Portland Oregon Foodie Suggestions

My daughter is leaving for Portland tomorrow for a month and I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions for foodie stuff there: markets, ethnic restaurants, etc.

I get to be the first to direct you to the amazing
extramsg, an amazing food blogger who is based in Portland, notwithstanding his extraordinary photos of some many Chicago favorites.

I was in Lake Oswego, a Portland suburb, earlier this week where I had an excellent calzone at the Flying Pie. The flying pie is located in a strip center on Monroe.

I left a meeting at 2 Pacific realizing that I hadn't had lunch. I was ravenous. It was close. And, it was really good.

My calzone was large, hot and fresh stuffed with mozzarella, pepperoni and sausage.

One of my favorite places to eat in Portland is the old Galleria. It has become the home to Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School, once known as Western Culinary Institute. There are several restaurants there that have the culinary students as the entire staff. They are watched over by their instructors, so the food is usually right on. Being a chef myself, I find going there quite amusing. Sometimes they do great, while other times they slip up a bit, but amusing nonetheless.

Pricing is inexpensive and the cuisine varies from night to night. Not a place for romance or an anniversary, but a great place to go and give these students a little real world experience.

Kurt

Hey, psychchef emailed me a while back about this and so I never caught the thread.

If anyone is ever coming through Portland, make sure you contact me (and also check out my two sites, http://www.extramsg.com which is my blog, and http://www.portlandfood.org which is essentially LTH Portland). I'll gladly give you a culinary tour, show you around the markets, or whatever.

One of the big things right now is that the Portland Farmer's Market just re-opened. Come May, all the Farmer's Markets will be up and running. You can see pics from the opening this year on extramsg.com. There's a recent report.

If you want to get a feel for what NW Cuisine is, you should eat at any or all of these:

Wildwood
Park Kitchen
clarklewis

Those are usually my first choices given to people. Other good options, with varying emphases and fortes, but still producing some level of NW cuisine, are:

Higgins
Caprial's
Paley's
Castagna
Bluehour
Hurley's
Lauro
Heathman

These are all upscale places, which in Portland means entrees in the $15-30 range. Most of these have entrees in the $20-25 range.

Some of my favorite midscale places are:

Pambiche (Cuban)
Apizza Scholls (Pizza, with aweseome!!! BBQ Mondays only)
Pho Van (Vietnamese)
Taqueria Nueve (Regional Mexican)
Nuestra Cocina (Regional Mexican)
Ken's Place (Bistro)
Typhoon (Thai)
Sungari (Chinese)
Wong's King Seafood (Chinese)

Some downscale places:

Yen Ha (Vietnamese)
Pho Dalat (Vietnamese)
Cha Ba (Thai)
Sukhothai (Thai)
Arawan (Thai)
Tortilleria y Tienda de Leon (Mexican)
La Iguana Feliz (Mexican)
Pearl Bakery (Breads)
Ken's Artisan Bakery (Breads)

All of these are in Portland itself, not suburbs. Some really good food is in the suburbs, though, eg the better Indian and taqueria Mexican. I'm working on a Portland tip sheet (and need to get back to it). The current beta version is here:

http://extramsg.com/uploaded_misc/portl ... sheet.html