Gourmet Portland

Saturday, November 1. 2008

Portland, Oregon is a great food city. Many residents of San Francisco and Seattle act superior to Portland, but Stumptown has quite a few things going for it, including its own brand of West Coast cuisine and very pleasantly low prices.

Of course, the primary things that Portland is known for are Beer and Coffee. Deschutes is one of the many Oregon breweries which operates pubs in Portland; other Portland brews include Widmir, Bridgeport, McTarnahan, Amnesia, Full Sail, and others. Portland native chain McMenamins operates a small empire of brewpubs, including a resort, a B&B, a winery and a distillery. If you drink beer from a bottle while in Portland, you're a fool.

Portland is probably second only to Seattle in the US for coffee consumption per capita. You can't go more than three blocks anywhere in the city without running across a coffee bar, often a locally-owned one with locally-roasted coffee (like Stumptown Roasters). Even better is finding baristas who know that a cappucino is not made with 8oz of milk.

Less well-known is downtown Portland's predilection for food carts. Probably half the office workers and Pearl district partiers get their lunchtime sustinance from roach coaches offering cuisines as diverse as Serbian, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Salvadorean and Japanese.

It's also a terrific city for chocolate. Pictured above is the chocolate counter and the dessert counter at Sweet Masterpiece. Other Portland chocolatiers include Moonstruck, Sagahund, Verdun, and Alma.

Cupcake Jones is probably the best cupcake in Portland. Above are peanut butter & chocolate, and pumpkin & cream cheese.

If you're in Portland on a Saturday, don't miss the farmer's market on Portland State University campus. It's one of the better farmer's markets in the country, from a diversity and quality perspective. They even have local wine.

You can also have a terrific lunch at the farmer's market. Left are vegetarian biscuits & gravy, and right Josh T. shows off most definitely non-vegetarian pulled pork.

Speaking of which, Portland is part of the "vegan belt"; vegetarians can delight that most restaurants will have several vegetarian options, and many will have primarily vegetarian options. Also, if you are staying in downtown Portland, there is no reason to rent a car; the Max is excellent transportation.

Reccomended food places I won't have full reviews for: