Monthly Archives: May 2009

Hob Knob Grille

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I recently dropped by the Hob Knob Grille on SE Morrison, a new-ish eatery that occupies the former digs of the mediocre Southeast outpost of Salvador Molly’s…

And gave their house ground Hobnob Burger a whirl. It’s an interesting take on a standard, served with a chipotle cream cheese, a tomato jam, lettuce, tomato (sprinkled with fresh ground pepper), and a single Hungarian-style skinny chili.

Thankfully, it’s served on an expertly toasted bun (burgers on ciabatta is the worst culinary trend of this millenium). My burger came out decidedly more on the medium side than the medium rare I requested, but this was a very flavorful, honest burger. The chips, while nice and house made, makes you pine for fries.

Hob Nob is aiming to fill that niche of solid neighborhood eatery. If this burger is any indication, they are doing a fine job.

Hob Knob Grille

3350 SE Morrison St
Portland, OR 97214
503.445.3665

Hob Knob on the WORLD WIDE WEB

Papa Haydn (West)

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Papa Haydn, located on Northwest Portland’s bustling 23rd Avenue, is a destination due to its plethora of dessert and pastry choices. I stopped by a while ago to check out their bistro burger.

Things started off with this French onion soup. The soup was fairly standard, with a thick slab of gruyere melted upon a raft of bread floating atop the earthenware dish. The broth was a bit understated, but the onions were thick and meaty.

The burger came atop a nicely toasted brioche-like bun. Some very good, fresh-cut (near) shoestring fries accompanied the burger.

Mustard and ketchup on the side. The burger here is fairly standard, and the beef is pretty flavorful. My gripe was the shape of the patty. It had a dome shape most commonly associated with a hand-formed backyard patty–too thick in the middle, with tapered edges. As it stood, its total circumference was too sparse to adequately blanket the bun on which it sat.

Lunch ended with this lemon tart with a meringue border. Like I mentioned, Papa Haydn is known for their desserts. This tasted like dessert.

Papa Haydn (West)

701 NW 23rd Ave.
Portland, OR
(503) 228-7317

Northwest Hot Dogs

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This

This hot dog cart is located just south of Jamison Park in the Pearl District.

Presumably the gentleman behind these sauces and rubs has a say in the day-to-day operations of this food cart. I’m too lazy to do the research.

The menu.

A nicely grilled Chicken Italian Sausage, doused with standard condiments and copious amounts of Harry’s sauce.

Northwest Hot Dogs

Jamison Park (NW Johnson and 11th)
http://northwesthotdogs.com

Philly Cheesesteak: world’s most overhyped sandwich?

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Cheesesteak not Philly’s best sandwich?. (Philly.com)

“I may never eat another Philly cheesesteak – not, at least, when I can have a roast pork sandwich,” a writer opined some weeks ago in the Washington Post.

Tim Warren, who lives in Maryland, was such a big cheesesteak fan that he often made food runs to Philadelphia and found he “wasn’t the only idiot who had driven 100 miles for a $7 sandwich.”

He sided with Pat’s in the Pat’s vs. Geno’s debate.

Now he’s siding with the roast pork vs. cheesesteak.

Because he fell in love.

“The subtle interplay between the pork and the tart greens, between the provolone and the spices in the juices, is heaven compared with the sledgehammer-like cheesesteak.”

Heaven!

“Going from cheesesteaks to roast pork sandwiches was like listening to whatever pop music was on the radio, and one day discovering a station that played Sinatra and Duke Ellington,” he gushed.

My knee still prevents me from making a hollandaise that doesn’t break

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Portland firefighter turned restaurateur sues for disability benefits. (Oregon Live)

A former firefighter is suing the City of Portland for $2 million, claiming that it should have to continue to pay him thousands of dollars a month in disability benefits despite the fact that he has succeeded as a nationally known chef.

Thomas K. Hurley filed suit Thursday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, arguing that the city has been “reneging” on its promise to pay him disability benefits as long as he isn’t physically able to work as a firefighter.

The suit doesn’t say how much Hurley was receiving in benefits before the city cut him off, and the city declined to talk about Hurley’s case because of the pending litigation.

According to a 2005 article in The Oregonian, Hurley was collecting $3,948 a month in late 2004. Meanwhile, he had created a high-profile second career running an upscale French restaurant, Hurley’s, in Northwest Portland. He closed the restaurant at the end of 2007 to move to Seattle to focus full-time on a restaurant he’d started there.

Hurley, a fifth-generation firefighter, has said that he fractured his knee when he fell through a second-story floor that collapsed in a fire. He has said he also suffered another injury, hurting his back when thrown by the force of a fire. He has been on disability since 1993.

The city’s Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund helped pay for his training at the French Culinary Institute in New York so he could start a new career. The fund also continued to pay him thousands of dollars a month in disability benefits.

Ah, the memories: Hurley’s closes, but not without parting shot. Shorter Thomas Hurley: “Portland, you are a bunch of rubes, you can suck my knob. But I will continue to take your city’s money.”

“I’m moving on to bigger and better things,” says Hurley. “I need to be in a bigger city with more sophistication, more money…”

“Portland wasn’t ready for me,” says Hurley. “People in Seattle love what we do. They don’t mind paying for quality.”

Maybe Seattle doesn’t mind paying for quality, but I’m pretty sure they would mind if their tax money paid your mortgage.

Cock sauce

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A Chili Sauce to Crow About. (NY Times via @wanderchopstick)

It’s become a sleeve trick for chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

At the restaurant Perry St., in New York City, Mr. Vongerichten’s rice-cracker-crusted tuna with citrus sauce has always relied on the sweet, garlicky heat of sriracha. More recently, he has honed additional uses. “The other night, I used some of the green-cap stuff with asparagus,” Mr. Vongerichten said. “It’s well balanced, perfect in a hollandaise.”

In Houston, at the restaurant Reef, Bryan Caswell, a veteran of Mr. Vongerichten’s kitchens, stirs sriracha into the egg wash he uses to batter fried foods, from crab cakes to oysters to onion rings. “It’s not heavily fermented, it’s not acidic,” said Mr. Caswell, who has won a devoted following for the sriracha rémoulade he often serves with such fried dishes. “It burns your body, not your tongue.”

Sriracha has proved relevant beyond the epicurean realm. Wal-Mart sells the stuff. So do mom-and-pop stores, from Bristol, Tenn., to Bisbee, Ariz.

Sriracha is a key ingredient in street food: The two Kogi trucks that travel the streets of Los Angeles, vending kimchi-garnished tacos to the young, hip and hungry, provide customers with just one condiment, Huy Fong sriracha.

Road Trip: Umami Burger

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I was in Los Angeles recently, and entirely upon Oishii Eats’ heads up I decided to hit Umami Burger.

I already had my mind set on the namesake burger. Here’s the rest of the menu:

The Umami Burger interior itself presents a stylish, yet comforting, modernity.

The raison d’etre.

Triple pork burger with fries and “umami” ketchup.

Triple pork burger.

Umami burger.

Roasted tomato, umami ketchup, shitake mushroom, parmesan crispellete. Amazing. The composition of the burger really spoke to my worldview. Easily one of the top 5 burgers of my recent life.

onion

Malt Liquor Tempura onion rings.

Triple Pork Burger money shot. Ground pork seasoned with chorizo and “cob-smoked” bacon, manchego, and pimenton aioli. Wonderfully spiced. The roasted tomato slice served as a beautiful foil for the rest of the sandwich.

Mexicali Express

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We’ve owned a Saturn in some shape or form for over a decade now, and it’s refreshing to see our customer loyalty rewarded by GM most likely killing the brand altogether. In the meantime, I’ll continue to get the car serviced in Beaverton at the Saturn dealership like I’ve been doing for the last seven years.

exterior

I’ve been driving by this place for seven years whenever I’ve traveled to Beaverton to get the Saturn serviced, and it never occurred to me to stop by. Recently, though, after a scheduled maintenance appointment, upon spotting this sign, I realized that I had three dollars.

menu2

menu3

menu4

As you can see, the menu is a mix of old school Spanglish, and is somewhat hilarious.

menu

The “proper” taco menu is an addendum.

salsa1

salsa

Immediately, I was impressed with the prolific garnish opportunities, which included ranch dressing. I liken the appearance of ranch dressing in a restaurant to that of Matthew McConaughey in a movie. It ensures that the experience will be bad.

sauce

In addition, these table sauces were available. They were weak and watery.

tacos

The taco triumvirate (carne enchilada aka “marinated pork”, asada, carnitas). Each of these were a dollar. I had three dollars.

asada

Asada.

pastor

Carne enchilada aka “marinated pork”.

dressed

Fully dressed tacos.

If you’re in Beaverton for any reason, I suggest you keep driving.

Mexicali Express

On a street in Beaverton. You will have to look it up yourself, as I can’t in good conscience direct you there by any means.

Factory farmed chicken is not a new car, but at least it’s something

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Oprah Gives Out Free KFC in Most Hypocritical Move Yet. (Civil Eats)

It may seem harmless: a mass market “they want it, so I’m giving it to them” kind of campaign. But because Oprah has marketed herself as one who cares about animals, even getting a “Person of the Year” award last year from PETA, this KFC campaign is a serious disappointment to say the least.

This is because KFC buys their meat from Tyson, which is the largest chicken processor in the United States and is known for supporting a conglomeration of chicken CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). Inside these daylight-free hellholes, chickens are crammed so tightly together they can barely move. Worse, if we were to grow as fast as these broilers are bred to grow, we’d be 350 pounds by the time we were 2 years old.

You can’t spell swine flu without FU

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The Pork Lobbyists, Ready to Reassure. (Washington Post)

For going on two weeks, the Washington professionals who represent the nation’s 67,000 pork producers have been in a mad dash to, as President Obama once said, put lipstick on this pig. Hundreds of people have been infected in more than a dozen countries, prompting the closure of scores of schools across the United States, including four in the Washington region.

In Canada over the weekend, officials said a farmworker passed the virus to a herd of hogs. Although the farmer and the pigs apparently have recovered, and top U.S. and Mexican officials yesterday projected a cautious optimism that the new virus is not as lethal as initially feared, intense worldwide focus on swine flu shows no signs of abating.

Each morning, the pork lobbyists assemble to figure out how bad it got overnight. On this day last week, word came that officials in Egypt had ordered the slaughter of every pig in sight — about 300,000 of them. In Iowa, the first two possible cases of swine flu were reported, and the Russians and Chinese were considering banning pork imports from that Midwestern state, America’s biggest hog producer. On CNN, a news anchor teased an upcoming flu segment with footage of dead pigs.

“Worried about the swine flu?” the anchor asked. “Well, it could be worse. You could be a pig farmer.”

Aybla

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<>AybalaAybla nestles itself amongst the conurbation of food carts downtown near the intersection SW 10th and Oak.

As this prominently displayed sign attests, they serve Portland’s best gyro. Although I haven’t had every gyro sandwich in the metro area, I would have to say this boast is probably not too far off the mark.

AybalaAybla does the standard “Kronos” style gyro, as this photo of a rapidly diminishing cone o’ meat demonstrates. The gyro provisions at AybalaAybla are generally shaved a bit thicker than most Kronos joints, and crisped real well. They seem to have a less processed/generic flavor than your standard mystery meat, but that could be just wishful thinking. I’m quite positive they don’t fashion that huge cone o’ meat themselves; most likely—like every Kronos gyro cone establishment east or west of Crete—the meat is factory prefabbed from refuse cuts, pure fat, and various binder agents, and most likely shipped from the same import distribution center in north Jersey or the south side of Chicago with involvement of various degrees by the mafia.

The gyro mob likewise also probably strong arms the forceful distribution of these ubiquitous sandwich wraps. The branding on this wrapper matches neither the restaurant in question, nor the general geographic vincinity. It is therefore hilarious.

But the real hawt action at AybalaAybla isn’t the gyro sandwich, anyhow, it’s the kefta kebab.

Here’s the menu (click to view larger version).

Aybla

925 SW Alder
SW 5th and Oak
Portland, OR
http://www.ayblagrill.com

Aybla on THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Portland Food Carts has been here