a l i Amelia's................................................... 45 Angel Food Fun........................................ 73 Autentica................................................. 83 Chalino.................................................... 86 Guero...................................................... 69 La Taq.. .................................................... 73 Luis's Taqueria.........................................90 Mi Mero Mole.......................................... 52 Nuestra Cocina........................................ 56 Pollo Norte.............................................. 69 Taqueria Nueve........................................ 65 Taqueria Santa Cruz................................. 86 Tienda de Leon........................................ 76

– ADVERTORIAL –

Goose Hollow Inn 1927 SW Jefferson St. // (503) 228-7010 // goosehollowinn.com

Before Bud Clark was mayor of Portland (1985-’92), before he exposed himself (literally) to art, he was the owner of a pub at the foot of the West Hills. The Goose Hollow Inn is a comfortable and soulful place—an unpretentious establishment that fully captures the spirit that defines Portland. Its motto has been quoted and respected since Bud wrote it in 1967: “Dedicated to quality draft, fine food, pleasant music, and stimulating company. We’re also dedicated to extremes of opinion, hoping a livable marriage will result. If physical violence is your nature, either develop your verbal ability or leave.” Goose Hollow Inn lies in a cozy corner of town, just across the street from a MAX stop and a stone’s throw from Providence Park. Photos and posters—including Clark’s iconic “expose Yourself to Art” poster from 1978—line the walls. It’s a place where old and young gather for a hearty sandwich and cold brew to unwind (and sometimes, to pregame before a Timbers match). Bud himself still drops by on occasion. Goose Hollow’s reuben is one of the few truly famous sandwiches in Portland.

originally adapted from a recipe Bud found in Sunset magazine, this behemoth on dark rye fresh out of the oven lives up to its reputation. And it goes well with beer, as does everything on the menu. (As measured by Budweiser, Goose Hollow Inn routinely sold the most beer per square foot of any tavern in America in the ’70s and early ’80s.) The tap list has grown from three beers in 1967 to 18 in the decades since the restaurant opened, and in recent years cocktails joined the beverage menu. Some people might wonder how the city elected a bar owner as its mayor. Clark’s involvement in establishing neighborhood associations, volunteering for Meals on Wheels, founding the newspaper that became the Northwest examiner, and leadership in grassroots projects that helped to make Portland... Portland...gained him the respect of the city. Looking around at the posters and newspaper clippings decorating the Goose Hollow Inn should answer any remaining questions. If that’s not enough, maybe they’ll get lucky and bump into the man himself.

L at i n Andina..................................................... 52 La Lena.................................................... 62 Paiche.. .................................................... 45 Chicken and Guns..................................... 71 Pollo a la Brasa El Inka.. ............................ 76 Chinese Chin's Kitchen.. ................................... 11, 68 Danwei Canting.................................. 11, 54 HK Cafe................................................... 76 Kenny's Noodle House.. ............................ 76

Restaur ant Guide 2017

index

Kung Pow.. ............................................... 50 Pure Spice............................................... 76 Red Robe................................................. 52 Taipei Noodle House................................ 76 Taste of Sichuan.. ..................................... 45 XLB.. ................................................... 11, 64 Ko r e a n DJK Korean.. ............................................ 45 Han Oak.. ............................................ 12, 61 Kim Jong Smokehouse............................. 50 Nak Won.. ................................................ 63 Spring.. .................................................... 45 Thai Farmhouse.......................................... 12, 62 Hat Yai.. ................................................... 37 Langbaan................................................. 28 Nong's..................................................... 54 Pok Pok.. ............................................. 12, 48 Vietnamese Ha VL...................................................... 86 Pho An.. ................................................... 73 Pho Oregon.. ............................................ 76 Teo Bun Bo Hue........................................ 76 Short Round............................................. 62 J a pa n e s e Afuri........................................................ 54 Bamboo Sushi.......................................... 50 Biwa........................................................ 54 Marukin................................................... 54 Nodoguro........................................... 47, 58 Shizuku.. .................................................. 83 Zilla......................................................... 81 Indian Dil Se.. ..................................................... 45 Maruti..................................................... 62 Sudra....................................................... 69 Bollywood Theater................................... 73 Pa n -A s i a n / F u s i o n Aviary...................................................... 42 Du's Grill.. ................................................ 73 Expatriate................................................ 56 Revelry.................................................... 54 Stateside.................................................90 Wares...................................................... 69 Gastropub Grain & Gristle......................................... 75 Grand Army Tavern.................................. 73 Interurban.. .............................................. 86 La Moule.. ................................................ 56 Pearl Tavern............................................. 52 Woodsman Tavern.................................... 56 Wine Pub Ruddick/Wood.........................................90 Nick's Italian Cafe....................................90 Southeast Wine Collective.. ...................... 56 H awa i i a n Kama'aina................................................ 45

Vegan/Veg Kati......................................................... 56 Maruti..................................................... 62 Aviv......................................................... 76 Sudra....................................................... 69 96

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Will amette Week

Index of

B es t s An undisputable list of the definitive answers to the common questions everyone asks us.

T he B e s t. . . Neapolitan Pizza… is at Apizza Scholls (page 45). Deep dish pizza… is available only on Tuesday nights at East Glisan Pizza Lounge (8001 NE Glisan St.) when they do a traditional Detroit red-top.

Bagels… are at Bundy's Bagels (1421 SE 33rd Ave.), a cart manned by obsessive workaholic Joel Bundy, who "thinks about quitting every day." We determined this through a blind taste-off of every boiled bagel in town.

Vieux carré… is at Urban Farmer (525 SW Morrison St.), the swanky steakhouse in the Nines literally overshadowed by celebrity rooftop spot Departure. That solera-systemaged vieux carré—though a whopping $20—is a thing of towering majesty.

Acai bowl… is the "orange-pink, silkysmooth acai blend" of the Summer Breeze Bowl at Nob Hill's KIVA (1533 NW 24th Ave.), which "literally and figuratively towers over the competition.” We ate every one in town to determine this.

Oysters… are at Flying Fish (2340 NE Sandy Blvd.), the oyster counter inside Providore Fine Foods, where owner Lyf Gildersleeve brings in fresh oysters you’ve never tried, directly from farms up and down the coast. Most cost $3, though. The best dollar oysters are at Jacqueline at happy hour (page 51).

Tonkotsu ramen… is at Marukin (page 54). It is pork heaven, and our favorite broth in Portland. The best shio is the aromatic yuzu shio at Afuri (page 54), which also sports the best vegan ramen in town, deep and lovely with black truffles. The best tom yum ramen is on special sometimes at Imjai Thai (3801 SE Belmont St.).

Bite at the entire Feast food festival… was the collaboration between Matt’s BBQ (page 43) and Langbaan (page 28), which was outrageously good and worth waiting 40 minutes in line for. Fish and chips… are in Woodstock, cooked by fisherfamilies the Shirleys and the Berkowitzes, out of a little window by the side of the Portland Fish Market (4404 SE Woodstock Blvd.)

Burger… is at Grain & Gristle (page 75), whose beef comes from a line of Herefords cultivated since 1856 at Oregon's Hawley Ranch. We determined this through a tournament-style bracket of the city’s 64 most notable burgers. Brewpub burger… is at Ecliptic (825 N Cook St.) which tore through the brewpub bracket in our Burger Madness tournament. The monster house burger is served on a plump potato roll that crushes pleasantly in your fist. It's topped with a lot of aggressive ingredients—pancetta, red onions, melted Gruyere, and Russian dressing—which are applied gently, bringing it into perfect alignment. Chicken and jojos… are at dive bar Reel M Inn (2430 SE Division St.). The lot was recently targeted for redevelopment, but the city’s most wonderful broasted birds will instead get new life under bar manager and future owner Carey Bolton. We determined that no one else in town does this classic Oregon plate better during Jojo July, our monthlong celebration of the broasted potato wedge.

Apple fritters… are at Donut Queen (5842 E Burnside St.). The best cake crumble doughnuts are at Delicious Donuts (12 SE Grand Ave.) and the best old-fashioned donuts are at Tonalli’s (2805 NE Alberta St.) The best penis-shaped doughnuts are at Voodoo (multiple locations). Conveyor belt sushi… is at Sushi Ichiban (24 NW Broadway). The best edo-style sushi is at the Fukami pop-up, moving soon into the Nimblefish space at 1524 SE 20th Ave. The best modern-style can be found on sushi nights at Nodoguro (page 47). The best dayin, day-out sushi spot is Zilla (page 81). Pho… is at Teo Bun Bo Hue (page 76). But until the end of this year, it’s chicken pho only. Beef is coming. Hand-pulled noodles… are at Frank’s Noodle House (822 NE Broadway), where they are thick, chewy and pretty much perfect. Get them with any oily, spicy sauce.

Pizza and ice cream spot… is Rally Pizza (8070 E Mill Plain Blvd, Vancouver), in the suburb of Vancouver, which has slipped a bit from its strong early months but which still makes very good Neapolitan pies paired with decadent custard sundaes. Classic family dining Mexican place… is La Carreta (4534 SE McLoughlin Blvd.) a mammoth hall of refried beans and crispy chimichangas where there’s a Friday night mariachi band that plays “Hang On Sloopy” in Spanish. tacos… were at El Amanecer, a weekend cart behind the flea market at 193rd Avenue and East Burnside Street, which for the past two months has mysteriously failed to open. Please come back. We miss you.

Hawaiian Shave ice… is at Wailua (1022 W Burnside St. Unit O), which shaves every bowl to order and tops them with fresh fruit and thick whipped cream. Daiquiri… is at Bar Casa Vale (215 SE 9th Ave.). For no reason in particular, we spent the entire summer drinking daiquiris, and none is better than the rich, round, lovely añejo daiquiri here. Get it with the spice-rubbed chorizo octopus. Photos by Thomas Teal

Restaur ant Guide 2017

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Piazza Italia (p. 52) | Henry Cromett