Mio Sushi
April 17, 2008
- Mio Sushi website
- Location: Pearl district (Hoyt/13th)
- Cost to fill up two people: $30 to $40
Gary and I hit up the Bullseye Gallery yesterday, some neat glass there right now. I got a kick out of Gary’s trick of asking gallery (and museum) personnel which piece they’d personally remove from their burning building. The answers were intriguing and not at all what I’d thought. (And as a bonus that question sent the guard at the Museum of Contemporary Craft all over the exhibit seeking unique PoVs for us…but that’s another story.) [Read more]
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.
Yuki Japanese Restaurant
February 15, 2008
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Area: West-side downtown, 23rd street
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Price to fill up two people: About $40
I’m not sure anything is going to top Sushi Takahashi for price, but in terms of taste, this little Japanese restaurant on 23rd between Lovejoy and Johnson definitely meets it. They served some of the best toro (fatty tuna) sashimi I’ve had in a long time, but where they really shine is in sushi rolls.
I think these guys must stay up nights figuring out what else to stuff in a roll, and they had some really nice combinations. Robyn and I ate our way through a tray of sushi rolls, sashimi and misc. for about $36 for the two of us, with green tea. We were stuffed, and probably shouldn’t have started with appetizers–Robyn had steamed edamame pods, which were tasty, and I had the traditional cucumber salad, which should have been marinated longer.
Tip: The tiger sushi roll is very good.
India Grill
January 25, 2008
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Location: NE Portland (Laurelhurst)
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Price to fill up two people: $50
India Grill is so far the best Indian food I’ve had in glassland (and I still haven’t had any as wondrous as that I encountered in DC, Manhattan and London). But this one’s pretty good, and it’s over in Laurelhurst, one of the funky, Craftsman-and-Tudor neighborhoods on the northeast side of town (which, BTW, hosts an incredible number of nifty little bistros).
Food’s good, prices are reasonable, service is swift and painless (once you’re actually seated in this little place, which takes some time).We had vegetable samosas, papadums, my favorite mint chutney, raita, and then classic chicken tikka, naan, and chicken korma. All good, if a bit skimpy on meat products.The waiter apparently assumed we were full at the end (probably from our bloated, glassy-eyed expressions), because he didn’t ask about dessert.
Tip: Allow some extra time to find parking, especially on a Saturday night, then go inside the house and walk up the stairs to the restaurant. If they seat you at the Christmas-light-festooned sunporch, you’ll command a nice view of Burnside and the Wild Oats across the street.
Arawan
January 12, 2008
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Area: Vancouver
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Price to fill up two people: About $30
You go to Typhoon for the exotic/authentic kinda Thai meal; you go to Arawan for suburb Thai. It’s up in northern Vancouver, WA, and the food is fresh, bright, inexpensive and tasty. Don’t expect anything unusual (no “beef with grapes” here), and don’t be surprised if items from Japan and China slip in…but it’s a nice, standard Thai dinner place.
Typhoon
November 25, 2007
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Area: Multiple sites, my favorite’s on NW23rd
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Price to fill up two people: $40-$60
I don’t care what they say, Typhoon has some of the best Thai food in Portland, and the best Typhoon (there are several) is the one on 23rd and Everett in the forget-finding-a-parking-place shopping district.
Lots of good things on the menu, but when I hit it up for dinner there’s only one entree for me: Beef with grapes. It’s spicy, almost hot, with extremely tender filet and halved Thompson seedless grapes with a generous squeeze of lime juice. I know it sounds goofy, but it’s delicious. Also try that coconut-mushroom soup I can never remember the name of.
They’ve got a full bar if you’re into that kind of thing. Better still, there’s also an extensive menu of herbal teas and tea teas (I like the white teas best). Service is friendly and fast. Parking consists of about six spaces in front of the restaurant–actually finding an open space at night is a bit like winning the lottery. Otherwise, you’ll be parking a couple blocks away on the street.
Tip: Ask to sit on the street side–it’s fun to watch the tourists strolling past.
Vindalho
November 5, 2007
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Location: SE near 21st and Hawthorne
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Price to fill up two people: About $60
Think “India meets Wolfgang Puck” and you’re close to Vindalho. It’s across the main drag from Bullseye Glass, sorta squeezes past our affordability rule, a semi-chichi place with very good Indofusion food. That means you’ll find rosewater in your salty lassi (not a great choice) and samosas made with pumpkin.
Food-wise, the carrot soup was delicious, they had a seared ahi tandoori tuna that was magnificent and I very much liked my prawns. The breads (a critical part of any Indian restaurant) are pretty good. The four of us paid about $110 with tip (and we didn’t order booze or dessert) and had enough food left over to feed a couple of doggy bags.
Sushi Takahashi
October 3, 2007
Location: Downtown Portland
Price to fill up two people: $14.50This place proves that great sushi doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, the bill was so low that we pulled out the menus and added everything up again, certain the waiter had shortchanged himself. He hadn’t; we paid $14.50 for a VERY filling and tasty sushi dinner for two people.
About two blocks away from the new Contemporary Crafts Museum (who recommended the place), this place is so, er, unpretentious that I almost didn’t go in. You sign in, wait for the hostess to call your name (it’ll take awhile) and when she does she’ll tell you to go find a seat. You have your choice of the traditional “food goes by on a train” sushi counter or a few little threadbare booths at the back.
Swagat
August 24, 2007
- Restaurant website
- Location: Several in Oregon (I’ve tried the ones in Orenco Station, Beaverton and the Pearl)
- Price to fill up two people: About $50 for dinner
The Swagat chain is, sadly, probably one of the top 10 Indian restaurants in Portland. I say sadly because in other parts of the US, say, Washington DC, Manhattan, Silicon Valley, it wouldn’t make the top 50.
It’s not that the food is bad; it certainly isn’t. Nor that the service isn’t generally friendly; it mostly is (although they’re much nicer in the Pearl and Beaverton editions than Orenco Station). Prices are higher than I’d expect, but not entirely out of line.
I guess my reservation is that Swagat serves what I call Mall Indian–nothing you couldn’t pick up in the food court of your average-sized megamall. There’s the requisite hot pink tandoori chicken, slightly dry and chewy, the kinda gummy malai kofta, the leaden galub jamin. It’s all edible, it’ll give you a taste of India and if you opt for a mango lassi instead of a sweet, you’ll probably be perfectly happy.
What you won’t be is excited, enchanted or thrilled at the end of the meal. Yet that’s exactly what great Indian cooking, especially south Indian cooking, should do. If you’ve never tasted a perfect masala dosa, or chewed a skillfully made fresh paan, had a vegetable cutlet like somebody’s grandma makes it, you may not know the difference. Once you have, though, Mall Indian just won’t cut it anymore.
There are local places that come closer, Abhiruchi and India Grill being two of them. And I’m told Plainfield Mayur, which I haven’t tried yet, is probably tops.
Tip: If you’re in the mood for all-you-can-eat Mall Indian, hit up a Swagat buffet at lunchtime. It’s a pretty good value, especially if you like chicken.
Abhiruchi
July 10, 2007
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Location: Beaverton
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Cost to fill up two people: Around $35
There is an incredible south Indian restaurant, Udupi, in Takoma Park, MD, just outside of Washington DC. I still dream about their masala dosas. My Indian friends tell me the food there beats most of the restaurants in India. Abhiruchi ain’t it, but it’s not bad.
You’ll find all the standard Indian restaurant dishes here, the ingredients are fresh and the people very nice. The restaurant itself is not exactly ambience city–they’re tucked into a K-Mart strip mall–but the food’s reliable and it’s reasonably priced. They do the breads well, there’s a buffet at lunch that looks like a pretty good deal (haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure).