Tag: Restaurants

Restaurant Review: Tasty n Sons



A few weeks ago, my mom and her boyfriend and my sisters ALL were in town. They came to see me and Jonah do a gig out at Edgefield winery in Troutdale. Which was really fun. The morning after the gig, we decided to go to Tasty n Sons for brunch. I’d been once before, and man was it good. And man was the wait long. But worth it, I think.

So we went, and yes, the wait was long. But while we waited, we sat back behind the restaurant by Chop, the butchery, and watched the cooks at the restaurant make bacon. There are worse ways to spend your time, don’t you think?

When we finally sat down, we ordered far too much food. I ordered the steak and eggs, which comes with an amazing jalapeno cornmeal pancake below some delicious scrambled eggs and marinated steak. We also ordered bacon-wrapped dates with maple syrup, the breakfast board, and polenta and sausage ragu with mozzarella and a fried egg, among other things. The polenta was delicious! Creamy and cheesy with yummy ragu, and covered in runny yolk.

Then came the breakfast board. It had… teriyaki beef jerky, some bacon-y type stuff, bread with delicious sweet cheese, some kind of pate, and Hood strawberries. It was good.

And I sat waiting for my steak and eggs, trying not to eat too much of anything else so I wasn’t too full to eat my dish. And I waited… and waited… and waited… And it didn’t come. So I finally asked about it, and our waitress had forgotten to put in the order. So she put in the order and I figured, oh they’ll rush it, so it won’t take that long. But it still took kind of a long time. At this point, everyone else had finished eating and we were all pretty full. To apologize they brought biscuits with gravy, which was good, but all I really wanted was my steak and eggs! So eventually I asked to just have them put it in a box, and I took it home. And actually, it made really good leftovers. I ate it for lunch the next 2 days.

Now, even though my food didn’t come in time for me to eat it, everything else was really very good. Even after the fact, my dish was really good. The place is a Portland staple, and worth the long wait, in my opinion. The previous time I went, I didn’t have to wait too long for any of my food. So you know, I think this just happens to me a lot (see what happened to me at Stopsky’s). So I would definitely recommend Tasty n Sons! Just know that it’s busy and loud, and that the food is delicious.

Restaurant Review: Oven & Shaker

Last week, Jonah and I went to see Alabama Shakes (and some other great bands) on the waterfront. The concert was part of the Rose Festival, and I bought tickets for Jonah as an anniversary present. It was on Sunday night, started at 5:30, and probably went till 10:30, though we left at 9:45 (we were hungry and also weren’t crazy about the last band). Finding a place to eat at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night was not the easiest, but after a little hunting on my phone, I found that Oven & Shaker, a very hip pizza place in the Pearl, was still open. Not only were they open, but it was happy hour, my favorite. Now, the ampersand – & – is a thing in Portland. All these hip places have two words with an ampersand between for the title: Beaker & Flask, Salt & Straw, Oven & Shaker. Is it bad that I had previously judged this place because of the ampersand? Probably. But hey, I wanted to try it anyway.

Oven & Shaker
Kyle making pizza in the wood oven.

So after the concert, we found a parking spot right out front (score!) and headed inside. We were immediately seated at the chef’s counter (our choice) so we could watch them make pizzas and, my favorite part, be warmed by the giant wood oven. We were greeted by a little blond hipster who was flinging dough around and asked us if we had ever been before. After hearing we hadn’t, he gave us a spiel about traditional cooking style with local ingredients bla bla bla…the same as most portland restaurants. He then left and another guy (whose name I later learned was Kyle) took over his station on the line. Now this guy, I liked: he seemed down to earth, asked how our weekend had been, chatted about the concert we had just been to, and said to ask if we had any questions or wanted to try anything. I like that.

We ordered drinks, the Nostrana salad (radicchio, parmigiano, rosemary-sage croutons, Caesar style dressing), and the goat cheese pizza (goat cheese, leeks, chives, basil, and speck). What’s speck, you ask? So did we. Kyle told us that speck is like prosciutto, except it has been smoked before being cured. While we waited for our food, we overheard some great conversations amongst the staff. My particular favorite was the bartender telling Kyle about the “margarita popcorn” he had made: tequila butter, lime juice, and salt-tossed popcorn. Kyle asked if it was a “Clyde Common popcorn” which I found entertaining. (Clyde Common is another very hip restaurant downtown that has fancy popcorn – think pimenton or truffle – as an appetizer.) We also overheard a conversation about a chitlin dish they were planning for the menu the next week.

Oven & Shaker
A slice of our goat cheese pizza (with a bite missing).

Anyway, after a short wait, our salad came, and man was it delicious. The raddichio wasn’t too bitter, the salad was perfectly dressed, and the croutons were deliciously flavored and crunchy. Yum! Then came the pizza. The crust was up there with Ken’s (another famously delicious pizza place in Portland), and the toppings were delicious. Ours didn’t have sauce on it (tomato or other), but the leeks, goat cheese, and ample olive oil that had been sprinkled on kept it from seeming dry. The speck was delicious. And the goat cheese was SO GOOD. Perfectly creamy and melty. I really liked this pizza a lot. We finished the whole thing. Not too shabby. As we were finishing our pizza, Kyle brought us a small plate of the chitlins we had heard them discussing earlier! Made from the prosciutto skin (instead of the pig intestine as they’re usually made), soaked for 12 hours, and then fried and sprinkled with lime zest and some other seasonings, he explained that this was the latest incarnation the chef had made and asked us our thoughts. I’ve never had chitlins before, and I’m not sure I would ever order them at a restaurant, but these were pretty good! We finished our chitlins and our pizza, thanked Kyle for a lovely meal, and headed home, perfectly full and content.

Restaurant Review: Biwa (and Ramen!)

This past Monday night, Jonah and I decided to head out into the city to get some food. We’ve both had a cold for a little while now, so we were riding the wave of Asian soup. Saturday night we went to Thai Peacock (a funny little Thai place by Powell’s with the best Tom Ka Gai I’ve ever had), and Sunday night we made pho (and decided the pho at Mekong, the place a block from our house, is superior to anything we could ever make ourselves). I’d read in the Portland Monthly Best Restaurant edition that Biwa is the place to go for ramen, and had been wanting to try it since.

Lucky for us, because it was a Monday night, it wasn’t packed. That being said, there were a couple large parties waiting for tables, and Jonah and I opted to eat at the bar to avoid waiting because we were super hungry. We pretty quickly decided on what to order, choosing to stick with familiar dishes since we were both sick and not feeling terribly adventurous. Jonah got a housemade ginger soda (which I was jealous of and of which I probably drank at least half).

I must say, that while ordering, I noticed that the restaurant has a little bit of a boys’ club vibe. All the cooks and all but two waiters were men, and I felt a little funny being a girl. The men were all very stereotypically “Portland”: facial hair, flannel shirts, skinny jeans, tattoos. I felt a little out of my element, which was odd to me. That being said, our waiter was very nice, though quick and with a very dry sense of humour (or maybe he was being serious… I couldn’t really tell).

We ordered the cucumber sunomono (vinegared cucumber salad with shrimp and seaweed), agedashi tofu (my favorite Japanese dish, fried tofu in broth), and of course, a bowl of ramen.

Ramen at Biwa
A beautiful bowl of delicious Biwa ramen.

The cucumber salad was delicious. Thinly sliced cucumbers with seaweed doused in delicious vinegar with huge juicy shrimp… Oh my goodness. I could have eaten a few of those and gone home happy. It was light and refreshing. I want to go back on a hot summer’s day and eat that dish. The agedashi tofu was also magnificent. Much lighter than most of the agedashi tofu I’ve had before: the tofu was more delicate, the batter was much lighter, and the broth tasted less “packaged,” if that makes sense. It was unique and delicious. I love soaking the crispy fried tofu in the broth and letting it soak up the flavor. Yum.

Now onto the ramen. It was delicious. The noodles were amazing, just the right texture, and very fresh tasting. The meat was some thinly sliced pork and was actually largely fat, which sometimes throws me off. But this fat had a wonderful texture that just fell apart in your mouth and tasted so rich and delicious. One thing I wasn’t crazy about, which I wanted to be crazy about, was the egg. The shoyu egg, which I think means they’ve been soft or hard boiled and then cooked in soy sauce, was a little…sweet? I’m not really sure what the taste was. Perhaps it’s just that I wasn’t used to the preparation of it, but I wasn’t a crazy big fan. The broth of the soup was good, but about halfway through the bowl, both Jonah and I were chugging our water because it was so salty. It was so salty that we almost asked our waiter if it was supposed to be like that or if it was over-seasoned or something. I can appreciate some salt as much as the next girl, but it was pretty extreme. But still delicious. Just… in smaller doses.

Overall, I was happy with our meal at Biwa. Next time I want to be a little more adventurous and also want to try their other noodle soup (udon. yum.). The atmosphere was nice, and the food was delicious, particularly the small plates. I would definitely recommend it for a diner who is interested in more traditional Asian cuisine with a touch of flare.

Restaurant Review: St. Jack

A while back I picked up Portland Monthly Magazine, the Best Restaurant issue. I look forward to this issue every year so that I can see how many of Portland’s top restaurants I’ve eaten at and which ones I need to get to. At the top of last year’s list was a restaurant called St. Jack. I’d heard of it before, but hadn’t read about it until the magazine. I’d also noticed it because it’s right near Jonah’s office, so I would pass it whenever I dropped him off on my way to work. I was very excited when my Dad came to town and we decided (well, I decided really) to go there for dinner.

St. Jack

After reading the menu probably about 10 times, I made a reservation. We showed up and were seated at a table in the back. The interior of the restaurant was so lovely. Simple and clean, with little artistic and crafty touches, like the giant wax candle towers on the back bar. I was particularly excited to eat here because one of the things I’d heard about St. Jack is that they have really good original cocktails. My dad and I both got the Guillotine (rum, cointreau, lemon, housemade grenadine, and absinthe), which was wonderful! It was a really refreshing drink, and a little bit wintery, which I like this time of year (unlike Jonah’s very delicious French Pearl, which was mint, gin, lemon, and sugar).

As for appetizers, we got two of the Salad Lyonnaise, a salad of frisee, bacon lardons, bacon fat croutons, and a poached egg. I absolutely loved this salad (since we can’t make bacon in our apartment I’m super into bacon when we eat out). It was warm and delicious and a little tart. We also got the pommes frites and the Cervelle de Canut, which was like a mixture of cheeses and herbs served with bread. For dinner, I got the Coq a la Biere, a half a chicken braised in ale with veggies underneath. Jonah ordered some steak, Dad got the trout, and Darla got the onion tarte. All of these dishes were splendid, but a consensus was reached that my chicken was the best (Yes! I won!).

St. Jack

For dessert we ordered the madeleines, which are baked to order. I had never actually had madeleines before, and I thought these were delicious. Simple and light with a touch of lemon. A lovely end to the meal.

Overall, our experience was great. The waitstaff was very friendly and helpful. The atmosphere was perfect: enough noise so you don’t know the place is dead, but not a roar. It was a peaceful, relaxed meal of thoughtful, delicious food. I would highly recommend this restaurant if you’re on the search for a romantic evening or a slightly fancy dinner. I loved it!

Photos from St. Jack’s website.