El Proyecto
Founded in 2003, Andina has emerged as one of the region’s leading Peruvian restaurants and continues to generate wide appeal within the food communities in and around Portland, as well as further afield. Andina draws inspiration from the native culinary traditions of Peru, as well as from the contemporary cooking of Peru’s leading chefs. Owner Doris Rodriguez de Platt collaborates with Andina’s kitchen team to develop a menu that celebrates her family’s Andean roots, interweaving the ideas and techniques of both Criollo and Novo-Andean cuisines.
As a cultural ambassador, Andina’s mission is to prepare both a table and a feast around which all guests can gather and find the warmth and richness of the Peruvian spirit in its truest forms. The dishes and flavors carry stories of their own; as do the music and art. Above all, the staff at large convey what is most essential about Peru: its profound hospitality, a delight in sharing its stories, and pride in presenting food born out of love.
Ataula
Eater’s 2013 Chef of the Year Jose Chesa emphasizes a convivial, familial vibe at his restaurant Ataula, which considers itself a Spanish gastropub more than a stuffy “tapas restaurant.” The tapas themselves combine similar levels of comforting familiarity and playfulness: Beef and potato “bombas” arrive in a suitably spicy sauce; chorizo “lollipops” are addictive; and an almost-savory sangria is the perfect drink for rainy evenings.At Ataula, a breezy tapas bar with dark wood tables and a white bar flecked with jawbreaker-like color, Cristina Baez and Jose Chesa present flavors that Spanish food fans couldn’t previously find in Portland. Start with a gin tonic, Spain’s most beloved cocktail, then dive into the pitch-perfect tortilla Española, some salt-cod croquettes and a seafood paella stocked with red peppers, shrimp, calamari and plump, caramel-crusted rice, each grain holding an ocean’s worth of flavor. The paellas are good, perhaps the best in Portland, but the rossejat, paella’s pasta-based cousin, is even better. It comes with toasted, squid-ink-blackened fideo noodles topped with a spoonful of roast garlic aioli. Best of all is the Ataula montadito, a small, open-faced sandwich with house-cured salmon, mascarpone yogurt and black-truffle honey on a crusty baguette. The kitchen’s latest treat is a whimsical dessert: whipped coconut milk and egg yolk gelato, served in a cool skillet like a pair of sunny-side-up eggs.
Beast
Opened in 2007, Beast is the fine-dining restaurant by Naomi Pomeroy, the 2014 James Beard Best Chef NW recipient, and like many Portland greats, it shows how a love for DIY everything can transform a humble space into something stunning, in this case a culinary theater. After recent updates, guests are greeted with sparkling wine, courses display a wider breadth of influence (especially more seasonal pastas and seafood), and brunch is honed to three focused courses for $35 (tip included) to trim the fat. Beast’s backbone remains unchanged, and it still serves that iconic foie gras bon bon and some of the prettiest platings in the city. It also accommodates dietary needs when possible. Just give it advanced notice when making a reservation.
Clyde Common
Found next to downtown Portland’s Ace Hotel, Clyde Common is the first place many out-of-towners eat. Oddly, it’s also a restaurant that could exist in almost any hip city in America. Chef Carlo Lamagna offers a deliciously esoteric menu filled with less-common ingredients and some intriguing Filipino touches. If you’re looking for basic, look elsewhere. You can start simply enough with a bowl of marinated olives or some gnocchi, though the latter might include black garlic and morels. I’m always happy to see the crunchy pork-shiitake lumpia or pork cheek adobo ramped up with crisp pig ears. Clyde Common was an early adopter of large-format dishes (in other words, entrees big enough to share). Bring a few friends and work your way through a whole fish or a platter of grilled beef ribs with cornbread and celery beer jam. This is food exciting enough to pair with ace bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s cocktails.
Higgins Restaurant & Bar
One of Portland’s pioneering chefs, Greg Higgins was cultivating relationships between local chefs and farmers long before winning the James Beard Best Chef Northwest award in 2002. But today, Higgins is one of downtown’s best spots for a business lunch or a pre-show dinner, and the service is as close to fine dining as it gets in laid-back Portland. For a more relaxed but still old-school vibe, visit the wood-paneled bar for Totten Inlet mussels steamed in white wine and The Higgins burger of Carman Ranch grass-fed beef.
Kenny and Zuke’s
The quintessential Jewish deli of the Northwest, Kenny & Zuke’s boils and bakes its own bagels, brines and smokes its own pastrami and stocks one of Portland’s best soda collections – think sarsaparilla and Cel-Ray. You can flirt with the Cobb salad, the hot dog or the welcome array of healthier sandwiches, but, eventually, you’ll find your way to the Reuben: juicy, thick-sliced cured beef on grilled, caraway-flecked rye with copious kraut and melted Swiss. Get it with shoestring fries and a custom float, and bring a friend to split it. Locals and late-waking Ace Hotel guests next door know about the bagels, latkes, cheese blintzes, challah French toast and smoked salmon eggs Benedict available in the morning. Deli purists may kvetch (and do, often). That’s fine. More pastrami for us.
Le Pigeon
Two-time James Beard Award winner Gabe Rucker rocks his East Burnside hole-in-the-wall with an open kitchen, an always changing menu, and a firm handle on how to make inventive but mostly accessible food. This is where you’ll find unexpected treats like fennel in your tater tots and foie gras in your profiterole, balanced by impossibly comforting beef cheek bourguignon and twists on classic seared foie gras. If you’re looking for a “special occasion” meal, invest in the chef’s tasting menu. How many happy accidents had to converge to form Le Pigeon? Gabriel Rucker, the two-time James Beard Award winner, had to be looking for work after Gotham Building Tavern closed. The previous restaurant, Colleen’s Bistro, had to install the gorgeous copper hood that lends the space its warm glow. Andy Fortgang, the restaurant’s service guru, had to leave Tom Colicchio’s restaurant empire in New York and move to Portland. And, after nearly a decade in business, the restaurant had to be comfortable continuing to evolve. A meal in May showed Le Pigeon in its best light: cedar-plank trout scattered with plump morels; crisp slivers of goat in a marsh of basil and English peas; and an older dish, smoked and seared foie gras with sablefish and dill, which was the best bite of the evening. If not every dish hits the mark, that’s only because at 10 years old, Le Pigeon remains the city’s most exciting nightly high-wire act. Desserts have long been Le Pigeon’s secret weapon. Recently, those included the signature foie gras profiteroles, a mint-pistachio moon pie and a potpourri-like strawberry shortcake ice cream bar. The youth movement that took hold last year is moving on. Chef de cuisine Andrew Evan Mace and pastry chef Nora Antene left in May. Taking the reins? None other than Rucker himself.
Nong’s Khao Man Gai
This empire is built on a single dish – Hainanese-style poached chicken, supple rice and a gorgeous ginger sauce – that is common in Singapore but was almost impossible to find here before Nong Poonsukwattana opened her eponymous cart. If you’ve never been, I still recommend starting with the original cart downtown (1003 S.W. Alder St.). But for regulars, the brick-and-mortar shop has also earned a spot on this list, if only for the sometimes fickle machine by the counter that churns coconut-lemongrass soft serve. Like the cart near Portland State University (411 S.W. College St.), the restaurant adds to the menu Coca-Cola-braised pork and chicken and broccoli with peanut sauce. Both are fine – the pork especially – but you’re here for the khao man gai, preferably with a small bag of fried chicken skins for sprinkling over the top.
Nostrana
Featuring intensely regional food, wood-fired oven pizza, and a totally accessible menu, Cathy Whims’ Nostrana is a consistent, comforting presence in the local dining scene. The menu embraces a “neighborhood” vibe — Meatball Mondays! Gnocchi Thursdays! — and the space’s barrel-vaulted, exposed-wood ceiling, and tables of chatting guests add to the casual atmosphere. Nostrana straddles that line between “casual-ish” and upscale, and Whims has years of James Beard nominations to prove it. There’s a reason this gracious Southeast Portland restaurant has a wall filled with accolades, including a half-dozen James Beard Award nominations and The Oregonian’s 2006 Restaurant of the Year honors. Chef Cathy Whims and her team serve fine-tuned salads, beautifully blistered Neapolitan pizzas, wood-charred steaks and faithful Italian pastas inspired by Whims’ mentor, the late Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan. Order the Insalata Nostrana, which keeps the best attributes of a Caesar (the dressing, Parmesan and croutons) but ditches romaine in favor of bitter, spicy radicchio. It pairs well with a Negroni, the restaurant’s signature cocktail. Two recent pastas – fettuccine with Hazan’s tomato-butter sauce and snailshell-shaped lumache with a piquant sauce and crunchy pancetta – were remarkable in their distinction. The salt-crusted lamb, smoky rotisserie chicken and luscious porchetta all have their merits. But if you’re on a double date, the dry-aged, salt-crusted bistecca alla Fiorentina in rosemary-garlic oil makes for a night to remember.
Paley’s Place
This is the Balthazar of Portland, the place that manages to be creative, yet so classic. Whether you’re enjoying mussels frites, escargots, or really interesting Northwest takes on classic French-style cooking, head chef Vitaly Paley remains playful and inventive while never veering too far off the path. For those without the luxury of expense-account dining, a happy hour menu makes the restaurant more accessible with deals like $5 Old Fashioned or $2 oysters
Pok Pok
This is one Portland food story that likely needs no introduction: Classically trained chef Andy Ricker moves to Thailand, learns to cook little-known Thai food, and serves up enough Vietnamese chicken wings, boar collar, and noodle soups to snag himself a James Beard Award for Best Chef Northwest. Ricker’s now a certified empire-builder, but it’s worth a trip to the mothership on SE Division if you want to never look at Thai food the same way again.
¿Por Que No?
strives to support our local economy, whether it means using line caught fish and local meats or remodeling with recycled materials.
We have traveled from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to the mountains of Oaxaca to share the flavors and the essence of what we found.
Ringside Steakhouse
RingSide Steakhouse is the Sophia Loren of Portland restaurants: It looks as good at 70 as it did at 35. There’s a clubby, Rat Pack-era charm to the dining room that was only enhanced by a loving 2010 remoedel. One of the city’s oldest family-owned restaurants, and still Portland’s best traditional steakhouse, you won’t find bavette steak, pork secreto or other cuts popular at modern meat houses here. Instead, RingSide stays on Main Street with juicy rib eyes, thick pork chops and fat lobster tails, all seared to order and delivered with a smile (and a fluffy baked potato). Lately, the kitchen has experimented with more ambitious desserts, including a deconstructed bananas Foster. It’s admirable, and well executed, like everything here. Given the ambiance, though, you might wish for something more traditional.
St Jack
St. Jack, Eater’s 2011 Restaurant of the Year, creates the ultimate bouchon experience in this NW bistro. Embrace “Non, je ne regrette rein” as your official dining motto and sit back and relax with a few whiskey cocktails, plates of rich escargot gratin and roasted bone marrow. When specials are available, snatch them up, particularly the pied de cochon and stuffed duck neck. Starting in 2010, St. Jack, the flagship of Portlander Kurt Huffman’s ChefStable restaurant group, conjured the ambiance of a Lyonnaise bouchon – a marriage of hospitality and excess. Two years ago, chef-owner Aaron Barnett and his team moved the restaurant from its original Southeast Portland home across the river, adding a luxe cocktail bar and an instant patina to a new home on Northwest 23rd Avenue. The sumptuous snout-to-tail menu survived the move intact. You’ll still find escargot, chicken liver mousse and tablier de sapeur, thin pieces of golden-fried tripe. Order a salad, maybe the one with bacon and bacon-fried croutons, as a healthy base for duck à l’orange, a truly great steak frites, or the lovely fisherman’s stew, with plump scallops, mussels and creamy, garlic-stocked broth. If you have room, there are baked-to-order madeleines in a ceramic bowl – small, soft and still warm to the touch under a shower of powdered sugar. Let the food coma commence.
Tasty ‘N Sons
John Gorham’s insanely popular second spot reinvents Portland’s favorite meal — brunch — taking it to new heights worth the inevitable wait. The sprawling, family-style menu flaunts influences from North Africa to Asia to the American South, with a strong “put an egg on it ethos.” Think shakshuka with merguez sausage, or steak and eggs with corncakes. For dinner, the recently revamped spot got an updated menu with a mix-and-match, Chesapeake Bay spin
THE FOOD TRUCKS