Portland Foodie Adventures - Day 2

Today was quite an uneventful day in terms of food, but very eventful in all other respects! We started out the day with Spella coffee again, YUM. Then, as we were headed up the street to check out an old church, I tripped over a curb (it was an unusually tall curb, ok?!!?) and scuffed up my left knee pretty badly. So we went back to our hotel for some first aid and after icing my knee and downing a Motrin, we set out for brunch.

The other exciting thing that happened was that in the middle of the day when we were exploring Pearl District, it started snowing!!! At first, it was a light confetti type of snow and I was enjoying the feeling of snow falling on my eyelashes and tasting it with my tongue. But then it progressed to a pretty crazy snowstorm. Everything was completed coated in a white blanket! Driving in the snow was not fun and we got stuck in traffic for 2 hours when we were coming back to the hotel from the distillery (we were only 2 miles away from our hotel and in normal conditions it would have only taken about 10 minutes). I haven't experienced real snow since I left Oregon so it was a beautiful experience. L is worried it's gonna snow again tomorrow when we have to drive the car back to his brother's but I'm secretly wishing that it will hee hee :).

Back to brunch - I wanted to sample the other fillings at Ziba's Pitas so we ordered a spinach filled one and a zucchini filled one. Ziba remembered me too :). We also tried the "ustipaks", which according to Ziba herself are "like bread, but much better". Here they are pictured below...they reminded me of Native American fry bread actually and were a little bland on their own but very tasty when consumed with a bit of the ajvar.



Here are the spinach and zucchini filled pitas! Very delish!



I also stopped by a cart called Savor which specializes in soup and build your own grilled cheese sandwiches. I tried their chicken tortilla soup which was really tomato-y and tummy-warming.



Here are some pics of food carts which I didn't have a chance to try....



This one looked really cool but they were not open yesterday or today :(.


Last night, we had reservations at Nostrana, an Italian restaurant run by Chef Cathy Whims who was a James Beard finalist for 2009. I was very excited because the cuisine is from the Piedmonte region of Italy and I've heard fabulous things about the food from this area.



The restaurant had a cool wall of wines:


It was really, really dark in the restaurant, so I couldn't take decent pictures of everything we ate :(. So only 2 food pics of our entrees. But here's everything that we ordered:

Appetizer

Pan Fried Ribollita, with borlotti beans, red cabbage, winter squash and Nostrana ciabatta, featuring Tenuta di Capezzana Olio Nuovo

Comments: This dish was a little disappointing especially after how much our waiter had played it up - the concept sounded very interesting. Basically, a minestrone soup with day old ciabatta, that's cooked down until the ciabatta absorbs all the soup. Then the ciabatta is pan fried and drizzled with olive oil. The texture was as expected, a little mushy, but the flavor was lacking. I expected a flavor punch especially after such a long cooking process, but instead I didn't taste much of anything.

First course

Paglia e fieno – straw and hay pasta - Spinach and egg fettuccine with prosciutto, shiitake mushrooms and cream

Comments: This was delicious. It immediately reminded me of a fettuccine dish I had in Rome, so fresh and light. Even with the prosciutto and cream, the dish was not heavy...salty and creamy and woody (from the shiitake).

Entrees

Mine:

Astoria Black Cod with herbed Dungeness crab, tomato sauce, braised greens and Parmigiano bread crumbs

Comments: This was AMAZING. The cod was buttery and cooked to perfection. The tomato sauce was absolutely terrific - I cannot put my finger on all the flavors, but it was the perfect complement to the fish. I could eat this over and over again.

L's:

Franco’s award winning stuffed pork belly with spicy onion & raisin relish and braised cabbage

Comments: This, too, was amazing. There was a side of crackling on the belly that just melted in your mouth. The stuffing consisted of rapini with pork sausage, pine nuts and fresh herbs. The raisin and onion relish had a great spicy kick to it and the cabbage was sweet and tart.

I can see why people rave about Nostrana. The entrees, especially, were so well thought out and the flavor profiles were amazing. I think I counted at least 8 or 9 elements of taste in each dish :).

To wrap up our day, we visited Clear Creek Distillery which is one of the few places outside of France that produces a pear brandy (eau de vie) where the pear is grown directly in the bottle. It is pretty amazing. We tasted about five of their offerings, and the pear brandy tastes exactly like a Bartlett pear - exactly like it. It takes 30 lbs of pears to produce just one bottle of brandy. And the liquors are all at least 80 proof so it's some really crazy strong stuff. In fact, the distillery is only allowed to serve 5 items during a tasting cuz I guess Portland was worried that people would stumble out too drunk to drive :P.

Here's a mini bottle of the pear brandy that we purchased to take home.


We also tasted their Apple brandy which is made from Golden Delicious apples and is similar to the French Calvados. This is their 2 year brandy which is a little fruitier and lighter. They also have a much more potent 8 year version. There's a dish I made in school, a braised chicken in Calvados and apple juice, that this would be perfect for.



For dinner today, we had reservations at the Veritable Quandary, but due to the traffic, we had to cancel :(. I was quite sad about it, but we ended up having a good meal at Jake's Crawfish which is a Portland institution and has been around for 100 years. I had the Arctic Char which is a fish that's closely related to salmon and trout. The flesh is much like salmon but less oily. It was extremely fresh and served with a citrus butter and dungeness crab topping. We also had their bourbon bread pudding and three berry crumble for dessert which was a great finish to a snowy and cold winter day!

It's time to say goodbye to Portland :(. I will miss thee, especially Ziba and Spella and all the lovely food carts that I wish I could bring back to the Bay Area with me.

The next post will be from Seattle!!! Until then :).

Portland Foodie Adventures - Day 1

Last night after a pleasant dinner with L’s brother and family, we checked into our hotel in downtown Portland, unpacked and then I promptly dragged L out into the freezing cold so we could hit up Voodoo Doughnut.

It must have been the excitement factor which gave me courage, because as we were walking there, L kept saying how sketchy the area looked, and I kept saying “Nah, it’s just like Berkeley”. However, when we walked through the neighborhood again today, I realized it really is very sketchy, and it’s a wonder that we weren’t mugged or murdered or something :).

Anyways, back to the donuts. So I’ve heard about Voodoo from my friends as well as on Man vs Food (go Adam!). It’s a tiny little hole-in-the-wall type of place and the whole vibe really reminded us of Berkeley, but there isn’t really any food establishment in Berkeley quite like it. Afterwards, L said that Voodoo reminded him of an Annapurna which sold food instead of weird clothing – hah! We got two donuts, a Bacon Maple bar and a Portland Crème.

Bacon Maple bar:

Portland creme...like the 2 frosting eyes? cute :).

Both were pretty good and not as greasy as I expected. I liked the Bacon Maple bar a lot – the bacon was thick-cut, smoky and cooked just right. In combination with the sweet maple glaze, it really hit the spot. The Portland Crème I was not as impressed by. Maybe because I had to eat half the donut before I got to the crème center, and when I did, it reminded me of condensed milk. I was tempted to buy a t-shirt as a souvenir, but as you can see from the pictures, their slogan is “The Magic is in the Hole”, so my better judgment won :).

Today was our first official exploration day, and priority number one for me was the food carts! And such good fortune! Our hotel is literally steps away from a cluster of food carts :).

Food carts mostly only accept cash, so there is conveniently an ATM machine smack dab in the middle of two of them....funny, huh?

For breakfast, we hit up Spella coffee and I had a delish Ethopian coffee cappuccino.

The friendly peeps at Spella recommended the Brunch Box food cart for breakfast so we ventured up a few blocks to another cluster of food carts.

The Brunch Box makes their own English muffins, so I ordered an egg, mushroom and cheese sandwich on English muffin and L ordered a sausage, egg and cheese on Texas toast. Very yummy.

After breakfast, we took a digestion break and went off to explore Washington Park, but of course headed back in time to hit up more food carts for lunch :). We returned to the cluster near our hotel (Alder and Southwest 9^th) and here’s what we ate:

Ziba's Pitas

Ziba is a super sweet Bosnian lady who serves pitas filled with a savory filling of your choice: Burek (beef, onions and potatoes), Zeljanica (spinach, eggs, cottage cheese), Sirnica (eggs, feta cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese) or Tikvenica (zucchini). The pitas aren’t your typical pita bread. The dough is flaky and baked, more like a strudel. She serves it with a yummy roasted red pepper sauce (ajvar) that has a nice spicy kick to it, as well as a sour cream and cucumber salad. The pitas themselves range from $5 to $6 each and a full plate (pita plus ajvar and salad) costs about 75 cents more.

We had the Burek today which is pictured below and it was very, very tasty.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to try the spinach and the zucchini pitas cuz I realized after the fact that you can order half pita combos, yay :)!

Tabor (Southwest 5^th and Oak/Stark parking lot)

Tabor is owned by a happy Czech couple and they are known for their Schnitzelwich sandwich. It’s a schnitzel (breaded and fried meat cutlet) served on a crusty ciabatta bread roll, along with horseradish mayo, red pepper spread and crunchy lettuce leaf. You can choose between a chicken or pork schnitzel. We had the pork schnitzel and I was not forewarned about how strong the horseradish mayo was, so towards the end L had to finish it, because I am weak sauce when it comes to horseradish :). The schnitzel was great - tender and well-seasoned. They also serve goulash which I was sorta tempted to order but couldn’t pass up on the schnitzel. I was trying to pace myself for the later eating to come after all :).

The Schnitzelwich!

Finally, we ate at “Best of Brazil”.

Brazilian food in Portland too! Yay! By this time, we were pretty full even though we shared the two previous dishes. So we settled on just ordering 2 coxinha, which are little fried dumplings filled with shredded chicken and a Guarana soda. L had fun chatting it up in Portuguese with the 4 other Brazilians who were there, including the sweet lady owner.

This post is turning out to be a mini-novella so I will save my dinner report (Nostrana) for tomorrow! Until then, bon appétit!