Buster’s Texas-style BBQ
January 26, 2011
- Restaurant website
- Location: Tigard, OR (SW Portland burbs)
- Price to dine stuff one: $10
YOU try finding an equally inconvenient meeting place for a bunch of people who pretty much nail each corner of the greater Portland metro area.
Old Town Pizza
November 5, 2010
- Restaurant website
- Location: Downtown (near Chinatown)
- Price to dine one: About $20 with tip and drink
It was hot, muggy (muggy in a Portland fall?), noisy and dark. There were plenty of places to sit but nothing that would accommodate five people. There were a few off-limit tables reserved for a birthday party, but the bulk of tables in this restaurant seemed to be made from old sewing machine trestle tables and would probably seat two. In a pinch.
OGG’s Portland chapter board had picked Old Town Pizza for our monthly meeting, and from the looks of things we were going to be eating standing up. But at last, the folk at one of about three bigger tables got up and left. Whew.
Old Town Pizza is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered woman. If she was our waitress, that would explain the service, which was pretty much “get your food at that window, your drinks at the bar, and stop bothering me.”
All in all, I had a less than impressive introduction to Old Town Pizza, so lucky the food was so good, right?
Uhm…not exactly. The lasagna I had was about on par with a good high school cafeteria, i.e., nothing to write home about, and it was missing the promised salad. I didn’t see my dinner companions smacking their lips over their selections, either. The soft drinks were sold at arm-and-a-leg bar prices, so it was hard to get out of the place cheap.
Old Town is housed in an historic old hotel building; the owners say it was a center for white slavery and prostitution in bygone days. The ghost of Nina–who they say hangs out in the basement and likes to watch diners–is supposedly an ex-hooker who went straight and was murdered for it. It lends a little extra spice to the food, and given the murk of the place, I really didn’t have that much trouble believing it.
But I sure didn’t see whatever it was that led noted gustolebrity Rachel Ray to like the place. With the gazillions of wonderful places to eat in Portland, Old Town Pizza is what she talks about?
Ok, to be fair, we didn’t order pizza, being unable to come to consensus on the crust, let alone the toppings. It’s a pizza parlor, so maybe that’s where all the joy is. Maybe the other stuff on the menu is just there to keep the pages from being blank.
But given the ambiance of the place I’m not inclined to go back and find out. Not even for Nina.
Cafe Nell
October 21, 2010
- Restaurant website
- Location: Upper Pearl District
- Price to brunch two really well: About $40
From the front, Cafe Nell looked like a Volkswagen-stuffing contest, with folk obviously standing around waiting for a table.
Kinda discouraging, that. I’d been seeing the Cafe Nell sign for months, whenever I drove down Lovejoy toward the Pearl. When my friend Sara suggested going there for brunch, I’d really been looking forward to it, but from the looks of the crowd, we were never getting in.
Fortunately, Sara was at the bar, just past the door. She’d gotten there early, made reservations and so we sailed past the mob into the restaurant. The folks at Cafe Nell gave us a nice seat by the window all to ourselves.
I’m not sure how to characterize Cafe Nell–downhome northwestern Frenchish locavore nouvelle cooking?–but whatever it is, I like it. We got a kick out of the Sunday brunch bloody marys (above), which had three or four skewers of garnish apiece, from prawns to salami to olives. “It’s a whole meal in a drink!” Sara marveled.
Sara ordered an eggwhite omelet with lobster, which was huge and delicious, with big chunks of sauteed lobster. I frankly thought mine was better–a smoked salmon eggs benedict on a home-made English muffin with a pile of fresh fruit. The hollandaise was light, the salmon got to breathe a bit…and I got to eat the whole thing.
The waitstaff was attentive, seemed genuinely proud of the place and pleased that we liked our breakfasts. We sat and talked (a lot), they made sure we had plenty of beverage, and the crowd strolling past our window in the crisp autumn sun made a perfect floorshow.
About the only criticism I have of the place is one endemic to most Pearl District bistros: Noise. Most of the surfaces are concrete, steel, stone and glass in these places and they act like amplifiers. When the restaurant is as popular as this one at brunch, you pretty much can’t hear yourself think. It’s chic and probably easy to clean, but sometimes I wish we could go back to velvet walls, carpet and drapes.
Minor quibble, though–Cafe Nell is definitely a keeper.
Wildwood
August 20, 2010
- Restaurant website
- Location: NW, 21st above the Pearl
- Cost to feed four for dinner: About $125 (plus wine)
My colleague was doing Atkins, the low carb thing, and however tasty the bread, she couldn’t eat it. So the chef at Wildwood braised some veggies, added a mild vinaigrette and served them as the classiest (and tastiest) crudites I’ve had in quite awhile.
So when my houseguests offered to take me to dinner, and asked for a “Portland local” place that had good veggies, I sent us to Wildwood.
Good choice.
Carol, Laurie and 9-year old Emelia know food. (Emelia’s favorites are mussels and tomatoes, so yes, this family KNOWS food) What they got at Wildwood tonight was impressive.
Service was exquisite–the waiter was as passionate about the food as he could be (and he clearly loved his job). Every one of his recommendations was spot on.
I had an absolutely fabulous chilled cucumber soup; Emelia and Carol had the roasted beet salad with blue cheese and walnuts while Laurie tried a slightly tamer salad. Delicious, all of them, though I think my soup had the edge.
We proceeded to lightly seared tuna on a fresh tomato risotto that was absolutely incredible. “I don’t know,” said Laurie, “I personally think the duck confit was exquisite.” And we all loved Emelia’s mussels.
(I love houseguests that believe in sharing plates in a nice restaurant.)
For dessert, we mixed up the chesterberry pie with honey-basil ice cream, the lemon tart and the Varlhona chocolate whatever. My top vote went to the pie.
Lovely, lovely meal. I haven’t been to Wildwood in awhile; this trip reminded me of why I need to go back.
Cupcake 2.0
July 30, 2010
Now, listen, I LIKE cupcakes, don’t get me wrong. What’s not to like? They’re cake. They’re frosting. They’re portable. Portion-controlled creamy-sweet goodness you can stick in a lunchbox. With sprinkles.
But…high-fashioned eats? The hautiest of haute cuisine?
C’maaaaaaaan. They’re CUPCAKES, for heaven’s sake. Yet I kid you not, there are at least three specialty cupcake shops in Portland, and more coming. Some of the best bakeries in town are pushing cupcakes as the wedding dessert of choice.* [Read more]
The Pause that really refreshed
April 21, 2010
- No website, so Pause’s phone is (971) 230-0705
- Location: Overlook (near the Killingsworth Max station)
5101 N Interstate Ave, Portland - Price to completely STUFF four people at lunch: $40
“Now, don’t you go writing about this in your blog,” Dennis warned, “It’s hard enough to get a table here as it is.”
Ooops.
Dennis, Barbara, Kat and I took a break from prepping for the Oregon Glass Guild Fusathon* at Pause, a little taverny kinda restaurant on Interstate not too far from the Harbor Freight. I had my doubts, looking at the neighborhood, but Dennis said he frequently came all the way down from Vancouver just to eat a Pauseburger, so I kept my mouth shut and my mind open.
Good thing. It was outrageously delicious and about half the price of similar eats in the Pearl District.
Pause is friendly, clean, a tad trendy without being obnoxious about it and they grind their own meat. Smoke their own pork. Make their own pickles. Bake their own buns, for all I know.
And the fries are those delightful hand-cut potatoes with the skins still on, fluffy inside and toasted crisp on the outside. That alone is worth the trip…but the meat’s pretty good, too.
My companions are old hands at Pause. They went straight for the house specialty, the hand-ground burger served with local cheese. I just hadda be different, so I ordered the Cuban. It wasn’t what *I* think of as a Miami-style Cubano, but it was a superb sandwich. There was home-smoked pork in there, some ham, maybe some beef, some really lovely cheese and I dunno what all, with a mound of home-made half-sours. (pickles)
Slurp.
It was also at least a third again as much as a human should eat for lunch, which made it a pretty remarkable deal for just eight bucks. I’m sure the desserts and other stuff would be equally delicious, but who in their right mind could possibly have room for those things after even a half-sandwich?
This is definitely worth a return visit. Just make sure you save Dennis a table.
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*The Fusathon is an annual charitable event put on by the Oregon Glass Guild. OGG members congregate at the Uroboros glass factory, where we all make small dishes and bowls from donated Uroboros glass. They’re sold at the Portland Blues Festival over the fourth of July, with all proceeds going to the Oregon Food Bank. It’s a worthy cause, lots of fun and this year Uroboros is planning some special sales and partystuff just for us. If you’re in town toward the end of May, join us.
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.