Cassidy’s (American/Northwest)
March 3, 2010
Restaurant website
Location: I5 and Burnside, near the Crystal Ballroom
Price to stuff two: About $40
I pulled into the space, shut off the engine and a woman came flying up to the car. “You didn’t have to phone, I’m right here!” she scolded.
I peered through the open door–she sure wasn’t my dinner companion. “Uhm…may I help you?”
She stopped and turned beet red. ”Wait a minute–you’re not my friend! This is so embarrassing–you look like my friend and she drives the same kind of car…I’m sorry…”
“No problem,” I said, and went on into Cassidy’s, a restaurant that appears to have been a PDX fixture for maybe centuries (actually, since 1979). My friend Lyn waitressed there in college, had a hankering to see what the old place was up to and so we met at this old saloon-style restaurant for dinner.
I honestly didn’t expect much–these places usually serve barfood, so I resigned myself to indifferent burgers and chilifries or somesuch–but Cassidy’s surprised me with a really nice menu, almost budget-minded. They also offered small plates and large in a kind of northwest-tapas-chic-meets-a-lumberjack kinda way.
The menu emphasizes seafood and greens, and does them pretty well. We also tried the handcut fries with smoked pecorino and rosemary salt (well, we were in a saloon, for heaven’s sake, how can you NOT have something with potatoes?), then split off into small plates.
I had a really fabulous salad composee of grilled romaine spears with pickled egg, followed by shrimp in a sweet-hot sauce on lemon couscous. Lyn did crispy rock shrimp and calamari, after an arugula/pancetta salad.
Both were excellent and just exactly the right amount of food. The waiter was attentive, the owner came over to chat with Lyn about good old times when she worked there, and it just felt nice, like home.
So I’m not entirely sure why the restaurant was pretty much empty on a Friday night. Maybe it’s the parking; there was absolutely no street parking available so I wound up paying $5 in a parking lot. Or maybe it’s the location; the hotel next door seems to specialize in down-and-outers in what used to be known euphemistically as a “men’s hotel,” and they’re not shy about panhandling the customers.
Or maybe it’s the decor, which is tired and gloomy and not incredibly well lit. Whatever the problem, people should get over it–once you get inside this is a nice little dinner place and one I’ll go back to.
50Plates
July 1, 2009
Restaurant website- Location: Pearl District
- Price to dinnerize two people: About $75 with tip
First thing I thought when I opened the 50Plates menu: “Whoa! These guys have figured out how to charge $10.50 for a bowl of chili.” Second thought: “It better be bloody good chili.”
I didn’t taste it, so I can’t say. I can say that the other food’s pretty good and the prices aren’t. And that this is a restaurant that needs to make up its mind: Is it a kitschy Americana diner, a trendy Pearl District eatery with a twist (i.e., the tapas are American), a down-home Southern kitchen, or….?
The concrete, stainless steel and chunky marble tile (Ann Sacks, unless I miss my guess) fit right into the Pearl District ethos, as do the cheap cafe tables set on the loading dock for those of us who want to eat outside. The waitstaff is attentive, service is fast and there’s an inventive (and expensive) drinks and wine menu.
The music is a little too retro for my tastes, mostly early 70s popcharts stuff. The menu talks about the concept of surveying great American foods, but unless you read 50Plate’s lengthy online rationales about why particular diner foods made it onto the menu, it’s hard to find the rhyme or reason to it. 50Plates just seems a bit too self-conscious to really be fun.
Still, Robyn and I gave it a shot tonight. I ordered a hot sandwich that closely resembled a Miami Cubano. Robyn got the BBQ brisket, $19.50.
The brisket arrived with mashed sweet potatoes, drowning in a molasses BBQ sauce. Both were pretty tasty, although the brisket had a bit more fat than strictly necessary.
$10 or so didn’t buy a huge sandwich, nor was it as pressed flat as the Miami version, but it was good. Despite the “concept,” I wouldn’t call it diner food, especially since it came a la carte–no potato salad, no tossed salad, no bag of chips, nuthin’ but a dill pickle. It looked kinda lonely, there on a big white plate. I added the “chopped salad,” at $6.50, and it was very good.
We ordered dessert to celebrate Robyn’s anniversary: Rhubarb crisp and Key Lime pie. Both were good. The Archies played “Sugar, Sugar” in the background, and a couple got up and danced while we toyed with our sweets. The after-dinner decafs came with a tiny pitcher of cream, shaped like a cow. Robyn and I both drink our coffees white, so the waitress eventually brought out the BIG cow of cream. That was more like it.
You know, I once ordered a room service hamburger at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, and nearly fainted when I got the $35 check. Fortunately, I’m now made of sterner stuff, so I didn’t turn a hair when the check arrived. But I couldn’t help thinking that a real diner would have served a similar meal for half the price and a quarter of the pretense.
Grandma Leeth’s
February 28, 2009
- Restaurant website
- Location: SW Portland almost to Beaverton, just off HW26
- Price to dine two people: About $40
Say there’s this BIG landslide, and the daycare center crashes into the organic restaurant, picks up speed and piles into IKEA. I think they’d call the result “Grandma Leeth’s.”
Robyn and I had a quiet dinner there the other night. It was quiet because, aside from the hostess and our waitress, we were the only signs of life in the place.
Wild Abandon
November 1, 2008
- Restaurant website
- Location: SE Portland
- Price to fill up two people (with coupon): $40
“I’ve got a coupon from the Chinook Book,” said Robyn, and she read off a list of interesting-sounding restaurants. We decided to try Wild Abandon, mostly because of the name.
It was a pretty good choice. Wild Abandon is an unpretentious place with a friendly staff and a wall mural full of nudes in back. I guess the mural’s the “wild abandon” part because otherwise it’s a pretty typical Portland restaurant. They offer fresh-caught seafood dishes, lots of Italian, and also vegan and gluten-free options.
Robyn ordered a ziti-scallop dish that she said was very good; I got the cioppino. Both were served with a little crusty French bread and some very fresh olive oil. The cioppino was just as it should be: a fresh tomato broth, pepper-spicy, full of salmon and clams and shrimp and scallops.
It’s not a huge restaurant, but it was quiet enough for us to chat awhile. Wild Abandon is supposed to be famous for their breakfasts, and given the tastiness of the dinner, I think we’ll try it at some point.
Hash and My Brother’s Crawfish
October 14, 2008
- Hash Restaurant
- Location: Sellwood district
- Price to fill up two for breakfast: $9
- My Brother’s Crawfish
- Location: Sellwood district
- Price to fill up two for dinner: $??
The last time I checked, this blog was up to about 750 regular readers, which is kinda surprising for a private blog that doesn’t advertise. About a dozen are regular commenters but, interestingly, many, many more send private email about stuff I write. Even more interestingly, much of the private stuff is about restaurants–places to try, funky, not-so-great experiences, etc.
In a spirit of generosity (or maybe sheer laziness), figured I oughta let them speak a bit. So when Oregon Glass Guild members Ed and Donna LaPlante sent a little note about two new restaurants, well… take it away, guys:
#1 …. Hash, in Sellwood
I had a 2 egg, 4 item omelet w/smoked tomatoes, bacon, cheddar and chanterelle mushrooms for $9, yumm! Included bread and a fruit bowl, good coffee too.
#2 …. My Brothers Crawfish , SE 82nd.
This was listed in the Oregonian food insert this past Friday.
We ate there a few weeks ago and had gumbo and etoufee. Both very good, filling and spicy. We also had catfish bites appetizer, very good. This place is in a circular strip mall arrangement you can see from 82nd but only enter from the side street.
There are two Vietnamese brothers from Houston running the kitchen and an attentive wait staff. The inside is dark and comfortable with contemporary art on the walls. They do a lot of take out with bags of spicy crawfish flying out the door, that is what we will try next time.
Thanks, Ed. I wanna give both of them a shot.
Fishwife
July 12, 2008
- Restaurant website
- Location: North Portland (Portsmouth) almost to St. Johns
- Price to fill up two people: $40-$50
If you’re a glassist or ceramicist in Portland, you’ve probably been to Harbor Freight and Georgie’s, right? If you just keep heading down that road (Lombard), almost to St. Johns, you’ll drive by (and probably miss) the Fishwife. That’s a shame, because they run a real fish house.
Bread & Ink Cafe
May 8, 2008
- Bread & Ink Cafe website
- Location: SE Hawthorne district
- Price to fill up two people for dinner: About $70
The Spanish tapas place we aimed for had gone out of business, so Robyn and I strolled Hawthorne looking for the next best thing. I remembered reading about Bread & Ink somewhere, the menu was impressive, and so we gave it a shot.
In the end, it reminded me of the old rhyme: When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she wasn’t as good as I’d hoped (or something like that). The first half of our Bread & Ink meal was delicious, second half less so, and overall I give it a big, fat sorta.
Bread & Ink has been around since 1982 (which these days makes it a Portland antique, I suppose), and has one of the most eclectic menus I’ve seen in awhile: Waffle sundaes share space with mojitos and morels, you can have fiddleheads and fresh scallops on your spaghetti or chuck it all and have a burger.
We opted for the fancy menu, probably should have done what our fellow diners were doing and stuck with the burger. [Read more]
Jake’s Famous Crawfish
April 16, 2008
- Jake’s Website
- Location: Pearl (across Burnside)
- Cost to fill up two people: $80-$100
My online buddy Gary was in town, so we caught some glass art and headed to the Pearl for dinner. After sifting through choices, we settled on one I’d heard about, Jake’s, off 12th and Burnside. I’m usually leery of any restaurant with the word “famous” in the title (I mean, Hitler was famous, too, right?), but collegial raves told me to ignore my instincts and try it anyway.
So much for my instincts: It was really good. During the meal I discovered that Jake’s is owned by McCormick & Schmick’s, one of my favorite Beaverton seafood joints, which explains a lot. [Read more]
Press Club
April 13, 2008
- Press Club website (review)
- Location: Southeast Clinton neighborhood
- Price to fill up two people: $20 to $30
Savoy Tavern & Bistro
April 12, 2008
- Savoy Website (Citysearch)
- Location: SE Clinton area
- Cost to fill up two people: About $40
Bunch of us were down in the SE Clinton district on Saturday night, looking for a quiet place to talk and eat. Somehow we wound up in Wisconsin (or at least the northwestern version of Wisconsin) at the Savoy Tavern & Bistro.
Outwardly, the Savoy looks like any other semifunky tiny Northwestern cafe. There were a couple of wrought iron tables outside (with the requisite cute baby and dog), about six small tables inside, and a small, select menu of sandwiches, savories, and entrees that included deep-fried cheese curds.
Cheese curds are salty, milky, tofu-like nuggets, an interim step between milk and cheese, and they squeak against your teeth. They’re pretty common in the Great Lakes states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and hard to find if there’s not a cheese factory nearby. The waitress explained that the restaurant owner’s from Wisconsin.
In any case, we opted for the olive salad as an appetizer (it was good), and burgers with Wisconsin cheese. The service was lovely, the waitress extremely patient with the vagaries of a bunch of art types. Interestingly, the wines were mostly French, definitely NOT from the Great Lakes.
Tip: If the waitress sets a small bowl of creamy goop next to your salad, do NOT assume it’s the salad dressing. Taste before applying to your greens, because it may in fact be your tablemate’s very spicy honey mustard, capable of setting your nose on fire. (ask me how I know this)