Alexis Greek Restaurant
March 16, 2008
- Alexis website
- Location: Chinatown
- Cost to fill up two people: About $45
If you head north from DC to Silver Spring, MD, then go back behind the Lee Building on Colesville and Georgia Avenues, you’ll find a little Greek restaurant that can make your tastebuds sing. Tonight Robyn and I hit up Alexis, which we were told would do the same.
Nope.
Sweet Masterpieces Coffee and Chocolate Bar
March 14, 2008
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Location: Pearl district
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Price for beverage and snack for two: $8-$18
My friend Barbara and I helped out at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts exhibit, and decided to find a place to sip and talk afterwards. Sweet Masterpieces was just up the street, and we stopped in for a brownie, creme brulee and beverages. Half the shop is devoted to chocolatier-ey stuff–which we didn’t get around to–and the other half is a coffee bar.
Caster’s hand cream
March 13, 2008
Those of you who cast glass know that one thing casting ISN’T, is good for your hands. Between plaster, investments, clay, coldworking, etc., casting is just about the worst thing you can do to a good set of digits. I’ve spent a small fortune on lotions and emolliments designed to bring my chapped, cracked, and generally gruddley hands back to life.
Now, thanks to an underfired pate de verre piece and Hugh McKay of warmglass.com fame (glassburl), I’ve actually found a casting process that helps my hands instead of hurts them. (Doesn’t this sound like a commercial?) [Read more]
Stumptown Coffee
March 10, 2008
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Location: Downtown business district
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Price to snack up two people: Around $8
The Greek food from Alexis enstomached in greasy, garlicky lumps, Robyn and I decided we needed a hot beverage and a cookie or SOMEthing to erase the taste. After wandering through homeless missions and X-rated nightclubs with lackluster ladies on swings, we crossed Burnside into the funkadelic pubside of town and then into Stumptown Coffee.
Now, Stumptown is something of a local legend–glassland coffee afficionados who wouldn’t be caught dead in Starbucks and turn their noses up at Peets speak of Stumptown with reverence. “They KNOW their beans,” they’ll murmur.
Stumptown doesn’t have much in the way of desserts (we split a small blueberry-chocolate chip muffin), but they definitely worship at the altar of coffee and turn the making of a latte into ballet.
We did the decaf latte thing (which got us a tolerant but pained look), and it was delicious. $6 for two beverages and the muffin. There’s serious audio equipment for an obsessed DJ in the back, playing nice music at just the right volume. Only complaint: They close too early for a relaxed after-dinner interlude.
Tip: While the folk at Stumptown are more than friendly, DO NOT let your coffee naivete show unless you have an extra half hour or so and your idea of fun is asking Jehovah’s Witnesses to teach you about religion.
“I’ve never really bought coffee before,” I confessed on my first visit, and the barristas practically vaulted the counter to convert me. They eagerly pressed brewlet after brewlet on me as part of the education process, accompanied by earnest commentary on wininess, floral notes, depth, etc. I was so wired I didn’t come down from the ceiling for two days.
Papa Haydn’s
March 9, 2008
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Location: NW 23rd (restaurant row)
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Dessert for two: About $15
Hang around Portland long enough and somebody will suggest going to Papa Haydn’s for late dessert. That’s ’cause these guys do dessert like kangaroos hop. There’s a regular, non-sweet restaurant, too, and the food’s probably pretty good, but who knows? Nobody I know gets past the dessert case.
This week Mom decided to postpone her birthday party (and the cake) for a week and just do dinner out with whoever remained after sick kids, emergency business trippers and the like took their toll. I stopped off at the 23rd St. PH’s for three pieces of cake: hazelnut torte, raspberry gateau, and triple chocolate cake. ($24 for the three)
All three were dense, incredibly chocolatey and so rich and huge that each slice was enough for three people. My favorite was the hazelnut torte, but I could have tossed them all and just slurped the raspberry sauce that came with the gateau—-hoooooooooly cow.
I’m not a huge chocolate fan, so the triple chocolate cake was a bit too much for me but Mom, a world-class chocoholic, loved it.They’ve got non-chocolate stuff, too. I’ve never had any dessert there that wasn’t well worth the price.
Wong’s King Seafood Restaurant
March 6, 2008
Our dinner came with a whole squab, split between the two of us, and they scrupulously made sure that we each got half..of the head.
- Website
- Area: Far east-side, I84 and Division
- Price for two to fill up: $98 this time, but more usually about $50
A great Chinese seafood restaurant in Portland? That’s something I thought I left behind in the Bay area (or DC), but I gotta say Wong’s changed my mind.
Don’t go there if your Chinese food appetites extend only as far as kung pao chicken or broccoli beef. But if you’re looking for, say, sliced abalone in oyster sauce (or goose intestines with bitter melon), this is the place to go, maybe the only place in Portland.
Journalistic bloggery
March 6, 2008
Translated: Long Island University, which gives out the George Polk awards for excellence in journalism, has awarded one to a blogger this year, specifically to Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo for breaking the attorneys general firing scandals. The Polk awards aren’t THE most prestigious awards that a journalist can get, but they’re right up there, so it’s significant that one was awarded to new NEW media instead of established media institutions.
Just because it’s pretty…
March 5, 2008
OK, I’m succumbing and posting this just ’cause it’s pretty and the resemblance is striking, even though I’m not a fan of fairies.
At least, I’m not a fan of the fluttery, twittery garden variety fairy that drinks nectar out of buttercups and giggles. Probably has something to do with my college art professor explaining that I’d never be an artist because my stuff was “pretty.” Therefore I should confine my attention to making fairies or, better still, forget art, marry an orthodontist, and live in the burbs. Then he stubbed out his cigarette on my final project.
Wonder whatever happened to that guy? (He was alive when I left his office, I swear!)
Anyway, NASA publishes really cool new images on space.com every weekday. This one kinda tickled me.
Asteroid eats Mothra and creates…victory brown wax?
March 4, 2008
Checking the website of one of my favorite casting materials suppliers, Stephenson Patternson Supply in glassland, to see if they had the type of RTV I need. Very friendly, helpful place I like a lot, but somehow I never figured they were into creative writing.
Got such a kick out of their “About us” that I just had to share. All you science fiction aficionados out there gotta read this.
Sydney’s
March 3, 2008
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Location: Pearl district
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Price for coffee for two: About $10
Had a client meeting this morning in the fun part of the Pearl (where all the artists and creative agencies hang out, mid-teens and end-of-alphabet streets), and was a bit early so I stopped into a little place called for a bagel. I’d call it the quintessential Portland coffee house…for gadget freaks.
Really nicely decorated, good view of the bridge and sorta the river beyond. Then there’s this bonsai/box of rocks thing going on in one table and good lighting over each individual table so you can actually work while you do breakfast or lunch (they’re not open for dinner). The food is nicely done, tasty…but there’s a BeoSound on the wall (serious sound, guys), flat panels on the other walls, and it’s obviously designed for people who sip joe and work on a laptop.
Only did the bagel (and true to non-NewYawkers these dudes think that whitebread thing that looks like a donut is a bagel (yeah, right) but at least it was well-toasted), but I’ll definitely be back to try lunch. The soup they were simmering for the lunch crowd smelled wonderful.