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I ran across this awesome Indian shop and “snack bar” when I took my daughter into the exurban hinterlands of Beaversboro (or as us “Occupy Lake Oswego” types call it “Nikeastan”) for a birthday party in some bouncey castle bullshit warehouse slum. So I thought I should share its contents (the awesome Indian mart, not the disease incubator next door).
India Sweets & Spices
16205 Northwest Bethany Court, Beaverton, OR
(503) 690-0499
Shoyu broth with miso grilled pork, shitake, menma, and choy.
I had a pie from Gladstone Pizza a while ago. In a town with notable pizza stalwarts, and many up-and-coming pizza newcomers, Gladstone tends to fly under the radar.
The make a great pie, in my humble pizza opinion. Great crust, with a nice “chew” and quality toppings.
Including Mama Lil’ Peppers! A sausage and Mama Lil’ Peppers is a great combo, like Woodward and Bernstein, Sonny and Cher, Hannity and Colmes. Just kidding, Hannity and Colmes is actually like a combination of toxic smegma that forms a cancerous tumor in whomever approaches a 10 mile radius.
Here is the obligatory pizza upskirt, demonstrating the nice level of char. One person’s char is another person’s “burnt”, but fuck that person. The latter, not the former.
Gladstone Pizza
3813 S.E. Gladstone St.
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 775-1537
Sometime you just want a dog adorned with copious toppings. The New Seasons all-beef dog ($4.50, WITH Mama Lil’ Peppers even) certainly meets the profile.
Look at all those veggies. What the fuck. What the…delicious!
Hey, a new year, maybe I will start blogging again. Now that the therapy is starting to kick in.
Here is my favorite dish of 2011. “Peppery pork ball noodle soup” from SE Portland’s venerable (and ephemeral) Viet noodle joint HA&VL.
Behold the deliciousness of the soup-that-is-Vietnamese-but-is-not-pho-but-exists.
Masu Sushi406 SW 13th Ave # 202
Portland, OR 97205-2359
(503) 221-6278
Alton Brown: Molecular gastronomy won’t replace cooking basics (Restaurant News)
“My worry about molecular gastronomy, especially with young cooks, is that they will try to use it to replace knowing how to cook food,” Brown said during his presentation. “Show me you can cook a chicken breast properly. Show me you can cook a carrot properly. Now do it a hundred times in a row. Then we can play around with the white powders.”
Molecular gastronomy, he added, is part of the cyclical evolution of food and cooking.
“It’s an interesting skill set, but you can’t live on it. It’s not food,” Brown said. “Don’t think you can replace cooking technique with throwing a whole bunch of flavors on top of something any more than you can making it into a caviar or making it into a foam. If I live the rest of my culinary life without a seeing another foam, I’ll be OK.”
Living The Dream: The Truth About Life Inside Food Carts. (NPR)
Squish Durawa owns Wy’East Pizza in Portland, turning out artisan pies from a 64-square-foot trailer. He tells me he loves what he does, would never go back to his old job at the tile store.
But living the dream?
“No. I work roughly 12 hours a day,” Durawa says. “Twelve, fourteen, sixteen -— it doesn’t matter after twelve .”
And it’s not just the hours that are rough. Durawa deals with rain that drives his customers away, and drafts that keep his dough from rising.
And he shares this small space with an 800-degree oven.
“People say we’re living the dream,” Durawa says. “There are moments where it feels like we may be living a dream – I don’t know if it’s the dream we set out for.
Food Fight! (WSJ)
Why was a small boîte in Copenhagen crowned the best restaurant in the world for the second year in a row? And how does it stack up against the best restaurant in America? Globe-trotting restaurant critic Jonathan Gold judges the year’s biggest taste test.
Somehow, it feels like humanity has lost its narrative.
The Crisis We Should Be Panicking About: Bacon Prices. (CNBC)
But this year, just as the U.S. is worrying about its own debt crisis and a possible “double-dip” recession, the price of bacon —that sizzling, smoky comfort food we most need during tough times — is expected to surge.
After Wild Weather, Higher Food Prices On Horizon. (NPR)
Throughout April and May, U.S. farmers faced floods, tornadoes, downpours and droughts — all of which made planting difficult. Now in June, intense heat has been sweeping over much of the country.
The harsh weather likely will reduce the fall’s harvest, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That, in turn, could further drive up grocery prices for consumers.
“Farmers had everything thrown at them” by Mother Nature this spring, USDA economist Gerald Bange said. “Excessive rains led to planting delays, and then some of what was already planted actually got flooded.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s War On Craft Beer. (Commie-pinko liberal website ThinkProgress)
Tucked into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) much-discussed budget was a little-noticed provision to overhaul the state’s regulation of the beer industry. In a state long associated with beer, the provision will make it much more difficult for the Wisconsin’s burgeoning craft breweries to operate and expand their business by barring them from selling directly to restaurants and liquor stores, and preventing them from selling their own product onsite.
The new provision treats craft brewers — the 60 of whom make up just 5 percent of the beer market in Wisconsin — like corporate mega-brewers, forcing them to use a wholesale distributor to market their product. Under the provision, it would be illegal, for instance, for a small brewer located near a restaurant to walk next door to deliver a case of beer. They’ll have to hire a middle man to do it instead.
You don’t see a restaurant in Portland that follows a format like San Francisco’s (Tenderloin/Civic Center) Hai Ky Mi Gai: a southern Chinese joint (that seems like it’s actually Vietnamese) specializing in dry and wet noodle soups. Or maybe you do and I’m just an ignorant slut.
We stopped by one early weekday morning for a quick bite. The interior resembles a pho joint more than it does your typical Chinese restaurant.
A good way to start off a morning is with hot, freshly made, sweetened soy milk.
The table condiments featured fish sauce, soy, hoisin, chili oil…
and these fresh jalapenos chilis.
I got the “wet” house special noodle with wonton, which featured a clear, mild broth and fresh, wide egg noodles and plump wonton. Lots of meat on this bowl, including lean torn “free range” chicken, shrimp, and slices of cha lua, pork and liver.
Here’s a disgusting cross-section photo of a freshly bitten wonton. I have no shame.
If you’re in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and looking for some breakfast, you can do much worse than Hai Ky Mi Gai’s decent bowl of soup noodles. Like crack cocaine and a toothless hooker.
Hai Ky Mi Gia
707 Ellis St
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 771-2577
Information is Beautiful: Plenty More Fish In The Sea? (Guardian UK)
So this is a kind of collective social amnesia that allows over-exploitation to creep up and increase decade-by-decade without anyone truly questioning it. Today’s fishing quotas and policies for example are attempting to reset fish stocks to the levels of ten or twenty years ago. But as you can see from the visualization, we were already plenty screwed back then.
Located in downtown San Francisco’s colorful Tenderloin district, Turtle Tower is well-known for its northern-style pho, in particular their pho ga. The dish came highly recommended so I figured I’d give it a whirl.
Turtle Tower (cash only) is sparsely adorned, and the table centerpiece shares this same minimalism — chopsticks, salt, pepper, fish sauce and Sriracha.
Turtle Tower’s northern-style pho features wide ribbon rice noodles (somewhere between fettucini and parpadelle width) as opposed to the thinner rice noodles commonly associated with its southern counterpart. There’s plenty of sections from all over the chicken, including lean meat interspersed with knobs and ends and bits and pieces of skin.
The salad plate does not exist. The only external garnish features sliced fresh jalapenos. The soup itself is garnished simply with fresh cilantro and chopped green onions.
Turtle Tower’s fresh rice noodles have rightfully earned much praise from those who have had the pleasure of sampling their toothsome bite.
I enjoyed the soup here, but at the end of the day I was missing those flavor profiles I commonly associate with pho. The fresh, anise-y “tang” from fresh thai basil and sawtooth herb, the crunch of bean sprouts. A rich stock more redolent with a complex spice profile. The broth at Turtle Tower is much more simpler and straightforward, more “clean”. It has it’s place — it reminds me of the pho I grew up with, when we lived overseas, and my mom could not find many of the ingredients common to her style of soup, and we had access to only wide rice noodles and a limited selection of fresh Vietnamese herbs.
I shall returns soon to Turtle Tower to try their beef pho and bun thang options.
Turtle Tower
631 Larkin St
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 409-3333
Europe’s E. coli Outbreak Continues to Grow. (Food Safety News)
Officials at the University Hospital in Gronigen, Netherlands got a call Tuesday from the Bremen hospital — just over the border in Germany — asking if they’d be willing to take on extra patients in the event Bremen cannot accommodate its growing number of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) patients, those suffering the most serious effects of E. coli illness.
“I said yes, of course,” Dr. Alex Friedrich, head of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infection Control in Gronigen, told Food Safety News. “We are preparing ourselves because we are the largest hospital close to the German border.”
The fact that German hospitals — among the best-equipped on the continent — are putting international backup plans in place is a sign of how severe the E. coli O1404:H4 outbreak in Germany has become.
A Rave, a Pan, or Just a Fake?
This reads like a rave on Yelp, but it’s actually a sample from a help-wanted ad on another site — specifically, Mechanical Turk, a Web site owned by Amazon.com and a place where companies invite “Mechanical Turk workers” — thousands are registered, worldwide — to complete what could be described as microtasks. Each task pays a tiny sum. In the case of Southland Dental, workers were asked to write a fake, five-star review and post it to Southland’s Yelp page, for which they would earn 25 cents.
Fucking Mechanical Turks.
Just due east from an entrance of Tigard’s Washington Square Mall, located on the north side of the unfortunately named Locust Road, is the Bavarian Sausage Delicatessen.
The deli features an excellent selection of freshly made German sausages and cured meats (such as legit Black Forest ham).
In addition, the smallish market portion of the establishment features (admittedly expensive) German staples.
Including the real deal Holyfield Haribo gummi.
In addition to the excellent meat counter, as the name suggests, this deli serves up cooked-to-order fare. There’s even a dining area with a half-dozen seats located just to the left of the register.
This chicken sausage is no frills. Just high quality meat on a small, toasted french roll. A bit of deli mustard and really, what more do you need out of a $4 snack?
It comes even with this excellent house made potato salad—a creamy affair with a wonderful texture that surely ranks amongst the upper echelon of Portland-area potato salads.
Bavarian Sausage Deli
8705 Southwest Locust Street
Tigard, OR 97223
(503) 892-5152
50 Plates is a Pearl District restaurant that tends to fly under the radar, probably because it’s a bit off the beaten path. It’s backed by a “hospitality group” and it’s got a kitschy “upscale comfort food” concept with a menu that features somewhat cornily contrived dish names like “Sammies” (though their current menu seems to eschew this).
[By the way, a photo on their menu page I linked to above looks amazingly similar to one I posted a while ago on THIS VERY BLOG. But instead of getting apoplectic about this IP theft like most blowhards, I simply bring it up because I don't want you to think I'm shilling. I don't give two shits. I pressed a goddamn button.]
A while back I hit up 50 Plates for happy hour on a lazy Saturday afternoon and put away many of the well-priced menu items, all washed down with a few cocktails and beers.
Really good fresh-cut fries with an excellent house-made ketchup. I think they might fry the potatoes in duck fat or a fat with an animal/lard component.
On the left there are “Castrovile Artichoke Rolls” that are sorta like creamed artichoke flautas, for lack of a better description. I don’t really care for them, but my wife likes them. 50 Plates likes to do a variety of sliders; pictured above is a nice pulled pork slider with a tangly slaw.
‘
This Oregon bay shrimp cocktail with cocktail sauce and horseradish was exactly that. Hard to mess up.
Some sort of salad with hazelnuts and apple. Not a salad I would order normally, but my wife likes fruit and vegetables and so I had some and it tasted like salad with fruit in it.
On the other hand, this Cobb salad with shrimp and tender butter lettuce is something I’d order, and I did, and I ate it. Avocado isn’t a fruit, I’ve heard.
“Chowda” of the day. My daughter’s favorite, with lots of bacon and a hint of poblano, if I remember correctly.
Mussels are always excellent it seems if the product is good. This product was good.
Ditto that on oysters, served with a champagne mignonette and ponzu.
You know what’s underrated on oysters? Ponzu.
All this food and a couple round of drinks was just a shade over 70 bucks. If you’re looking for a happy hour on a Saturday afternoon you could certainly do much worse than 50 Plates.
50 Plates
333 NW 13th Ave.
Portland, Oregon
97209
503-228-5050
Italian ham slice dispute lands four in hospital. (Yahoo! News)
Finally, something worth fighting for.
I recently watched an episode of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Oregon Experience” titled “The Oystermen” which recounted our state’s colorful and surprising bivalves history.
For instance, did you know the Pacific variety, which I commonly associated with Oregon oysters, are not indigenous to Oregon at all but rather were introduced from Japan “seeds” (oyster shells rich with oyster larvae) a century ago? Did you? Huh? Can you handle the truth?
I can handle the delicious, meaty truth. Especially with a squeeze of lemon and a dash of Tabasco.
The “No Nitrites Added” Hoax. (Ruhlman)
Please, if someone can tell me what is wrong with nitrates (in green vegetables) and nitrites (in curing salts and in our bodies, a powerful antimicrobial agent in our saliva, for instance), I invite them to do so here. In the 70’s there were studies finding that at high temps, they could form nitrosamines, cancer causing compounds. I don’t disagree, but burnt things containing nitrite are bitter and unpleasant so we’re not likely to crave them in harmful quatities.
Preach it. On par with the MSG hoax.
Eegees is a Tucson chain known for their eponymous frozen fruit slush that is legendary amongst these parts. A wonderful, sugary sweet blend of fresh fruit and ice, it’s a perfect respite during a plus-95 degree day, of which there are many in the desert.
Eegees is also known for their selection of sandwiches, including their famous Eegee Grinder.
This falls into the more-nostalgic-than-good territory.
But the pull of nostalgia is strong. I remember after a long day of doing nothing in high school, and, after playing Tengen R.B.I. Baseball on Super NES for an hour, we’d hit Eegees for an afternoon pre-dinner snack. I’d always come armed with a 2-for-1 coupon, and would effortlessly put away 2 8″ Eegee Grinders like they were singular canapes at a proper cocktail function. Many times I would go back for a third, if I had the extra $3.75.
I’d always ask them to “really” load up on the hot peppers, and they were always stingy. This time, some 20 years later, they took my directive to hilariously exaggerated new heights.
Here’s a gross bite cross-section of the Eegee Grinder. Erstwhile ham and salami, ordinary pickle chips, iceberg lettuce, chopped pale tomatoes, dried herbs on stale-ish bread — what’s not to love? Memories of back-to-back Baylor/Evans homers (followed by Tony Armas at the substitute Boston Red Sox 8th spot), and dominating, sidearm-flinging Bret Saberhagen pitching feats flood the cerebral cortex. Ah, that’s the stuff.
Apropos of nothing, here’s my OXO Meat thermometer. It has seemingly overcooked my last 2 roasts, but it could be user error as I don’t even know what the fuck is going on until really it reaches fucking 140 degrees.
So there’s that.
This is like a meat popsicle.
Gartners Country Meat Market
7450 Northeast Killingsworth Street
Portland, OR 97218-3737
(503) 252-7801
After five bowls of this dish, I will announce it as Portland’s best bowl of ramen noodle soup available for purchase (or barter).
Your mileage may vary.
Shigezo
910 SW Salmon
Portland, OR
97205
(503) 688-5202
A show at North Portland’s Mississippi Studio meant a Yellow Line Max ride out to Miho, a counter-service izakaya located on the west side of Interstate (just across the street from the famed Kon Tiki/karaoke haunt The Alibi).
Ahi poke featured quite a bit of skin-on English seedless cucumber, which I’m not normally used to. But it worked, especially since the dish also showcased nice, fleshy chunks of tuna with plenty of spiced soy and a hint of sesame oil. A nice rendition to be sure.
Miho advertises a tonkotsu-style ramen, and as you can see the broth features a milky whiteness one commonly associates with this style of soup. I’m quite certain Miho starts with a commercially produced base (this applies to the noodles as well) and gussies it up, which is quite common for Japanese restaurants that aren’t solely ramen-yas or known to primarily focus on this exact discipline.
But I’d have to say Miho does a competent job in the ramen gussy-up arena, with a whole egg and other solid accoutrements (including fish cake, sprouts, and a nice amount of scallion). The pork did have a bit of unexpected smokiness, and could have had more of that tender unctuousness that protein from an ideal bowl of tonkotsu delivers.
Since I exist as a creature of habit, a bowl of ramen is always accompanied by a simple shochu on the rocks. I’m not picky — just bring me whatever you got. I’m eating a big bowl of MSG, it’s not like I’m trying to gently train my subtle palette.
Tonight’s band, The Joy Formidable, from Wales, did their country proud. If I was 15 years younger and unencumbered with self-awareness, I might have slavishly thrown myself to the whim of the lead singer/guitarist only to be disregarded like spent trash. And I would have loved it.
Miho Izakaya
4057 N Interstate Ave
Portland, OR 97227-1072
(503) 719-6152
Is Sugar Toxic? (Behind NY Times paywall)
It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.
Freeze-dried food and the new frugal frontier. (LA Times)
Costco’s Great Gift Ideas catalogue last Christmas included a one-year, four-person supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food on sale for $2,999. It sold out.
The fear factor alone can drive families to avoid restaurants and stock up on coffee in ways that would have seemed extreme a few years ago.
“There are all kinds of ways consumers can feel this,” said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Analytics. “With unemployment hitting 10%, most people probably know someone who has lost their job. Housing markets haven’t recovered yet and that matters for about two-thirds of consumers who are homeowners.”
Unwanted New Item on Menu: Higher Prices. (WSJ)
At Thomas Keller’s esteemed restaurant Per Se, the prix fixe has quietly jumped to $295 from $275.
At sandwich chain ‘wichcraft, the price of a bag of chips and a turkey sandwich has crept up.
And Hoomoos Asli, a casual Israeli eatery in Nolita, last week started charging a “vegetable shortage surcharge” on its eggplant items.
How to Beat the Salad Bar. (Behind the NYT paywall)
Nate Silver breaks down salad bar economies of scale for the the New York Times.
Can This Chip Be Saved? (WSJ)
To make potato chips, it takes beet juice, purple cabbage and carrots. At least that’s what Frito-Lay has concluded as part of its big push to use natural ingredients in its chips. The veggies replace ingredients such as FD&C Red 40, an artificial coloring agent.
“If the ingredient isn’t in a consumer’s cupboard, can we get it off the label?” says Tim Fink, director of Frito-Lay’s seasonings team.
Frito-Lay, the biggest U.S. seller of salty snacks, is embarking on an audacious plan. By the end of the year, it intends to make half its snacks sold in the U.S. with only natural ingredients. Many are already in grocery stores.
Where Steaming Fried Noodles Spell Relief. (Behind the NY Times Pay Wall)
Nutritionists and the diet-conscious have made instant ramen a noodle non grata. One packet contains about half the maximum amount of sodium anyone should eat in a day. And most versions are fried, sometimes with particularly unhealthy trans fat.
But attacking instant ramen donated to feed Japanese earthquake victims would be just wrong, said Mr. Chang. It’s still very cold in the north, and there was a recent snow. Although potable water is at a premium, those who can find a source of fuel might melt snow or ice to turn dried noodles into sustenance.
“You are not going to tell a starving person they can’t eat that,” he said. “Now is not the time. For the dire situation they’re in, I can’t imagine a better food.”
Stopped by the North Mississippi location of Por Que No recently for a nice lunch.
The ceviche comes with plenty of freshly fried tortilla chips (that seem a bit too “puffy”, to lack a better description).
If I would have to guess, these shrimp are cooked with heat rather than marinated in citrus, which makes this a “cocteles de cameron” rather than a strict ceviche. It was certainly decent, if a bit lacking in seasoning and with a tad bit too many dominant notes of citrus and acid. I’d, however, probably order this every time I revisited Por Que No, as for $8.50 it’s a good value, all things considered. Ask for some salt.
Taco de pescado.
Taco de camerones. Give it to Por Que No, they know how to present a visually appealing taco.
These rojo (guajillo) and verde salsas (serve-yourself, to the immediate left of the counter) certainly look resonant and complex, but in reality they were tepidly restrained and a bit under seasoned.
And a fully dressed taco here is a paragon of model good looks, but as with many runway fashion models, the underlying substance can be a tad wanting.
Taqueria Por Que No seems to invite strong feelings from the pro/con forces in Portland. But this is clear: they are much appreciated. After a few wildly successful years in North Portland at their Mississippi location, they opened up a SE Hawthorne outpost that seems to be more popular than the original.
I am thankful for the responsibly sourced ingredients. Menu items here are bright and vibrant in presentation, and certainly carefully crafted. The handmade tortillas are very good. The proteins are of high quality. It’s just that the fare here lacks that certain…oomph, that primal, “exciting” quality of authentic taqueria fare that makes your taste buds perk up in quasi-revolt. Por Que No feels more like the Decemberists than Red Fang.
Also, two tacos and a small cocteles came out to $16. The seafood tacos run $3.50 (for fish and calamari—which I wanted but they were out of) and shrimp is $4, and these aren’t any larger than your typical taqueria items, so cost, at least relative to other taquerias, probably influences those firmly in the Por Que No “con” camp. You would need 3 (if not 4) shrimp tacos to sate an appetite, which places Por Que No out of the indie rock realm and catapults them more into the highbrow, “literate rock” territory.
But hey, the Decemberists are a mighty fine band with many fans, and they sell a lot of records.
Por Que No
3524 N Mississippi Ave
Portland, OR 97227
(503) 467-4149
It’s difficult to describe how powerful this video is.
In my short time on this earth, and in even my shorter time of being aware of a self-appointed Jewish deli “Council of Elders”, people seem to talk a lot of shit about pastrami and what they perceive to be simulacrums of the real thing they used to get back in their homelands of New York or Montreal or Los Angeles. This happened ad nauseum when Kenny and Zukes debuted their concept of a “modern” Jewish deli in downtown Portland a few years ago.
But I really don’t give a fuck about provincial bitchslaps. Or childhood archetypes those insufferable prigs impossibly impose upon others who might judge what a good pastrami sandwich might taste like without first fully taking into account the historical migratory patterns of the anasazi Jewish diaspora. For me: does the pastrami taste good?
And Kenny and Zukes delivers what accounts to be, in my humble estimations, a damn good pastrami sandwich on rye.
The pastrami itself is hand-sliced, thick, meaty, smoky, tender, ringed with a nice amount of unctuoss fat – everything I look for in a sandwich meat. At one point in my life I wasn’t even a big rye fan, but I can say for certainty I am officially one now and K&Z’s rye bread is fine by me. Squeeze on some brown mustard and I’m golden.
The potato salad was a bit unexpected, as instead of the usual creamy glop this was vinegar-based, and fresh and vibrant.
Kenny & Zuke’s
1038 SW Stark St
Portland, OR 97205
503.222.3354
Most of my experiences at In-N-Out Burger have been located (outside of a murky 10:35 am experience on Saturday morning in the midst of Vegas post-bachelor party bacchanalia that I vaguely remember and am not sure actually happened — it’s quite possible that I dreamt this entire encounter) in the state of California. When I lived in San Diego for 3 years after college, and in Westminster, OC, for a couple years in elementary school, In-N-Out was the stalwart fast food experience when you wanted a cheap, no-frill burger. You only went to McDonalds or Burger King or Jack in the Box if you didn’t have a car or self-respect.
So now that my old home town of Tucson has three In-N-Out burgers these days, I felt I naturally needed to stop by to see how the Southern Arizona experience matches up with the In-N-Out motherland.
And I have to say it’s practically the same. Give In-N-Out credit for consistency and uniformity. If they can’t do what’s right in their minds, they just won’t do it, which explains how they’ve largely bucked the trend of unfettered growth and expansion that has afflicted not only the fast food industry, but society as a whole.
The menu display trades entirely in the same exact minimalist shared by every other In-N-Out in the history of mankind.
Same open kitchen manned by enterprising, well-paid (contextually, compared with other fast food joints) youngsters, proudly donning the In-N-Out uniform.
Our order. Same low prices.
The burgers.
My usual burger, Animal-Style, mustard+ketchup instead. I usually get two of these, but this was simply a post-breakfast/pre-lunch dessert.
The fries — fresh cut, single fried, on order — are the same, and would disappoint those who hate In-N-Out fries, as these are the same fries. They aren’t exactly the crispest of fried potatoes, but I have a soft place in my heart for a fresh cut fry. Apparently so does my daughter, who claims these are her favorite fries.
She’s also pretty stoked about her cheeseburger.
Stopped by for breakfast (they open at 9 am on Sundays now). Yes, they still feature some of the best hand-made tortillas in the metro area. And yes, FWIW, they still feature meat inside these tortillas and call them “tacos”.
Basket o’ tacos. When you get one of these life seems exciting.
Asada.
Pastor. Oh the pastor.
Pescado.
The next week I stopped by for lunch.
Tamale platter. I like the beans on the platters at Sanchez. They are simple, creamy platter-style beans. Probably has a bit of lard. The tamales (pork) were a bit on the dry side.
Pastor torta. As with most tortas, I always seem to regret not ordering it simply in taco form. That’s just me. But I appreciated the flat-top grill press on the sandwich.
Pretty decent enchiladas.
Sanchez Taqueria
13050 Southwest Pacific Highway
Tigard, OR 97223-5072
(503) 684-2838
Nestled in an residential neighborhood a few blocks south of the Reed College campus, Eastmoreland Market really is an undiscovered gem in the far southern-central part of Portland’s southeastern quadrant. I presume it’s a loosely-kept secret amongst the locals, who include I assume many of the fortunate inhabitants of the palatial estates that comprise the Eastmoreland neighborhood that spills out west from the market. And I am going to go out on a limb and say these folks generally don’t have a lot of Yelp reviews under their belts.
As the name suggests, this is a proper market. Consider it an upscale “bodega”, full of high quality brands and artisanal food finds.
In addition, they’ve got a full-on open kitchen setup from which serious fare is finely executed.
They make what I’ve considered to be the best sandwich I’ve had in my time in Portland — a super version of the venerable muffuletta.
Eastmoreland’s version comes stacked atop perfectly toasted ciabatta, replete with multiple layers of fine meats and cheeses complimented with a beautifully oily, spiced olive salad studded with slices of crisp celery. This is a sandwich nonpareil.
Eastmoreland Market & Kitchen
3616 SE Knapp St
Portland, OR 97202-8349
(503) 771-1186
When I lived in Tucson, I used to buy Santa Cruz brand red chili paste concentrate from the 17th Street Farmers Market, which was just a short bike ride down the street from my house in the barrio.
It’s a mild and very versatile paste made from red chilies grown in Southern Arizona, just north of the (Sonoran) Mexican border. When I was last in Tucson, I made sure to swing by the market to procure a jar to smuggle back up here to Portland for later use.
Red chili beef
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 1/2 pound beef chuck roast, but into very large chunks
- Flour
- Salt and pepper
- 1 can cheap lager
- 1 large white onion
- 6-7 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 red fresh jalapeno chilis, seeded
- 5-6 dried guajillo chilies, cut lengthwise, seeded and stemmed
- 1 tablespoon pasilla chile powder
- 1 tablespoon chile de arbol powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1/2 teaspoon ground Mexican oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
- 6 tablespoons Santa Cruz red chili paste concentrate*
- 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
- 3 bay leaves
- 1/4 bunch cilantro for garnish
*Of course, you’re most likely not going to find Santa Cruz brand red chili concentrate in your neck of the woods (you can order it online). I suppose a decent substitute is a a small can (14 ounces or so) of a Mexican brand red chili sauce, like Las Palmas.
Soak guajillo chilies in warm water for 30 minutes or until reconstituted.
As shown above, use a knife to scrape the flesh from the chili, discarding skin. Set aside.
Chop onions and fresh red jalapenos.
Season beef with salt and pepper and dust with flour.
Heat oil in large skillet and brown beef.
Remove from heat, and add onions and jalapenos, and sweat over medium heat for 3-4 minutes.
Turn up heat to high, and deglaze pan briefly with beer and chicken stock. As you can see, I use some pretty shitty, cheap-ass lawnmower beer.
Add chili paste concentrate, guajillo chili flesh, all dried herbs and spices, and stir to mix well.
In this case I was using my trusted Cuisinart pressure cooker, which I find works excellently with slow-braised dishes, so I transferred everything (inluding the beef, of course) to the chamber and set to low pressure simmer for half an hour. If you’re doing stovetop, return beef to pan and cover and reduce to heat to low, and cook for 2 1/2 hours, stirring every half hour or so. You can alternately transfer the pot to a 250 degree oven and cook it for 2 1/2 hours, as well.
Top with cilantro.
I enjoy eating my red chili with a simple, medium-grain white rice pilaf.
Oyster Extinction? Stop Panicking and Get the Facts (In A Half Shell [ Oyster Power ])
This is where I see most secondary news sources come to a fault. They make a giant leap in connecting the decline in global oyster reef to your favorite oysters vanishing from the raw bar. Perhaps it’s to drive more hits on a page or maybe it’s just a lack of understanding. Fortunately, this is not an accurate depiction of today’s oyster consumption trends.
I am not trying to downplay the importance of oyster reefs or diminish the need to scrutinize wild fishery management. I just want to put things into perspective so that unnecessary panic can be nipped at the bud.
Excellent.
U.N. Food Agency Issues Warning on China Drought. (NY Times)
World wheat prices are already surging, and they have been widely cited as one reason for protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. A separate United Nations report last week said global food export prices had reached record levels in January. The impact of China’s drought on global food prices and supplies could create serious problems for less affluent countries that rely on imported food.
With $2.85 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, nearly three times that of Japan, the country with the second-largest reserves, China has ample buying power to prevent any serious food shortages.
“They can buy whatever they need to buy, and they can outbid anyone,” Mr. Zeigler said. China’s self-sufficiency in grain prevented world food prices from moving even higher when they spiked three years ago, he said.
Eggs Are Now Naturally Lower in Cholesterol. (PR Newswire)
According to new nutrition data from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), eggs are lower in cholesterol than previously thought. The USDA-ARS recently reviewed the nutrient composition of standard large eggs, and results show the average amount of cholesterol in one large egg is 185 mg, 14 percent lower than previously recorded. The analysis also revealed that large eggs now contain 41 IU of vitamin D, an increase of 64 percent.
Portland’s own Thermals played a show just last week here in Stumptown. The venue was Branx, a dank and sweaty den of inequity in Portland’s industrial inner-eastside brimming with underage grifters, B.O.-laden hipsters, and (on this night) a hapless, old loser that was yours truly.
One excellent benefit of the location is that it allowed me to start the night off right just a few blocks away at Biwa. And since it was a late Friday night punk rawk show, the late start (I’m really too old and decrepit these days to experience more than one live act in a row) meant I was seated at the counter just when late night/counter happy hour was just kicking off.
As is customary at Biwa, things start of with a hot towel followed by a simple amuse of stewed daikon and konbu. Such a simple and wonderful tradition.
A shochu on the rocks with a Sapporo back.
The steak tartare at Biwa has long been a favorite of mine. In the past, it was served with thin slices of cucumber. On this occasion, small, pointed spears of crisp romaine accompanied the tartare, and I used the lettuce as a foil on which to scoop delicious nibbles of cold beef. The beef was spicier than what I’ve experience in previous visits, punched up with sesame oil and green onions, and the richness of the quail egg really tied the dish together. I love beef crudo/tartare, and I have to say Biwa’s version is one of my favorite renditions.
On to the Biwa ramen. Biwa used to feature two types of ramen, most recently the “Biwa” version and a “Chicken” version. They’ve consolidated, I presume for expediency sakes, into one version. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on Biwa’s version of ramen — many appear to pooh-pooh it as an erstwhile simulacrum of the real deal. I know when Biwa first opened I had difficulty accepting it as the genuine article, but the last half dozen bowls I’ve had over the last couple years have been solid, which I think results through ongoing tinkering and adjustment. The most recent version featured toothsome, curly fresh noodles and a nicely salty broth with a bit of “cloudiness” that hit nice pork notes and was ultimately satisfying. Biwa’s ramen is rather minimalist, topped with just green onions, a sheet of nori, and an egg. But oh man, that egg. It tastes like a farm fresh egg, and I would put it on a 5-to-6 minute scale that results in a perfectly soft-boiled yolk that spills unctuously into the soup. So fucking good.
I think my bill came out to $22, drinks included. Normally the ramen is $10 or so, and if you up the ante with extra toppings such as cha su pork (at $4) the price can get quite ridiculous for a bowl of soup, but as it stood the Biwa ramen was an insane steal at $5 (this pricing is only available to those who sit at the counter, and only after 9:30 pm).
Biwa continues to bring the goods.
And so do the Thermals.
Me, just hanging out in my kitchen, by myself, as usual. Life is pretty good.
Food Prices Worldwide Hit Record Levels, Fueled by Uncertainty, U.N. Says. (NY Times)
Global food prices are moving ever higher, hitting record levels last month as a jittery market reacted to unpredictable weather and tight supplies, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.
It was the seventh month in a row of food price increases, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which put out the report. And with some basic food stocks low, prices will probably continue reaching new heights, at least until the results of the harvest next summer are known, analysts said.
“Uncertainty itself is a new factor in the market that pushes up prices and will not push them down,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist and the grain expert at F.A.O. “People don’t trust anyone to tell them about the harvest and the weather, so it has to await harvest time.”
There’s worse things in this world than all-you-can-eat tandoori chicken. Like genocide. And herpes.
Swagat Indian Cuisine
4325 Southwest 109th Avenue
Beaverton, OR 97005
(503) 626-3000
The Long Pull of Noodle Making. (NY Times)
Michael Hodgkins is a stern, passionate chef from upstate New York, with a dedication to local and organic ingredients. Huacan Chen is an aspiring entrepreneur from Fuzhou in southern China, with a skill that happens to be seriously marketable in New York at the moment: he knows how to spin out endless skeins of la mian, smooth, springy hand-stretched noodles, using nothing but a countertop and his hands.
Hung Ry, a restaurant that opened in October, serves noodle soups that brilliantly combine Mr. Chen’s noodles and Mr. Hodgkins’s broths: deep brews of oxtail, duck belly, roasted squash, star anise, ginger, tamarind, dried chilies and mushrooms. They are the most recent expression — building on David Chang’s ramen and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s chicken-coconut soup — of the East-West dialogue that has produced some of New York’s most memorable modern dishes.
Because of Mr. Chen’s skills, they are also a high expression of traditional Chinese noodle arts. Even a thousand years ago, there were late-night noodle shops in many Chinese cities; today, niu rou la mian, beef soup with hand-pulled noodles in the hearty style of western China, is a ubiquitous dish. There is a staggering array of fresh noodles served all over China — far beyond the familiar lo mein and chow fun — and more and more of them are popping up here.
There’s been a lot of predictable outrage and gnashing of teeth over an Alabama law firm’s seemingly pointless decision to sue Taco Bell for “false advertising”. Apparently a sneaking suspicion — that the meat slurry used by the fast food juggernaut in their painfully-bad-it’s-good menu offerings contained very little beef — was actually confirmed.
It looks bad but passable… until you learn that—according to the Alabama law firm suing Taco Bell—only 36% of that is beef. Thirty-six percent. The other 64% is mostly tasteless fibers, various industrial additives and some flavoring and coloring. Everything is processed into a mass that actually looks like beef, and packed into big containers labeled as “taco meat filling.” These containers get shipped to Taco Bell’s outlets and cooked into something that looks like beef, is called beef and is advertised as beef by the fast food chain.
In terms of the legitimacy of the class action suit itself, I would say Taco Bell has uniquely and cleverly shielded themselves of culpability by referring to their menu items as “beefy”, which in this case is technically true.
The Internet was similarly abuzz a few years ago when it was discovered that the “guacamole” dip commonly sold in erstwhile supermarket chains contained nary an avocado, and were essentially of the some composition as the crappy french onion dip it sat besides on the shelf, except with a booster shot of pale, artificial green.
If you’re paying attention, this really should come of no surprise. In the case of the supermarket avocado subterfuge, a quick glance at the ingredients of the guacamole container would confirm it always primarily consisted of industrially emulsified vegetable oil, and in the case of Taco Bell any sort of self awareness would have allowed the average person to discern that little of what passes as “ground beef” is actually flesh extracted from cows.
As someone who grew up on Chef Boyardee Ravioli (not because it was forced upon me, but out of pure, misguided choice), I recall being nine years old and marveling at how the first “meat” ingredient was “crackermeal”. I assumed at this young age this wasn’t a slang for what poor white people in Arkansas called beef — this was simply filler. Taco Bell’s “seasoned ground beef” similarly shares the same sort of strangely uniform and smooth texture.
If you’ve ever dared to look at what goes on inside the back of the house of any Taco Bell after placing your order, you’d already know that what goes on in the back-of-the-house doesn’t approach anything that resembles cooking in any conventional sense. Taco Bell is simply an MRE repurposing exercise. I presume the meat (and this includes all the meat, not just the seasoned ground beef) comes pre-cooked in unnaturally large, cryovaced bags, and each morning the opening shift simply cuts open a bag and pours the ignoble contents into a slot on the steam table and allows it to bring it up to temperature.
So how can it be a surprise that Taco Bell’s beef is more filler than meat? This is a place that has guacamole and sour cream loaded into separate chambers of the same squirt-gun. Taco Bell preys off teenagers, inebriated college students, and those of us suffering from bad judgement. Its raison d’etre revolves almost entirely around selling soda at huge profit margins — food is just a necessary means to an end.
Taco Bell President Greg Creed said in a statement that the lawyers who filed the lawsuit got their facts wrong and that Taco Bell plans to take legal action against those making the allegations. He did not explain specifically what type of legal action Taco Bell might take. “At Taco Bell, we buy our beef from the same trusted brands you find in the supermarket,” Creed said. “We start with 100 percent USDA-inspected beef.”
I, for one, am strangely comforted that only 36% of what is found in Taco Bell’s seasoned ground beef is actually meat.
A recent lunch-time trek for a sandwich from Portland’s venerable Bunk Sandwiches proved to be a worthy dispatch.
Here’s the full menu.
I picked up an Italian Meats Sandwich with Mama’s Lil’s peppers and provolone piccante. It was stuffed inside a perfectly crusty roll, and the quality of bread, fillings and garnishes immeasurably bootstrapped the overall experience.
At $9 it’s not the cheapest sandwich you can find, but it is surely one of the bestest. Those Mama Lil’l peppers are like capsicum crack.
Bunk Sandwiches
621 Southeast Morrison Street
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 477-9515
Bunk Sandwiches on the WORLD WIDE WEB
A trip back to the old stomping grounds of Tucson wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Taqueria Pico de Gallo. I no longer refer to Tucson as my “hometown”, even though I spent high school (and a year of junior high), college, and four post-college years there. With my 9th year now in Portland, and 3 years living in San Diego, I’ve determined a) I’ve lived more of my sentient “adult” life outside of Tucson, and b) I am an old fucking bastard.
So back in the day I would “stomp” over to South 6th Ave. in what is actually and formally the municipality of “South Tucson”. South Tucson is completely surrounded from all areas by another, larger entity, that being the municipality of Tucson itself. South Tucson, however, is a for reals city and shit, with its own Mayor and City Council. It is thusly similar to other enclaves like Lesotho and Luxembourg, though with the highest per-capita-murder rate of any “city” in the United States, South Tucson is more like the former than the latter. That being so, I had no problem “stomping” over the mile and half to Pico de Gallo on my Schwinn Cruiser when I lived just north of South Tucson. I never felt threatened, outside of the time when I went one morning at 9am and they weren’t opened yet, in which case I was held hostage by the promise of deliciousness. Also, that bike was eventually stolen, but, get this — it actually happened a mile “north” of South Tucson, in “south” Tucson. Oh the hilarious irony! Fate, you are a cruel mistress indeed.
I’ve previously sung the praises of Pico de Gallo on these very pixelated pages prior to my last visit. (Clue: if you see “again” in any of my titles, such as in the title to this post, it literally means I’m eating there again for a second, or third, or even the “more-th” time. It’s probably the only time my words are free from exaggeration or distortion or just plain lies).
In the humble opinion of yours truly, Pico de Gallo serves up the best tacos in Southern Arizona. Here are some photos of 9 AM taco breakfast I enjoyed last year, and for measured effect these are presented from three camera different angles.
What you just saw: pescado, asada, and cabeza. Pico de Gallo’s tacos veer towards diminutive, but what they lack in circumference they make up in heft and taste. The fillings are abundant and flavorful, and pickled onions add just the right amount of crunchy tart. Another distinguishing element are the thick masa tortillas that anchor the base of these tacos — wonderful stone-ground corn discs that are often times too fresh and delicate that they often have a difficult time staying composed in the time it takes for the four bites to polish one off. Pico de Gallo offers a flour option, but I have never felt curious enough to cheat on the corn.
There’s only one table sauce, and you’ll get a squirt bottle with each taco order. It’s a thick, fiery, intensely red habanero salsa that makes my brain perspire within seconds. Painfully addictive, and a perfect way to help sweat out the previous night’s regret.
Considering Tucson is a good four hours from the ocean (the Sea of Cortez is located over the Mexican border to the southwest), you might be surprised that you can find one of the truly great fish tacos I’ve had in my lifetime. in this landlocked city. I know I was, especially considering I moved back to Tucson in the late nineties after spending a few years in San Diego.
At this price, they are practically giving their tacos away. A true gem. If you are ever in Tucson, it’s a must visit.
Taqueria Pico de Gallo
2618 S 6th Ave
Tucson, AZ 85713
(520) 623-8775
With Mermaid’s Oysterpedia App, the World Is Your …. (Grub Street).
Not only does it give you tasting notes on 200 North American oysters, but it lets you rate them — a great thing if you’re always forgetting which types you do or don’t like.
A must-visit for me each and every time I visit my old stomping grounds in Tucson is “Little” Cafe Poca Cosa, the charming, diminutive outpost of the venerable Cafe Poca Cosa. The original restaurant serves decidedly “upscale” Mexican and Southwestern cuisine, while its little cousin seats only a few dozen and has a smaller, more concentrated menu of well executed dishes. But in keeping with the rich Poca Cosa tradition, the plates at the Little outlet are still vibrant and full of color and fresh flavors.
My office for a year was located just steps across the alleyway from their original downtown location, and I ate there at least a couple times a week. One thing I appreciated was that Little Poca Cosa (since their lunch platters consisted of mostly of slowly braised meats, and rice and beans were already available on the breakfast plates) served their full menu even for breakfast. And at 9:15 a.m. in the morning, music (world/latino music with a social justice bent) would pump in from the stereo system at wonderfully uncomfortable levels. This fit into my savory breakfast worldview quite nicely, and also cemented my preferred lazy routine — rolling into the office, responding to a few emails, finding a couple things on the Internet to outrage me, and then heading out for a spicy bit to eat — that I still practice with great zeal to this day.
Unfortunately this is now not the case. Change can be hard…but good thing I came for lunch!
My go-to dish was always the pork (“cochinito”) chili colorado. My most recent visit found that LPC has changed the dish up a bit, no longer serving cubes of braised meat but rather pork that has a “pulled” consistency.
It was still excellent.
The meal begins as usual with freshly fried tortilla chips and a safe (in terms of spice level) and fresh tomato salsa. You’ll also get your own very own warmer full of precious little corn tortillas.
The beans are always well executed, and a touch of salt is needed to really bring out the flavor of the perfectly cooked pintos.
My preferred plan of attack is to roll the chili colorado into tacos (with salsa spooned on top), then the beans, and then I douse the salad with herbed dressing Poca Cosa features on the table.
Then, after polishing off the fruit, I mix the rice with the residual chili sauce and dressing (which lends a crisp, salad-y, acid-tinged finish), and inhale every last grain.
Little Poca Cosa
151 N Stone Ave
Tucson, AZ 85707
Carne seca translates literally to “dried meat”. A Sonoran dish indigenous to the Tucson area, it’s generally air-dried, shredded beef “jerky” that has been reconstituted (by adding some sort of liquid base) and prepared in some fashion. There are a few restaurants in the area known for their carne seca, probably most famously El Charro, which purportedly dries their carne seca on the roof at their downtown location, utilizing the punishing Arizona sun to their advantage.
It is one of the things I miss the most about Tucson, and whenever I return to this city I indulge in this hard-to-come-by (at least outside of Tucson*) TYPE O’ MEAT.
La Indita has the benefit of being just a few hundred yards from my in-law’s home off of historic 4th Avenue. By most respects, the understated restaurant speaks Mexican in the Southern Arizonan Sonoran parlance—mainly platter style, with sides of rice and beans.
The interior is rather spartan. Some say “divey” and obsess about cleanliness and wonder aloud regarding the latest health department score. These people are killjoys and have sex (if at all) exclusively in the missionary position.
Once you’re seated you’re greeted by your very own pitcher of excellent table salsa accompanied by thick, freshly fried tortilla chips.
Their version of carne seca is a “wet” version—or at least it was the last time I visited. Wet in this instance, as you can see, simply means the carne seca has been braised in a savory red sauce. In El Charro’s version the beef is reconstituted just enough to achieve a “dry” quality and then stir-fried with chilies, tomatoes and onions.
The tortilla often served on the side at Sonoran restaurants in Tucson is flour. However, they are vastly different from the commercial, overly fluffy, flour pablum you’re likely to encounter at your average supermarket. A freshly made Tucson-style flour tortilla is generally comically large (about the size of a large pizza), composed of enough lard to give it a sinfully “crispy” texture, and usually come to the table folded.
A quality flour tortilla, such as the one served at La Indita, is sprinkled with pockets of char from direct contact with a flat grill.
And is in some spots deliciously thin and translucent.
A roll-your-own carne seca soft Tucson taco is a great joy to behold.
La Indita
622 N 4th Ave
Tucson, AZ 85705
(520) 792-0523
* Being that Phoenix is only 2 hours north of Tucson, which itself is only 1 hour north of Sonora, I imagine you can score carne seca in that metropolitan area. But I consider Phoenix a cross between Dubai and Dallas, a sprawling, paved expanse of soul-crushing anti-matter, and I’m not sure of what can possibly exist in that void.
Biannually, the Southern Arizona city of Tucson hosts a street fair along 4th Avenue, just north of the the 4th Avenue Underpass that leads into the downtown city core.
The street fair occurs in December and March, a time when the weather in Arizona is quite lovely. The event features your usual panoply of street fair “circuit” artisans, hippies, and countercultural hoi polloi peddling trinkets, assorted wares, and a provincial sense of whimsy (“Aunt Esther, we went to the homeless district and bought a bedazzled tarot card case sold by somebody from Taos!”).
There’s lots of beer tents serving watery domestic swill, and quite an interesting food scene as well. The following photos give you a taste of what rolls into Tucson twice a year, for only 4 days at a time, only to break down as fast they set up, leaving in their wake a bunch of sunburned rubes and a mountain of discarded paper and plastic detritus.
A vow for 2011: No cheap chicken. (Francis Lam @Salon)
I want to get back to that sense of value, of deliberate appreciation and enjoyment. (And, hopefully, it’s not going to happen from privation.) I’m going to learn about chicken. About how it’s produced, how it’s valued by the people who raise it and by the people who cook and serve it. I’m going to talk and share stories. I’m going to learn how chicken turned from something special to something common to something cheap.
Foodie fatigue. (Chicago Tribune)
“Having more people interested in good food is never a bad thing,” said food writer Amanda Hesser, who recently assembled “The Essential New York Times Cookbook.” But what she can’t stand, she said, is eating dinner with people who “only want to talk about food and every place where they ate, like, doughnuts or something, and where the best doughnuts are secretly found. Knowing a lot about food culture is a good thing. That cataloguing of food experience is becoming tiresome. I’m pro-food experts. I’m just not so sure I want to have dinner with them or have them judge me on the coffee I drink.”
Pretty nifty, actually.
Another electrical guitar-driven rock-n-roll music concert at the Wonder Ballroom means another pre-show nosh at Toro Bravo. I am a creature of repetition.
Things started off with a Basque Kiss—Monopolowa vodka, Txakolina wine, apricot liqueur, peach bitters, lemon.
I hadn’t had the Coppa Steak in a couple years, and considering I was about to witness the frenetic, punk art-rock stylings of Brooklyn’s Les Savy Fav, I felt red meat would properly gird my loins for the impending sonic assault. The coppa steak is sliced to order from an entire smoked beef shoulder, layered atop olive oil-poached fingerlings and chopped olives, and served with a healthy dollop of almond-y salbitxada sauce. A smoky dish of meaty satisfaction.
Commissioner Randy Leonard targets Portland’s food cart pods for permit violations. (OregonLive.com)
Portland’s quirky, popular food cart scene is attracting even more attention — and we’re not talking about another glowing review in The New York Times.
Portland city inspectors are reviewing the electrical and structural safety of food carts and the decks, patios and rooftops that owners have added.
City Commissioner Randy Leonard said Wednesday that he vaulted them to the top of building inspectors’ priority list after touring a downtown food cart pod.
“I was very alarmed by what appeared to be illegal structures popping up as appendages to food carts, which no longer make them food carts but illegal restaurants,” Leonard, who oversees building codes, said in an interview.
Bun Bo Hue Minh has no relation to Binh Minh, the venerable banh mi shop with locations in NE and SE Portland, or Pho Binh Minh, the erstwhile pho joint in Tigard with attitude problems. It’s all a bit confusing, but one thing the Vietnamese people are known for, along with degenerate gambling and screaming into phone handsets for no apparent reason, is a lack of brand self-awareness and being innately incapable to create singularly unique nomenclature. On my mother’s side, I have at least three cousins named “Duc Nguyen”.
The location, just east of the 205 on SE Division, is kind of a dive, which for Vietnamese soup joint is often considered a redeeming quality.
That and the chili-spiked fish sauce condiment that is on the table informs you that this is the right place for a good bowl of soup.
As the name suggests, Bun Bo Hue Minh specializes in the central Vietnamese soup that features rice noodles (fatter than the vermicelli common to pho or bun dishes), and showcases a deeply flavored, fiery broth seasoned with chilis and lemongrass.
And Bun Bo Hue Minh certainly does produce a solid rendition. The broth—strong and assertive—is chock full of the meaty goodness you expect out of a great bowl of bun bo hue, including slices of beef shank, peppery cha lua, pork knuckles, and, for the bold, cubes of congealed pork blood. If you come here only for the namesake specialty, you’ll do good. I have to say, in regards to this particular dish, Ngoc Han Bun Bo Hue delivers the unrivaled deliciousness in these parts, but Bun Bo Hue Minh is no slouch (along with “Bun Bo Hue”, further down south on SE 82nd near Clackamas — I know, it’s very confusing).
But BBHM also rolls a tight salad roll—fresh and well handled. At $3.50, two of these are great value. The dual chive backbone that runs the length of the roll informs you that someone cares. As I always sub nuoc cham instead of the (more traditional) hoison, and I appreciate it when a Vietnamese restaurant aggressively seasons their dipping sauce, but I always spike it with garlic chili sauce. If your Vietnamese doesn’t have this on the table, you’re going to the wrong place.
I also enjoyed the bun rieu here. The soup came with a fair amount of meat/seafood “loaf”, and the broth had a great balance of flavors, pungent with seafood flavor and redolent of deep tomato. Bun rieu is typically a soup I avoid in a restaurant (my mom’s version was a household favorite growing up) and in my experience it’s an afterthought at most Viet restaurants that try to cover all the bases. As a general rule I won’t order it unless a place is known for it (the only reason I came here to order it was on the strength of Extra MSG’s report at Portlandfood.org), but BBHM delivers a dependable version.
Above: The busser hates my kind.
I’m not sure what was up my first very visit (when I ordered bun rieu), but I was only given a sparse salad plate of cilantro, sprouts, and lime by a busser. Bun rieu absolutely demands mints (spearmint, parilla, lemon balm) so I had to flag down my server and insist that this treasonous crime against humanity be addressed immediately. I’m not sure if the busser thought perhaps I wasn’t part Vietnamese, but in any regard I accused him of racism and cursed his family, including his pets. We exchanged fisticuffs on Division street, and subsequently a pop-locking/breakdance battle. Nobody won (nobody ever wins). I assume this faux pas de garni was simply a one-time oversight, and ensuing visits have proved this to be the case. But as overly enthusiastic Ron Paul teabaggers abundantly proved this past election cycle, don’t ever allow anybody to TREAD ON YOU.
Above: What I made them bring me, as the U.S. Constitution mandates an abundant garnish platter (Article 7, Section 3, Paragraph 2), just like it says slaves are 60% human.
Bun Bo Hue Minh
8560 Southeast Division Street
Portland, OR 97266-1553
(503) 777-1917
Bun Bo Hue Minh on the WORLD WIDE WEB
Every Saturday I go to HA&VL, including last Saturday, I go into the small restaurant intent on trying their version of Bun Bo Hue, which I see others eating and which always looks fantastic. But the lure of the bun moc (and the fact I can get excellent versions of BBH at the two places that specialize in this soup just within a stone throw’s of HA&VL at any time) always wins me over. Chock full of peppery pork meatballs, cha lua, fish balls, and slices of pork ringed with gelatinous fatty goodness, it always delivers satisfaction on a level that is now legendary.
I love how HA&VL has evolved from its original roots of a coffee/sandwich shop, and now has a fully panoply of on-table condiments, including chopped bird chilies soaking in fish sauce, which allows me to spike alternate spoonfuls with tiny flavorful umami heat bombs throughout the course of devouring this delicious soup.
HA&VL Sandwiches
2738 SE 82nd Ave Ste 103
Portland, OR 97266
(503) 772-0103
Why Portland Is America’s New Food Eden
. (Time Magazine)
The Oregon city is America’s new food Eden, a confluence of every fertile trend in contemporary gastronomy. Locavorism, the New Naturalism, food trucks and so on — they’re all there. I had the sense that if I went to Portland and ate around, I might get in on the ground floor of something great, the culinary equivalent of such local musical heroes as Elliott Smith or Modest Mouse.
People who don’t live here seem to really like this place.
Is OpenTable Worth it?. (Incanto’s Official Site)
We live in the Golden Age of Google, in which Web-based services have transformed many consumer and business functions by making them easier, more accessible, and drastically less expensive. That’s ultimately the most perplexing thing about OpenTable: unlike so many other Web services, this one has actually driven up operating costs, not reduced them.
No wonder Groupon is so popular.
Jimmy John’s is a national chain that I had never heard of. That is, before they introduced a location in Beaverton off Cedar Hills.
A quick search online shows that many people sings their praises. I’ve stopped by a few times when I’ve been in the area to get an Italian sandwich as a snack.
Verdict? It’s a (slight) step up from your Subways and Quiznos (and for Portlanders, Big Town Hero), most notably due to the quality of meats and fillings (though I’d prefer a different style of hot peppers, but it doesn’t stop me from ordering extra peppers). The bread is weak, but still that’s a fairly ok $5 sandwich.
Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches
2790 Southwest Cedar Hills Boulevard
Beaverton, OR 97005
(503) 626-4300
Here in Oregon, we’ve already pulled up our summer tomato crop. If you’ve had a growing season like we’ve endured, you’ve probably pulled up plenty of green tomatoes, and threw away a bunch that were stricken with blight and tomato gout or lupus or whatever it is that tomatoes get.
Here are roasted tomato salsa recipes, both essentially quick riffs on a theme: tomato, allium, and chilies, all roasted over charcoal.
Charcoal that IS ON FIRE.
Garden Roasted Tomato Salsa “Molcajete”*
*Typically you’d use a molcajete, aka a fair-sized mexican mortar, but I use a food processor.
- 1 and 1/2 pounds of garden tomatoes
- 5 Hatch green chilies (or Anaheim)
- 2 jalapenos
- 4 whole garlic cloves in their natural papery casing
- 3/4 small red onion
- 1 lime
- 3/4 Bunch cilantro, stems, removed, chopped
- Kosher salt
Grill everything except lime, cilantro, and salt. Peel the husky layers from the onions, and finely dice, and set aside. Peel the husky layers from the garlic cloves. Or not. What out though as they tend to fall through the grill grates. (I think grills should be built with another layer of wire mesh below the grilling surface that allows grease to expunge but still catches elusively narrow grilled foodstuffs that often fall tragically through the grates. A safety net, you know, like for the trapeze artists at the circus. Grilling is food trapeze.)
The chili and tomato skins should naturally peel off after a good grilling, but don’t worry it there’s some remnant skin. That’s a part of life. I mean, speaking from experience, my own circumcision wasn’t exactly a “clean break”.
Put all the vegetables in a food processor or a large bowl that you intend to penetrate with an immersion blender. Add cilantro, lime, salt, and blend in short, firm, “medicated” bursts.
Salt additionally to taste.
Roasted Heirloom Tomato, Tomatillo and Cherry Bomb Salsa
I picked up some beautifully awesome heirloom tomatoes and “cherry bomb” chilies that were all over Beaverton Farmer’s market come mid-September. This version of the salsa eschews some of the tomato heft in favor of a tomatillos base, resulting in roughly a 60/40 mater/millo-composition.
- 1 pound fresh tomatoes
- 2/3 pound tomatillos
- 5-6 decent sized cherry bomb peppers
- 5 whole garlic cloves in their natural papery casing
- 1 medium red onion
- 1 lime
- Bunch cilantro, stems, removed, chopped
- Kosher salt
Grill everything except lime, cilantro, and salt. Peel, etc. (no worries about peeling tomatillo, though). Puree, etc.
Caffeine and Alcohol: Wham! Bam! Boozled. (NY Times)
Four Loko joins this warped tradition. And what I quickly came to see was that if you set out to engineer a booze delivery system that is as cloying, deceptive and divorced from the usual smells, tastes and presentation of alcohol as possible, you’d be hard pressed to come up with something more impressive than Four Loko.
Sheridan’s Market is great little market located just across the river from downtown Portland. Sheridan’s features an awesome meat department, with an excellent selection of specialty sausages and game meats. In addition to some interesting house/deli made ready-to-eat offerings, you’ll also find some distinct items here not found in other markets around Portland, including a full array of the products bearing the venerable Cento brand.
The hall o’ bulk, one of Portland’s best selection of bulk dried items including beans, grains, and spices.
Sheridan’s grill operates out front, and features grilled-to-order burgers, hot dogs, and other sandwiches.
At $4.50, this fresh burger is certainly a worthy snack.
Sheridan’s Market
409 SE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Portland, Oregon
97214
(503) 236-2113
What do checkoff programs do? (Food Politics)
…the USDA-sponsored program that collects a “tax” from dairy producers and uses the funds for generic promotion of dairy products. What fills the folks running the checkoff with pride? Among them,
- Focusing on dairy health and wellness by helping to combat childhood obesity by encouraging schools to implement physical activity and good nutrition, including dairy.
- Partnering with Domino’s Pizza to develop pizzas using up 40% more cheese than usual. This worked so well that other pizza chains are doing the same thing.
- Partnering with McDonald’s to launch McCafe specialty coffees that use up to 80 percent milk, and three new burgers with two slices of cheese per sandwich. The result? An additional 6 million pounds of cheese sold.
- Creating reduced lactose milks in order to bring lapsed consumers back to milk. The potential result? An additional 2.5 to 5 billion pounds of milk each year.
- Partnering with General Mills’ Yoplait to develop yogurt chip technology that requires 8 ounces of milk.
Socialism, or something.
I was in Los Angeles late last year, and had the pleasure to spend a night on the town with the lovely and the talented LA food blogging couple extraordinaire, Jeni of Oishii Eats and her husband Dylan of Eat Drink & Be Merry. They took me to the aptly named “Animal” on Fairfax Avenue, a restaurant with an indie cred (worn proudly on sleeve) that trades in the same lo-fi execution/hi-fi ingredient approach that many Portlanders would find quite familiar.
I’ve thought about this meal on occasion since then, but it wasn’t until I ran across a few photos Dylan shared with me that I truly remembered how delicious this meal was.
Fluke with grape and yuzu granita, mint, serrano chilies, and pea shoots.
Pork belly with kimchi, with a chili-infused soy, garnished with peanuts. The kimchi reminded more of the pickles you’d get with a banh mi sandwich, and this gave the dish more of a Vietnamese feel than Korean.
Fried pig’s tail, with mustard and zucchini pickles.
Fried sweetbreads and hen of the woods mushrooms on top of creamed spinach, garnished with capers and grapefruit. This dish really sang to me; earthy, savory, and tart.
Oxtail poutine. This was the star of the night, and I’m not normally a huge poutine fan. The fries were perfectly crisp and delicious, and the oxtail was melting, and the gravy rich with oxtail beefiness. Just the right amount of fine white cheddar.
Animal
435 N. Fairfax Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-9225
Yaquina Bay.
Eat makes one of the finer drunken oyster shooters in town
EaT: An Oyster Bar
3808 N. Williams
Suite #122, Portland, OR
97227
(503) 281-1222
Frightened Rabbit at The Wonder Ballroom last weekend.
And a show at Wonder always means a pre-show meal at the Toro Bravo bar.
A citrus-based cocktail I don’t quite remember the details of, outside that it had a very unique and super tasty pickled cherry hiding at the bottom of the glass.
The spicy octopus stew, one of my favorites. And boy, is this seriously spicy. I was at first disappointed the prep of this dish had changed; instead of baby octopus and their tentacles lurking within the piquant tomato stew, a portion of a large octopus (cut on a bias ) were laid over top. Any apprehension was quickly erased. This was some delicious, expertly grilled cephalopod.
Calamari a la plancha, on top of a white bean and chorizo stew. This wasn’t at all like I expected, as I also expected a full squid carcass grilled on a metal plate. And the white beans appeared to be not white at all. But man, this was delicious. I inhaled the dish, and the beans were so creamy and savory I could eat it for breakfast on toast.
I even ran into the band before the show, and bought them a round of drinks. These Scottish lads drink shots of Jameson.
As a somebody who self-identifies with eating too much meat, I also eat more vegetables than nearly anybody I know. I am a complex individual, a walking dichotomy (if you looked up “unknowable” in the dictionary you would see a photo of yours truly, along with a screenshot of Windows Vista).
Most of my vegetables come in the form of salad. I mean, who amongst us does not enjoy a nicely tossed salad?
The following recipe is for My Most Favorite Salad Ever, roughly adapted from a Lebanese restaurant that existed a decade ago in Tucson, Arizona, a place where I went attended high school and college and, subsequently, spent many brain cells.
When I was just starting out in my career as a pixel pusher, often during lunch I would jump on my Schwinn cruiser and motor over to the local university row. The aforementioned Lebanese joint served—in addition to your mezze standards and shawerma—a couple rotating daily specials that usually involved stewed chicken quarters or lamb shanks in a delicious sauce, served over generous portions of rice. Back then my metabolism was a force to reckon with, and I could put away 1000 calories at lunch, so I ate at this place often, often indulging in a plate of whatever the kitchen was cooking. An added bonus was that the Lebanese gentleman who operated the establishment was a total dick and seemed to really despise me for reasons I could never discern (outside of the normal ones), so that made patronizing his establishment that much more satisfying.
Anyhow, along with the stewed meat and rice, the daily special came with a nice scoop of salad. When I first ordered my plated special, I thought the salad was an afterthought; it was sitting at room temperature, already dressed, in a large chafing dish, alongside the dolmas and kibbeh. Hey, this salad is wilted…old salad!
I reserved the salad for the last few bites, after I had consumed the meat and starch, treating it as a palate cleanser, and when I took my first few bites it was a revelation. This wilted, old, forgotten afterthought of a salad? Fucking awesome. Each subsequent visit resulted in salad joy. The asshole who owned the place thought he was dicking me when he would progressively lighten up on the meat and rice and unbalance my plate with extra salad, but I nobly took such customer abuse with silent exhilaration. Ten years may have passed, but I never forget, you generous motherfucker.
Marinated Salad “Ceviche”, AKA “The Asshole Toss”
- an entire head of romaine lettuce, ribs removed
- 1/2 (or more) an English, seedless cucumber (or 2-3 Persian cukes). roughly chopped, skin on.
- 1/2 pound chopped tomato or halved grape tomatoes
- 1/2 red onion, coarsely chopped
- 1/2 bunch parsley, stems removed, coarsely town
- large handful of fresh mint leaves (14-16 or more)
- 1 lemon
- extra virgin olive oil
- fine sea salt
- freshly cracked pepper
- ground sumac
Assemble all the vegetables in a large salad bowl. Squeeze the juice of an entire lemon over the veggies, and douse generously with olive oil. Add a VERY healthy pinch of salt (this salad is oversalted, and that helps draw out water from the lettuce [and other veggies],—which will came into play later) plenty of pepper, and a touch of sumac. Toss that salad. Toss it. Toss it plenty.
Now leave the kitchen. Go watch the E! channel or whatever it is that grown adults watch these days. Or read a book, just nothing by Jane Austen. Goddamn that shit is unbearable. Go back into the kitchen after 10 minutes or so, and pour on some more oil and toss it. Toss that salad. Toss it lots. Then go check the mail. Check your email. Post an off-the-cuff missive rife with invective on some message board. Maybe log into Paypal and send $100 to “omnivore@guiltycarnivore.com” as a litmus test just to see if this person is real. Look at cats on the Internet. Process their LOL messages.
Then pour the salad onto a nice platter. Finish with more salt, pepper, and a fine dusting of sumac. This makes a huge plate of salad, that serves 2 or 3. But I eat the entire thing myself.
I hope you didn’t allow the dressing and extracted liquid that pooled onto the bottom of the mixing bowl to just sit there. Hopefully you transferred all those liquid goods to the plate itself, as well. At the end of the salad, I tilt my neck back and shoot the astringent, and oily, and slightly sweet, and sour, residue. Right off the plate.
This salad travels nicely to lunch as well. Just bring all the simple components and combine them there. You do have to start the salad portion of lunch nearly 40 minutes before the meal actually occurs, though, or you’re doing it wrong.
When your restaurant’s review has your mom crying.(Salon)
When a hilarious chef gets hammered by the N.Y. Times, he takes it well — and blogs his mother’s scolding e-mail
Observation: Salon’s Francis Lam is one of the best food writers in the country today.
A snack: stir-fried shisito peppers (from H-mart) and slices of lemongrass/chili tofu from SE Portland’s Thanh Son Tofu. This is a perfect lager beer nosh, in my humble (and often wrong) opinion.
If you haven’t checked out the seasoned tofu from Thanh Son, you’re really missing something special.
Thanh Son Tofu
103 NE 82nd Ave
Portland, OR 97220-6004
(503) 517-9902
From Thursday’s night show at the Crystal Ballroom.
Hiro Ikegaya to open Mirakutei. (Portland Monthly)
Ikegaya says the focus is Sapporo-style ramen noodles, sushi rolls and “Japanese tapas with contemporary Southern California creativity,” a specialty of the chef that he is transporting to Portland from Los Angeles. Scheduled to open in late October or early November, Mirakutei will be open daily, until midnight, with prices $4-$10. Ikegaya plans to stay at his post at Hiroshi.
I visited the San Juan Islands in northern Washington State this last summer. We stayed at Guemes Island.
Oyster shooters from Guemes Island Store.
The views from the balcony of our rental home validated my decision to be a human who is alive.
We got some good kayaking in.
And my daughter made some great friends. And tipped her hand at photography.
Guemes Island Resort
Enjoy the Anacortes Islands with the updated charm of an traditional fishing camp.
From Fetzer Sausages at the Beaverton Farmers Market.
For some reason I ended up at Yelp and ran across this review:
(1-star rating from “Wil. C”): I would have to concur Mindy C. below, this place is NOT authentic. When stepping inside just take a look across the room, when none of your customers are asian that is a red flag right there. Would you consider an Italian restaurant with all Asian customers authentic?
California Pot Initiative Opposed By Beer Industry. (Huff Post)
The California Beer & Beverage Distributors is spending money in the state to oppose a marijuana legalization proposition on the ballot in November, according to records filed with the California Secretary of State. The beer sellers are the first competitors of marijuana to officially enter the debate; backers of the initiative are closely watching liquor and wine dealers and the pharmaceutical industry to see if they enter the debate in the remaining weeks.
The opposition to pot among beer makers, however, is not unanimous among the CBBD’s membership. Sierra Nevada and Stone Brewing Co., microbrews that began in California but have become popular national brands, both lashed out at the CBBD after news of the distributor’s donation was reported on Celebstoner.com, a popular website focusing on marijuana-related news, and Alternet.com.
I would have to think those who enjoy Sierra Nevada and Stone and the bud/or-want-to-see-it-legalized probably share a large intersection of a Venn diagram.
The past weekend presented the perfect confluence of two very special things: the tail-end of summer, and the first weekend of NFL football. In these here United States, such fleeting moments of serendipitous folly are captured with a celebratory act that often involves the consumption of recently separated wings from a domestic chicken.
The following recipe involves a take on your archetypical “hot” wings, except using Sriracha, aka “hot cock sauce”, instead of the Frank’s or similar Louisiana-based hot sauce concoction usually associated with Buffalo-style hot wings. Also, these are grilled.
If you ask me if they are better…well, I’m not sure if I can tell you that. Normally, “Buffalo” wings are deep fried and then tossed in an elixir of melted butter/margarine and Louisiana hot sauce, and then served with a dipping side of rich, white, cheese-based dressing and ancillary-ish celery sticks (that most racist American males discard faster than a crack whore baby). Is this “good”? Well, that’s up to your own particular sliding scale of taste. But it’s difficult to “refudiate” a concept so quintessentially American. That would be like refusing to dance to Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina” at your cousin’s wedding.
But these grilled wings are different — the operative difference being that the “Buffalo” seasoning happens prior to grilling. This has the added benefit, as well, of being more healthy, but I don’t know if you can combine poultry skin and margarine and ever call it healthy by any extent of the imagination, even if you apply the saucing prior to finishing on the grill. That would be akin to asserting Michael Jackson as a doting father because he left a will.
Grilled Sriracha Hot Wings
- A couple pounds of chicken wings
- Equal parts: melted butter (or margarine) and Sriracha sauce
- Optional: a neutral “reddening” agent like mild paprika or beet powder
Pour that nasty butter and chili sauce (and reddening) mixture over the wings and marinade for 4 hours. Get your charcoal Weber going in the backyard.
Grill those bastages.
Eat, drink beer, and experience the deterioration of American sport.
Essentially duplicated the garden herbs/olive oil/acid marinade from my earlier post, here’s a golden trout, stuffed and rubbed with salt, pepper, herbs and lemon slices, and dusted with smoked paprika.
Grill it up. Ain’t no thing.
And while you’re at it, splash some olive oil onto some delicious zucchini squash and grill that up too. Always a summer crowd pleaser.
6 Hot New East Portland Eateries. Jen has a fantastic rundown of some great new options on Portland’s eastside.
First ripe tomatoes of the summer. About time.
This is the first part in a series of posts where I grill meat in my backyard.
I like grilling. Meat. In my backyard. I’ve got an old, beat up Weber kettle grill. One of the wheels is missing a cap, so whenever I roll the kettle its legs always pop out, spilling the grill proper onto the ground. One time, while grilling, I moved it slightly (to account for the smoke I was suffusing onto my tomato plants) and had to perform a bear hug save of the grill’s current contents…and proceeded to singe the living fuck out of my forearms.
Though I often entertain the idea of getting an obscene, propane monstrosity replete with dual side burners, refrigerated drawers, and scrotum massager, I quickly abandon such nonsense. Why waste the money when the Weber works just fine? I just shouldn’t be so stupid as to embrace a burning sphere of metal just to save a few medium rare strip steaks. Or maybe I can visit the hardware store and purchase a 25 cent wheel cap.
I do much of my grilling next to my garden, which in the summer features many green and tasty herbs, including chives, mint, thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley, and basil.
As such, one of my favorite all-purpose marinades simply features a smattering of these herbs (chopped or whole), oil, acid, and seasonings.
Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken
Spatchcocking is a nice option for grilling a whole chicken. Spatchcocking, for the uninitiated, is not a sadistic, fraternity hazing ritual, but rather the act of cutting out the bird’s backbone (preferably with heavy duty kitchen shears) to leave a flat carcass. Which is much more friendly for grilling evenly. And deliciously.
- One whole chicken
- Assorted chopped fresh herbs
- 5-6 cloves minced garlic
- Olive oil
- One lemon
- Sea salt
- Cracked black pepper
- Smoked paprika
First thing: spatch the living cock out of that fucking chicken. This dude can show you how1.
Sprinkle the bird with chopped herbs, garlic, and salt and pepper both sides. Pour oil to coat, and squeeze lemon. Using your hands, rub gently to mix in and settle the marinade. Sprinkle the top side of the chicken with smoked paprika, and allow to sit in the fridge for a few hours (or more).
Prepare your grill, dumping coals on one side. Grill chicken, 15-20 minutes per side, turning often, moving alternately from hot and cool side of kettle, covering and removing said cover as need be.
You know, grilling.
1 However, I advise that you don’t search for more spatchcocking videos on Youtube, as it’s (evidently) a common move for strippers and, subsequently, home workout enthusiasts. Unless, of course, you want to hazard the wife walking into your office (to change the cat litter), only to discover some guy watching grainy amateur video featuring a skinny Jersey goth spreading her legs 180 degrees while straddling a long, metallic pole. And you can live with the results. Which in my case it’s the usual askew glance of tepid disgust and then eventual disregard.
I visited the John’s Landing Zupan’s recently. When I worked in the area a few years back, I’d regularly patronage the sandwich counter centered in the market. What I appreciated most was their wilingness to pile on “N” number of meats if you checked their corresponding boxes off on the Zupan’s sandwich order/SAT form. The fine folk who work the Zupan’s deli entrepôt are willing to generously indulge my gluttonous penchant for over-accessorizing the sandwich, more so than other upscale markets about town. Which is why I give Zupan’s an official “AAAA++++ WOULD BUY AGAIN!!!!!” rating in my 2010 Upscale Market a La Carte Deli Sandwich Rankings.
U.S. restaurants starved for business. (LA Times)
The number of restaurants operating nationwide dropped this year for the first time in more than a decade, a survey shows, with California accounting for almost a third of the losses.
Oyster Herpes Deaths Tied to Global Warming. (Discovery News)
A new, virulent form of herpes is killing large numbers of Pacific oysters. Scientists think global warming may be fueling the virus.
Today is International Beer Day. For those who enjoy craft brews, you can thank that fucking commie cocksucker Jimmy Carter:
To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening back up to craft brewers. As the chart below illustrates, this had a really amazing effect on the beer industry:
There’s a chart and everything.
It’s a fucking awesome market. If I lived in downtown Seattle, I’d shop here pretty much daily.
Pike Place Public Market
Seattle and stuff. Next to the water. If you’re in the water, you’ve gone too far.
Tombo tuna crudo with ice lettuce. The tuna was sliced carpaccio-style, and sprinkled with an herb that gave it an anise-y/juniper note.
Steak tartare. Always a crowd pleaser.
Though it’s difficult to determine from this photo, this skirt steak with grilled cherry tomatoes and charred scallions was the hit of the night. God I love skirt steak.
Bavette steak with arugula and romesco.
I like Laurelhurst market. It’s unpretentious, straightforward, and the meat is delicious and well-priced. Many consider this a “steakhouse” but I don’t think it falls under that rubric in the conventional sense. It’s just a great neighborhood restaurant that happens to feature a variety of excellent cuts of beef that you can also purchase, in-house, at the front of the “market”. Add a great bar with excellent house-made tonic to mix with your local spirits, and you have quintessential Portland.
Laurelhurst Market on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
The Goodist has been here
PortlandFood.org
Laurelhurst Market
3155 East Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97214-1951
(503) 206-3099
Cannon Beach is a gem of a seaside town situated on the northern Oregon coast. Ecola Seafoods Restaurant & Market, located just off the main northern strip of downtown Cannon Beach, is similarly gem-like due to the fact you can get a mean, local sea-protein cocktail at 10am while everyone else is waiting for 45 minutes at the Pig ‘N Pancake for corn syrup-laden, starchy pancakes and factory protein just minutes away.
Silly people. Your species will never learn.
Then again, I could have just walked halfway out to this rock:
And just grabbed my own damn breakfast.
Who is the idiot now? Invariably it is me.
Ecola Seafoods Restaurant & Market on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
- Roadfood.com
- Also, this place has a Yelp* entry but I refuse to link to Yelp because many of its inhabitants appear to be scantily clad, near-violent homunculi. Just like Facebook.
Ecola Seafoods Restaurant & Market
208 N Spruce St
Cannon Beach, OR 97110
(503) 436-9130
Liveblogging my $6 breakfast sandwich courtesy of Alaskan Airlines wi-fi.
I wonder if there’s actual human in this.
In case you’re looking for it.
Wong’s King, a Cantonese/Dim Sum stalwart in southeast Portland, recently opened a Beaverton outpost. I stopped by for a bowl of wonton soup and some soup dumplings.
Very nice to have decent soup dumplings available in the vicinity.
Wong King’s Beaverton
10743 Sw Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy
Beaverton, OR 97005
503-350-1888
Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Landmark Egg Bill into Law. (Human Society)
Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed landmark legislation that protects animal welfare and food safety. The new law requires that shelled (whole) eggs sold in California comply with the modest but important food safety and animal welfare standards of Proposition 2. Passed in a 2008 landslide, Prop 2 phases out production of eggs from hens crammed into cages.
The bill, A.B. 1437, requires that all whole eggs sold in California as of Jan. 1, 2015, come from hens able to stand up, fully extend their limbs, lie down and spread their wings without touching each other or the sides of their enclosure, thus requiring cage-free conditions for the birds.
This is good.
Tigard’s Hmart opens sharply at 9 a.m.
If you get there early, you’ll be able to meet a fresh batch of jap chae as it comes out of the kitchen, just in front of the deli case. Breakfast is served. For $2.99.
Thanh Thao Market, located on a strip of Northeast Sandy in the Rose City district, may not be Portland’s largest Vietnamese market or it’s most varied (in terms of sheer selection), but—since I’ve moved here over eight years ago—it’s been the market I’ve appreciated the greatest.
You’ll find Thanh Thao has all the dried goods and noodles you’ll ever really need, meticulously arranged throughout their shelves.
The meat department features all the primal cuts favored by discerning Vietnamese cooks.
I love their dressed and pre-sliced meats that ease the homestyle pho prep.
The seafood department may not feature any filets, but you can satisfy your whole fish fetish quite soundly here. A quick nod to the fishmonger and, after weighing your fish, he will use the bandsaw to cut the fins and tail off and section your cleaned fish into nice manageable chunks for your next canh chua.
The frozen meat section also features a wide variety of compartmentalized carcasses from the land and the sea.
Their superlative produce section is stocked with all the vegetables, fresh herbs, handmade noodles, and eggs that make up an essential component of any Southeast Asian cook’s repertoire.
You’ll be able to score your next claypot in their very small housewares nook.
The true area where Thanh Thao shines, however, is their deli department.
Caramel catfish, canh chua, stuffed bitter melon, whole roast duck, roast pork, and other hot savory and sweet delights are available by the pound.
And right in front of the cashier, a refrigerated “island” is chock full of Vietnamese favorites, ready to take-and-go.
Each time I hit up Thanh Thao for groceries, I find it irresistible to not pick up a loaf of cha chien (fried cha lua/Viet bologna) and a $5 package of banh cuon.
And construct my own dish at home, punching it up with fresh herbs, blanched bean sprouts, cucumbers, chili-spiked nuoc cham, and chopped peanuts. I can stretch three meals like this out the affair. Seriously.
Thanh Thao Market
6517 NE Sandy Blvd
Portland, OR 97213
Neighborhood: Northeast Portland
(503) 284-4129
Gourmet Magazine Revived for the iPad. (NY Times)
Limbaugh attacks school lunches, suggests hungry children should “dumpster dive”.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you dumpster dive for oxycontin and viagra behind Eli Lilly’s HQ, and while you’re at the bottom you can suck a bag of dicks, you sanctimonious, lying sack of rat feces.
ExtraMSG over at Portlandfood.org a while ago gave a firm shoutout to Canby’s Taqueria Uruapan. Considering I work in “SoPo” (or as the locals call it, “Wilsonville”) during the daylight hours I figured I’d drag a couple co-workers down to the see what was cooking in Portland’s southern hinterlands.
If you’ve never travelled into Canby proper before, it’s easy to miss as Uruapan is a bit adrift amongst the folksy anachronism that is rustic, downtown Canby. The taqueria nestles adjacent to a Burgerville, which is itself just beyond a Safeway strip mall (fronted by Quizno’s and Panda Express), and if you spot the Taco Bell you’ve driven too far.
Uruapan is pretty awesome inside. Allow me explain.
First, they got a menu picture board, which is the first thing you need to do in order to be awesome. Then there’s a Neo Geo arcade console to the left of the ordering counter. Personally, if I wanted to take a confident, second step towards being awesome, this would be a capital purchase I would strongly consider.
Next up is a jukebox stocked with the latest Sinaloan narco-ballads. Also a television is constantly tuned to Spanish telenovas. And there are babies just chilling out in their rocking chairs, or the employee/owner’s kids feeding quarters into the Neo Geo or just whimsically hanging out, all the time. All these things are awesome.
Then you see that there are two pool tables. They also serve beer. Not only has awesomeness been cemented, but we’ve entered a state of existence that cannot be pigeonholed with the rubrical inadequacy of merely awesome. Post-awesome.
Tacos are $1.25 here. Each includes two (2) tortillas, meaning each taco is double-wrapped. And they are great. And you get two. For each taco.
And when you order, each tortilla is handmade there on the spot, to order, one-by-one. Those ladies are hand making the tortillas and grilling up bits and pieces of flesh to crisp perfection as we speak. Well, not as we speak, as in this moment, but on that day, back then, when I had my iPhone and was hungry.
And oh what crispy nuggets of delicious taco joy these are. Some of the best asada I’ve had in my time in Oregon. The “pastor” analog here is actually adobada, which are grilled meaty pork nibs bathed in a bright red, deliciously oily marinade.
The condiments are excellent, and as you can witness are presented as sauces three, with sauce the third being an incredible avocado verde salsa that just earns this place more awesome stripes and gold stars.
Here are pictures of tacos in a various states of being.
Restaurant Uruapan
851 SW 1st Ave (Hwy 99E)
Canby, OR 97013
503.263.4480
Jimmy Dean, sausage maker extraordinaire and country music troubadour, has passed.
To commemorate, it’s worth revisiting the best product feedback call of all time.
Summer grilling season is upon us! Here’s to backyard grilling and bbq.
Kai Yaang (Thai grilled chicken)
- 2 1/2 to 3 pounds various chicken parts, or a whole chicken, halved
- 8 or more minced garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon ground white pepper
- As much minced lemongrass as you like. I like a lot (like a 1/2 cup or more!)*
- 6-8 thai bird chilies, minced
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon turbinado sugar
- Half a bunch of cilantro, chopped
- 1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar
* Fubonn (and many Vietnamese markets) sell finely minced lemongrass in plastic tubs in the freezer section. They are a time saver, and the industrial cut is finer than anything you can reproduce at home. Highly recommended
Place chicken parts in a bowl. Add all the marinade ingredients and mix well. Marinade for at least four hours or overnight.
Start a charcoal grill in your kettle grill, keeping the hot coals on one half.
Once the coals are going, grill the chicken for 10-15 minutes over hot coals, turning often, until a nice color develops.
Move the chicken to the cooler side of the grill. Turn every so often, and cook for another 20-30 minutes. This is backyard grilling—use your backyard grillSense. Move parts back to the hot side as needed.
Serve with sweet chili dipping sauce.
I’ve been going to this place for nearly eight years, back when it was Pho Oregon “West” (despite being only a mile from the other Pho Oregon at NE 82nd Ave).
The interior is spartan. You are automatically rationed the standard beverages.
It took a name change, and a format change, plus Extra MSG’s vetting of the assorted grilled meat platter, that got me thinking about anything but pho at this place.
But why would I? I’ve long contended this location on NE Sandy, when it existed as a namesake to the NE 82nd version, had the better bowl of soup of the two doppelgängers. Since the obvious switch of ownership (and name, and staff, who are now dressed in lovely white uniforms) a few years back, I had no reason to really look past the first turn of the first menu page, the page where various permutations of pho are listed in perfunctory uniformity, the same list xeroxed and sampled by every pho joint from Chula Vista to Bellingham.
The salad platter at Pho An Sandy, as it was back when it was Pho Oregon, is unparalleled in Portland. You will always get more than enough <em>ngo gai</em>, aka culantro aka sawtooth herb, no matter how lily white your skin or accent may be.
The broth at Pho An Sandy I believe is one of our city’s most well balanced, though—as with any soup joint with high turnover that is constantly bootstrapping their stockpot—it can vary in the amount of spice, clarity, beefiness, sweetness, etc.
The braised meats (chin, nam) are very consistent.
All in all, a very excellent pho, served quickly and without fuss. What more could you ask for? Well, Pho An Sandy also has a wide and varied menu that expands beyond the perfunctory soup offerings.
Including this “dac biet” mixed grill platter, which features bo la lot (beef wrapped in betel leaves), grilled lemongrass pork (topped with sauteed shallots and chopped peanuts)…
…grilled sugarcane shrimp…
…and nem nuong (pork patty/sausage)
As is Pho An Sandy’s MO, the salad platter that accompanied this impressive phalanx of deliciously grilled meats was generous, overflowing with spearmint, perilla, rau ram, cucumber, and lettuce.
The general idea with Vietnamese meats is to roll your own (using the carefully constructed quenelles of rice noodles served with the meats as a starch foundation), thus you’re given a bowl of warm water and dried rice paper sheets…
…and a bowl of nuoc cham dipping sauce (always add a dollop of the fresh chili garlic sauce on the table—you’ll be thankful).
A delicious strip of nem nuong about in pre-rolled state.
I can roll a fat blunt.
Come to daddy, sugarcane shrimp.
Pho An Sandy on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Portlandfood.org
Pho An Sandy
6236 Northeast Sandy Boulevard
Portland, OR 97213
(503) 281-2990
Picked up some fresh noodles in the fridge section of Uwajimaya a few weeks back. Usually these are packaged with a broth/seasoning packet companion, but in this case it was a 3 pack of just noodles. These fresh ramen noodles are actually quite workable.
Ramen in broth with roast pork, menma, bok choy, and king oyster mushrooms, sprinkled with togarashi. I’ll publish the broth recipe one of these days when I’m not so lazy.
Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat.
This spring, scientists at the University of Missouri announced that after more than a decade of research, they had created the first soy product that not only can be flavored to taste like chicken but also breaks apart in your mouth the way chicken does: not too soft, not too hard, but with that ineffable chew of real flesh. When you pull apart the Missouri invention, it disjoins the way chicken does, with a few random strands of “meat” hanging loosely.
“i am a pharmacist
prescriptions i will fill you
potions, pills and medicines
to ease your painful lives
i am a lost soul
i shoot myself with rock & roll
the hole i dig is bottomless
but nothing else can set me free”
All 1.5 readers of this blog know I’m a big fan of Sanchez Taqueria, Tigard’s very own taste of Mexico that churns out delicious meats wrapped in hand-made pillows of fresh tortilla goodness (aka the “taco”).
Many of these readers will be interested to discover that Sanchez has expanded, usurping the square footage once occupied by (what I assume was) an erstwhile BBQ joint that formerly shared the same building.
Sanchez now bills itself as a “panaderia”…
…and in this case the strength of this size alone legitimizes their claim, even if their baked goods at the time were a bit sparse.
Ordering is done at the front counter, as before, the operative difference being that the front counter now occupies it’s own room (equipped with seating for to-go orders) at the very south side of the taqueria.
The interior is now quite cavernous, now spanning two separate rooms, each one singularly larger than the previous dining area altogether.
Tacos.
Asada. Wasn’t as crisp as I’ve had previous visits. It’s consistently very crisp, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Excellent pastor this time. Just a very tiny bit too sweet than where my tastes lay, but excellent and crisped up better than the asada this day.
Full metal taco jacket.
Sanchez Taqueria
13050 Southwest Pacific Highway
Tigard, OR 97223-5072
(503) 684-2838
This chart illustrates succinctly why our country sucks ass.
“Change in price of items since 1978, relative to overall inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The price of carbonated drinks, for example, has fallen 34 percent relative to all other prices.” (“The Battle Over Taxing Soda“, NY Times)
Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture. (NY Times)
Ron Siegel, who runs the Michelin-starred dining room at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, said he’s grown past his partying days. But even he is having a little fun with haute stoner cuisine.
To serve slow-cooked quail eggs and caviar, he places them atop plastic film that tightly covers a white porcelain serving bowl. Then he fills the vessel with smoke from grated Japanese cedar packed into the bowl of a fan-driven bong he buys in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The smoke escapes when the diner lifts a small spoon covering a hole in the plastic.
He calls it the Lincecum, after Tim Lincecum, the star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants who was arrested last fall after police found marijuana and a pipe in his car.
As spotted at a metro-area Fred Meyer superstore.
Will Immigration Law Doom America’s Lettuce?. (The Atlantic)
Seemingly permanent factories in Salinas are dismantled, packed into trailers, and reconstructed in The Desert in time for the first harvest, relying on veteran farmers to determine when the crop will be ready. Glimmering steel tanks used for washing greens in a chlorinated bath, giant driers that tumble the washed greens, and conveyors that gently move the fragile leaves along and into bags for retail are all portable. And with the crop and the factory go many undocumented workers.
But many of the harvesters who painstakingly kneel to cut each head of lettuce may choose not to work in Arizona this fall in the wake of its new, hostile immigration law, putting the produce industry in a potentially dangerous position.
Chicken, turkey may sicken 55K fewer under new USDA rules. (USA Today)
Under the new standards, only 7.5% of chicken carcasses at a plant would be allowed to test positive for salmonella, down from 20% allowed since 1996. Salmonella levels in chickens were tested at 7.1% nationally in 2009, says Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council.
Emphasis mine.
I stopped by Swagat Beaverton in recently to hit their lunch buffet.
Swagat also has a location on NW 21st. I’ve been there a couple times…years, years ago. It wasn’t too good, but I heard some decent things about the lunch buffet out at the BeaverTRON location, so here I am, I have $8, the boss is gone for the afternoon, and I have an innate proclivity for exploration (as long as it doesn’t involve investigating the Tyler Perry Franchise), so what the fucking hell, heh?
The buffet features various fine Indian curries, rice, chutneys, tandoori, sambar, etc. The green chutney is some damn good stuff—I could dip strangers’ shoelaces into that manna and slurp them up.
The experience quickly morphed into a gluttonous gorging vis-a-vis the tandoori chicken, which was presented nearly entirely in drumstick form, which happens to be my favorite roast/grilled poultry appendage.
The fresh naan (as it came out the kitchen in a serendipitous moment of buffet timing) was decent (not knowing the finer points of such stalwarts), as were the (lesser regarded—not my opinion, just my observation) vegetable curry dishes.
Swagat Indian Cuisine
4325 Southwest 109th Avenue
Beaverton, OR 97005-3026
(503) 626-3000
It was a memorable lunch. I remember seeing this at the grocery stand checkout stand later in the evening.
What a crazy time! I remember thinking, back in the day, “Poor Sandra. Will she ever find a non-white supremacist, blue collar lothario who is not a self-aggrandizing twatwad with a weakness for big-boobied women who live fast, talk even faster, and dye young? Somebody, anybody (I’m looking your way George Lopez) PLEASE save America’s Sweetheart from her own earnestness.”
Kai Yaang from the Thai restaurant out in the burbs where the office is located. Nothing mind blowing, pretty simple actually, but the chili sauce seemed custom (if a bit too sweet), and—at $7.50 for half a bird—quite a damn good deal. Nothing like the aggressively marinade full court press you’ll get from a cornish hen @ Pok Pok, but good enough to stuff your ass for another 5 hours until quitting time.
Thai Village
8633 SW Main St # 400
Wilsonville, OR 97070-6584
(503) 682-6211
Lay’s Changing Basic Shape of Salt Crystals for Healthier Potato Chips (Popular Science)
The salt crystals on potato chips only dissolve about 20 percent of the way on the tongue, while the center of each tiny cube-shaped crystal remains intact until after it’s swallowed. Thus, most of the salt you’re eating on your chips is not contributing to the taste of the chip, but it is dissolving further down your digestive tract and causing whatever the FDA alleges that increased dietary sodium intake causes.
The redesigned salt crystal, with more surface area, should dissolve completely on the tongue, thus theoretically allowing each chip to taste just as salty with only 20 percent as much salt.
I have much respect for the Frito-Lay corporation.
Good, if a bit pricy…but, hey, it’s a crab bennie.
Veritable Quandary
1220 Southwest 1st Avenue
Portland, OR
97204
(503) 227-7342
One of the better bowls of soup you’ll find in our fair burg.
Pho An Sandy
6236 Northeast Sandy Boulevard
Portland, OR 97213
(503) 281-2990
Cheney: Telling Leahy to ‘f*ck’ himself was ‘sort of the best thing I ever did.’ (ThinkProgress)
MILLER: By the way, my, I also want to thank you, on the list of things I feel I should thank you for, almost kicking Patrick Leahy’s ass. Thank you very much.
CHENEY: Hehehehe.
MILLER: I love that move. One of my favorite stories. Muttering that.
CHENEY: You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did
Now for old time’s sake…hey Dick Cheney: choke on Satan’s cock, you sniveling, wretched homunculus.
Double Down by the Numbers: Unhealthiest Sandwich Ever?. (Nat Silver @FiveThirtyEight.com)
We can, of course, be a bit more exacting about this. I’ve created an index based on the amount of fat, sodium and cholesterol that the Double Down and a variety of comparable sandwiches contain as a portion of the USDA daily allowance. (In the fat category, saturated fats are counted double and trans-fats are counted triple.) The index is scaled such that the Original Recipe version of the sandwich receives a score of 1.00, a measure of gluttony that will hereafter be known as The Double Down (DD).*
Sandwich to Be Renamed for Man With Lockjaw. (AOL)
A Georgia man bit off more than he could chew — literally — when he dislocated his jaw while trying to eat a super-sized sandwich.
Chad Ettmueller, a structured settlement broker in Cumming, Ga., suffered a locked jaw for 14 hours after biting into a double meat, double cheese sandwich.
What the world needs now:
- More people who complain about service on Yelp.
- Another Thai restaurant.
- More people who think restaurant food is too salty.
- More blanket media coverage for Korean tacos.
- Another national article on the fact that there are carts in Portland that serve food.
- More people who like to deep-fry things.
- A foot soldier movement to pretentiously over-analyze and thus ruin another beverage-related conceit just like wine, coffee, and beer before it. Candidates include water and milk.
- More places that serve dessert for breakfast and the requisite line of white people that line up to spend dozens of dollars for this privilege.
- More people who think a restaurant should exist solely to satisfy their predilections, whether it’s bringing in their own food/wine to augment their dining experience and expecting no resulting fees, or demanding the coq au vin be made with tofu or that the pizza be made gluten-free, or asking that each course be brought out exactly 78 seconds after I’ve fully and lovingly masticated the last bite from the previous, or expecting a dish to be comped because I tried pig intestines and realized it just isn’t my thing.
- One more food blog.
- Another asshole with an opinion who can make a bulleted list.
I hadn’t been to HA&VL on a Saturday for some time, so I was due for a visit.
Saturday’s feature is “Bun Moc Ha Noi”—pepper pork meatball noodle soup, laced with black pepper & slices of pork in pork broth.
The salad plate at HA&VL is not the largest.
But it really is just enough to make the entire bowl come together. In addition to the pork meatballs and Vietnamese spam, the soup is garnished with green onions, cilantro, rau ram, fragrantly fried shallots, a large, fried fish ball.
And lurking underneath are a few slices of this excellent pork, rimmed with a layer of gelatinous, chewy fat that’s so nice to chomp on.
I don’t know how they do this, but this bowl of bun moc was better than the half-dozen bowls I’ve had in the past. At HA&VL, the best bowl of soup always seems to be the last bowl of soup you’ve eaten here.
HA&VL Sandwiches
2738 SE 82nd Ave Ste 103
Portland, OR 97266
(503) 772-0103
HA&VL on the WORLD WIDE WEB
HA&VL Sandwiches on Yelp
It is now our official policy to not link to Yelp as that website is a depraved wasteland populated by deranged homunculi.
I recently ventured back to “The Old Pueblo”, aka Tucson, Arizona.
These tamales from Lerua’s were waiting for us thanks to the father-in and mother-in-law.
A fine specimen of a tamale, if a bit on the drier side. These were red chili beef tamales. The paler version (on the right) were green chili (no meat).
With an ample layer of house made salsa, these tamales became really excellent.
Lerua’s Fine Mexican Food
2005 East Broadway Boulevard
Tucson, AZ 85719-5937
(520) 624-0322
MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?. (Huff Post)
One of the best overviews of the very real dangers of MSG comes from Dr. Russell Blaylock, a board-certified neurosurgeon and author of “Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills.” In it he explains that MSG is an excitotoxin, which means it overexcites your cells to the point of damage or death, causing brain damage to varying degrees — and potentially even triggering or worsening learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and more.
Part of the problem also is that free glutamic acid is the same neurotransmitter that your brain, nervous system, eyes, pancreas and other organs use to initiate certain processes in your body.[4] Even the FDA states:
“Studies have shown that the body uses glutamate, an amino acid, as a nerve impulse transmitter in the brain and that there are glutamate-responsive tissues in other parts of the body, as well.
Abnormal function of glutamate receptors has been linked with certain neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s chorea. Injections of glutamate in laboratory animals have resulted in damage to nerve cells in the brain.”[5]
Although the FDA continues to claim that consuming MSG in food does not cause these ill effects, many other experts say otherwise.
Of course, I don’t think so.
Not really the kind of branding you want from a commercially produced emulsified forcemeat.
Stopped by Biwa recently for a bowl of soup.
One bonus of dining at Biwa, in addition to a hot towel that warms the soul, is the amuse you get of marinated sea vegetable. Just a couple bites to start the meal off right.
Biwa Ramen, with the egg option. The egg has that great consistency that’s a bit beyond soft- but appropriately short of hard-boiled.
When Biwa first opened, I was eager to check it out for the ramen alone. While I loved everything else about Biwa, the ramen fell a bit short.
But they’ve retooled dish, and the noodles are consistently curly and toothsome, and the broth that comprises their namesake ramen is deeply flavorful, redolent of roasted onion and simmered pork, most comparable I would estimate to a dark shoyu stock. My last couple visits the broth featured little bits of fat that added a bit of delicious, unctuous richness. Biwa also features a Chicken Ramen that has a much lighter broth—I’ve had it once and found it fine, but personally I would opt for the complexity of the Biwa ramen each and every time.
The ramen at Biwa is garnished a bit sparsely (with just green onion and a thin sheet of nori), and once you retool it with optional add-ons (egg for $1 and/or chasyu pork at $2 – the pork looks great, check out Sauce Supreme’s photo) it can become a somewhat expensive bowl of soup. But right now, unless there’s some new option I’m not aware of, I think Biwa is churning out the best bowl of Japanese-style soup in our fair burg.
While not very prototypical in terms of style and execution, I would say it’s a distinctly Portland take on ramen (above is a shot of the “parking lot”) and I’m officially a fan.
Biwa
215 Southeast 9th Avenue
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 239-8830
Biwa on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Salty, sweet: study says fat is the sixth “taste”. (Yahoo! News)
People sensitive to the taste of fat tend to eat less of it and are less likely to be overweight, according to Australian research that found human tongues can detect fatty tastes.
Researchers at Deakin University, working with colleagues at the University of Adelaide among others, found that fat was the sixth taste people can identify in addition to the five others — sweet, sour, salty, bitter and protein-rich.
Science.
Recently hit Chinatown’s Ping for some post-work drinks and snackables.
Bellied up to the counter/bar, where I prefer eating. At Ping you might smell like a combination of smoke and fish sauce when you leave, though.
Ping features excellent skewered meat. A round was ordered. At Ping the skewered meat is priced per skewer, but you have to order a minimum of two. This has always been their policy, even since I first visited Ping a little over a year ago during its Grand Opening week. Apparently the two skewer minimum is a problem for some people. Why don’t they just say there’s two to an order and double the price? I thought about this long and hard over the last year, and then it occurred to me. With this policy, you can order three! or Five! Or Seven!!!
lamb satay skewer: malaysian satay with peanut sauce. ($2.50/ea)
bbq beef skewer: with pineapple & chili, sweet soy, pepper and fish sauce. ($2.50/ea)
baby-octopus skewer: marinated in lime, chilies, garlic, fish sauce and cilantro. ($3.50/ea)
house-made fish ball skewer: thai-style, dipped in sweet chili sauce. ($2.50/ea)
Everthing was oh so flavorful and tasty. Like food. Aggressively seasoned. Made with ingredients. So another round was ordered.
To mix up the protein, a decision was made to introduce a bit of green. Something to modulate this gut carpet-bombing campaign.
nonya-style greeen beans: in spicy coconut curry and fried shallots. ($8). NOTE: this is just an a la carte dish. No two order minimum. Though I would order two because they are tasty and toothsome.
beef satay skewer. malaysian satay with peanut sauce. ($2.50/ea)
We had the lamb already…why not the beef? I am an equal opportunity, craven consumer of ungulate flesh, especially that of the artiodactyl. I assume one day I shall explore perissodactyls with the zeal and attention they deserve.
quail egg skewer: wrapped in bacon, with spicy mayo sauce. ($2.75/ea)
It is my contention that if you ate these with every meal every day for the rest of your life you would die happy and stupid and soon.
A salted plum collins and a couple Tiger beers rounded things out.
And because I’m a masochist who actively sabotages his lower gastrointestinal tract, another couple deliciously incendiary skewers of the spicy baby octopus made their way to our countertop. Much to the displeasure of my anus the next morning. Don’t hate the playa; hate the game.
Ping
102 Northwest 4th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209
(503) 229-7464
Ping on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
pdx PLATE
Portlandfood.org
BB has been here…
and Lizzy has been here…
and so has the Fearless Critic
Stopped by Bun Bo Hue Minh on SE Division recently for some breakfast.
Really nice goi cuon, freshly packed with herbs. Not the largest rolls in town, but a $3.50 a good value and nice precursor.
A solid bowl of bun rieu. Pork/shrimp/crab “loaf”, fried tofu, slices of cha lua (and a couple cubes of pork blood), in a tart, tomato-rich, seafood stock.
Bun Bo Hue Minh
8560 SE Division St
Portland, OR 97266
Bun Bo Hue Minh on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
FDA orders widespread food recall. (MSNBC)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of a common flavor enhancer that could be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.
The product, called hydrolyzed vegetable protein or HVP, is potentially in thousands of food products, including soups, sauces, chilis, stews, hot dogs, gravies, seasoned snack foods, dips and dressings. HVP is manufactured by a Las Vegas company.
All HVP in the world is manufactured by one company? In Las Vegas?
Pho tai nam at Pho Nguyen.
Pho Nguyen
4795 Southwest 77th Avenue
Portland, OR 97225-1807
(503) 297-3389
Jade Patisserie and Teahouse is a charming, family-run establishment located on that equally charming strip of 13th Avenue in Sellwood that boasts antique shops and other things white people like.
Jade is owned and operated by a Vietnamese family that executes straightforward, homestyle southeast Asian favorites with an emphasis on bright, impeccably fresh flavors.
Ordering is done at the counter, before an impressively composed, handwritten chalkboard menu rife with solid typography. I want these fonts.
The salad rolls are available with lemongrass tofu, or shrimp and chicken. Unlike the goi cuon you’ll find at standard Vietnamese greasy spoons, these have no noodles and feature a higher ratio of vegetables and herbs. For $5, it’s a huge order.
These are some of the best salad rolls I’ve had in town, tightly packed with fresh thai basil leaves that give them an anise-y snap. The fact that the tofu itself is seasoned beyond being simply fried is a touch that does not go unnoticed.
The won ton soup is a pleasant rendition, with a mild but flavorful broth. I definitely appreciated the greens and slices of lean char sui.
The dumplings themselves are on the diminutive side—you won’t confuse these with the overstuffed wontons at Kenny’s Noodle House—but overall it’s a satisfying dish.
The “Stir Fried Rice Noodles” here are nothing really more than stir fried rice noodles. The peanuts denote that it could be a sort of “pad thai” but it’s not trying to be this at all—just a mild, enjoyable noodle dish, if somewhat on the bland side. You’ll want to ask for some chili oil or Siracha to spike it up. But the composure of the dish speaks to what Jade is all about: fresh, simple, and comforting.
Which brings up another distinction. While Jade Patisserie and Teahouse is a full-fledged restaurant, it has a very casual feel. Unlike most Vietnamese restaurants you won’t find condiments (or chopsticks and spoons, for that matter) at each table.
This shot above is of the wonderful nook tucked into the far end of the restaurant (that features Connect Four).
I love the char sui hum bao here. It’s flat on either end unlike the dome-shaped buns you’re more likely to encounter. A much greater protein-to-dough ratio is the result, which in this case is a very good thing, as the hum bao is brimming with flavorful chopped bbq pork.
The beef stew here (bo kho) is one of the better versions of beef stew you’ll find in any restaurant, Vietnamese or otherwise. This is down-home cooking, rich, deep and satisfying.
If you’re anything like me you’ll be busting your gut to sop up every last drop with crusty french bread—just like at home.
Jade Patisserie and Teahouse
7912 Southeast 13th Avenue
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 477-8985
Jade Patisserie and Teahouse on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
A Delicious Free-for-All. (NY Times)
A GOOD selection of Belgian-style ales is like the very best kind of buffet, offering an assortment of flavors, aromas, styles, strengths and types. You want strong ale, sour ale, sweet ale, dry ale, golden, dark, wheat, fruity and malty. When we set out to draw a stylistic standard for a planned tasting of Belgian golden ales, it seemed as if we’d taken on an impossible task. But glory does not come to those who quit easily.
Last fall I had the good fortune to attend a conference and spend some quality time in downtown Los Angeles. Even though I lived in Southern California for seven non-contiguous years of my life, I never really spent much time in the densest parts of LA, much less downtown (outside of the occasional drive-through).
As an aside, I was actually quite taken by downtown LA. I walked a lot, and the weather was beautiful. My hotel was just around the corner Seven Grand, a dark and first-rate whiskey bar that would be instantly be my favorite place to drink in Portland. Despite the axiomatic pre-conception of Los Angeles being a city where the automobile is king, I was quite surprised by the breadth and punctuality of the public transit (The Dart ran multiple routes that criss-crossed the downtown circumference, some every 5 minutes, with a fare of only twenty five cents(!), and the convention center was well served by commuter train).
As my hotel was just a mile away from Little Tokyo, I was excited to indulge in some ramen. Mr. Sauce Supreme (himself a Los Angeles expat and a soon-to-be repat) over drinks at Beaker and Flask (a few nights before my trip) recommended Daikokuya. My first night in LA I shared a wonderful meal with EatDrink&BeMerry and Oishii Eats, and they similarly gave Daikokuya high marks. EatDrink&BeMerry gave me a tip: a few self-serve dollops of the pureed fresh garlic condiment takes the bowl to a whole other level.
As I stood amongst the throngs at the Staples Center, eagerly awaiting admittance in order to be golden showered with marketing bunkum and subjected to hours of rote proselytism, my mind raced. Here I was, amongst scores of wannabe capitalistic schlemiels with no ambition other than swallowing corporate jizz, while all I could think about was drinking from the sweet fountain that is a porky, cloudy Tonkotsu stock. Who was the bigger slave to the master? These people had passion, drive, and ambition, with shared, multivariate, outside interests in the arts and academia. I exist largely in order to consume salt.
It was with this heavy heart that I trudged towards Little Tokyo after my first morning’s sessions had completed.
On my way I noticed the Kogi Korean taco truck has quickly spawned a boldly colored cottage industry.
Even the Japanese taco was being touted…
…at a place appropriately named “LA Chicken” that apparently serves chicken that tastes like a luxury Japanese sedan.
Daikokuya itself is a small storefront on a busy stretch of 1st Avenue, just north of an entertaining maze of hilariously disjointed Japanese businesses that align themselves loosely into a mall of sorts.
I could wander these avenues for hours in tacit wonderment.
After walking over an hour with the sun beating down upon my neck, the cold Tsukemen’s sale pitch appealed to me, but there was no question what I was here for.
It was the Daikoku Ramen.
This was high noon, and there was a line out the door.
However, since I was dining solo, my name was called just 10 minutes after putting it on the waiting list, and I was parked at end of the counter, which gave me a bird’s eye view of the cooks working their magic in the small kitchen.
The initial reaction after this huge bowl of soup is placed in front of your person is to the prevalence of green onion. Trust me, it works. The guy who was seated adjacent to me as I was mid-way through my bowl ordered his Daikoku Ramen without green onions. A part of me died, and I’ve since held white hipsters with chain wallets in generally low regard.
The soup also features a nice amount of mung bean sprouts, slivers of fibrous menma.
Togarashi is freely available. Daikokuya must read my mind; this is the first thing I ask for anytime I’m brought a bowl a ramen.
Pureed garlic and pickled ginger sits on the table (or counter), allowing you to tailor the soup to your tastes. I can’t emphasize how fucking awesome this is.
The garlic goodness.
So how to describe this soup? The intense, pork bone Tonkotsu-style, creamy broth? The marinated, soft-boiled egg? The incredible tender and deeply flavorful kurobuta pork belly?
The curly, toothsome, handmade fresh noodles?
I’ll let the copy speak for itself. I will, however, add an official “goddamned mutherfuckin’ amen”. Daikoku Ramen is a masterpiece, a fugue of deliciousness, an experience that begins innocently with the prosaic act of accessorizing of your soup, then plunges you into an atavistic ingurgitation, and culminates in a lack of self-awareness as you raise the immense bowl above your head to lustfully extract every last drop of golden nectar.
I needed a smoke after this soup. And a nap.
When I awoke the next morning, my mind was consumed with the thought of returning to Daikokuya for another bowl of manna.
I cross-referenced the hours from a photo on my iPhone and was a bit forlorn that I would have to wait until 11AM.
Of course I was there when it opened.
The amount of green onion from yesterday’s bowl was not a fluke. And EatDrink&BeMerry’s sage advice rang true—I went with even another dollop of fresh garlic on this morning.
That’s a hawt (and disturbing) egg moneyshot.
The pork belly. Oh the pork belly. “Fall apart tender” is tautological when speaking of the kurobuta pork belly at Daikokuya.
A souvenir of success.
Yeah.
I checked out Adem Ayem cafe recently for lunch with a couple co-workers. Adem Ayem is a very small mom-n-pop Indonesian cafe located in a strip mall on the 99W just south of Hall Blvd. There are only 3 or 4 tables. Ordering is done at the counter.
The menu changes daily.
Beef redang (dry beef curry) with steam rice, sauteed veggies, sambal. The sambal was great–bright, spicy, vibrant, with a hint of fishiness. The tender beef, when pressed slightly with a fork, shredded into sublimity, and the curry sauce was delicious. Comfort food.
Chicken satay with peanut sauce and rice paste. Lightly pickled veggies on the side.
Adem Ayem Cafe
11945 SW Pacific Hwy, Suite 202
Tigard, OR 97223
503.639.7770
http://www.ademayemcafe.com
Adem Ayem on the WORLD WIDE WEB
One Noodle at a Time in Tokyo. (NY Times)
From then on there is only one sound — the slurping of noodles. Oh, it’s punctuated by the occasional happy hum of a diner chewing pork or guzzling the fat-flecked broth, or even by the faint chatter of the chef’s radio, but it’s the slurps that take center stage, long and loud and enthusiastic, showing appreciation for the chef’s métier even as they cool the noodles down to edible temperature.
Little T American Baker is a bakery/sandwich/espresso shop located on SE Division.
Its stark, modern interior features a rectangularly framed display case showing off the daily baked goods.
Including an excellent, crusty baguette. The breads at Little T are a treat.
A well-scribbled, chalkboard menu describes the daily offerings. The sandwiches options are mostly are static, but do seem to have a bit of variance from what I’ve seen.
Texas Cowgirl. Egg and cheddar on Sally Nunn (sort of a Texas Toast – $5.50). An excellent breakfast sandwich, cooked perfectly. A bonus about Little T is that they serve breakfast sandwiches on the weekend well into the afternoon.
The “Italian hoagie on seeded baguette” ($6.75) is not the most loaded of Italian style hoagies, but it hit the spot.
I personally would like more “tang” in the form of peppers, onions, maybe a tapenade. Perfectly fine, and the seeded baguette is a nice foil for the high-quality meats and cheese.
This “Ham and cheese and pretzel bread” ($4.50) is quite scrumptious. A pleasant snack, or, in this case, a sizable meal for my daughter, who for the first time ate an entire commercially purchased sandwich.
Little T American Baker
2600 SE Division St
Portland, OR 97202-1253
(503) 238-3458
Little T American Baker on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Imported Beef!
Packaged Salad Bacteria: New Study Finds Salad Can Contain High Levels of Fecal Bacteria. (Huff Post)
Literally.
Chicago’s Windy City Hot Dogs
8680 SW Canyon Rd
Portland, OR 97225
(503) 208-3031
Tacos can be eaten for breakfast when you are hungry.
Sanchez Taqueria
13050 Southwest Pacific Highway
Tigard, OR 97223-5072
(503) 684-2838
I’ve made repeated visits to Southwest Portland’s Hakatamon (located in the Uwajimaya Asian Market Superstore prefecture of near-Beaverton) since they introduced their Hakata-style tonkotsu broth ramen dishes some 20 months ago.
The cha-su pork here continues to be really excellent. This visit I’ve found the stock to be a bit too restrained…somewhat tepid. Garnishes included konbu, pickled ginger, green onions. sesame seeds. And of course the delicious kurobuta pork. The noodles I’ve determined need work. Too straight and pasta-like for my tastes. A fresh, toothsome, curly noodle, combined with refinement to the stock, could make this a more satisfying and complete bowl. Nevertheless, personally this is a good option for ramen in the Portland metro area.
Kenny’s is a new-ish Hong Kong-style noodle soup house on Portland’s southeast side, on the north side of Powell (just across the street from Best Baguette).
They’ve had a grand opening sign in front of their establishment for about 5 months now. That’s marketing.
The interior is clean and faux modern. Small and cozy.
You’ll get a nice cup of tea once you sit down. I tend to only drink one cup of tea, so I prefer a freshly poured, singular hot cup if tea to the metallic teapot service (and I imagine these teapots are constantly repurposed).
Condiment tray features standard condiments–red vinegar, white and black pepper, and the ubiquitous (and fiery) chili paste.
Default bowl of wonton soup.
Disgustingly posed photo of a half-eaten wonton cross-section.
From my post at Portlandfood.org:
“I like this place. It’s comfort food. The default garnish on the wanton noodle soups are sparse, with only a few slivers of the white of a green onion, but I ask them to add some bok choy and they happily oblige. And of course, the oily chili paste and dashes of white pepper complete the bowl.
“…the dumplings are large and stuffed with entire shrimp, and the minced pork filling is mild, but fine, and it doesn’t have that slight “off” or “gamey” taste I’ve experienced (maybe from heavy handedness with 5-spice or Shaoxing wine) at other places, like the Chinatown Good Taste location.”
Kenny’s Noodle House
8305 SE Powell Blvd
Portland, OR 97266
(503) 771-6868
Kenny’s Noodle House on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Two plates from the lunch buffet ($9 all-you-can-eat). Samplings include tandoori chicken, basmati rice, biryani, eggplant and potato curry, veggie pakora, chicken tikka masala, palak paneer, naan, raita, green salad.
Could use more spice and heat all around. Would eat again.
Tandoor Indian Kitchen
406 SW Oak Street
Portland, OR 97204
(503) 243-7777
Tandoor Indian Kitchen on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Small Bites: Q&A with John Gorham, galette des rois, vouvray brut and more. (OregonLive.com)
This guy is an inspiration.
Worst Automatic Price Reduction ever.
Pho Nguyen
4795 Southwest 77th Avenue
Portland, OR 97225-1807
(503) 297-3389
50 Plates—a newish, modern Pearl District eatery—has somewhat of a kitchsy concept. Its cutesy menu inhabits the murky hinterlands between playful and hackneyed cornball, sort of like HBO’s True Blood.
Castroville Artichoke Rolls. “goat cheese, roasted garlic & artichoke filling, avocado ranch”
These sounded quite intriguing, though what we received was incompatible with my expectations. These were more like eggrolls, and were disappointingly on the small side. But they were fine.
50/50. “aged cheddar on tomato bread, roasted tomato soup with oregano”
This is essentially a take on the childhood comfort staple of grilled cheese and Campbell’s tomato soup.
Unlike the overly processed banality of the latter, 50 Plates’ take on tomato soup was full of vibrant, intense tomato flavors, simple and delicious. The sandwich was a grilled cheese sandwich. It was eaten.
T.J. Caesar. “hearts of romaine, charred corn, cherry tomatoes, fried croutons and cave-aged gouda”
I’m usually not a big fan of “non-standard” Caesar salads, and despite the initials in the name (“T.J.” = Tijuana) that implies some sort of lineage to the birthplace of original Caesar, this salad certainly qualifies as non-traditional. Nicely dressed and composed, the dressing itself was too mild to be considered proper “Caesar” but the salad was enjoyable nonetheless.
The seafood chowder (“Today’s Chowdah“—implying naturally that a different chowder is featured each day) was quite good, featuring plump mussels, clams, and nice chunks of tender white fish in a rich broth not overly thick and maudlin like many seafood chowders can be.
Sliders are ordered at 50 Plates a la carte, and each separate slider came with a flag to distinguish its sovereignty. This must be a tedious step for any cook. Plus, it’s needlessly nationalistic. I live by the motto “hamburguesas sin fronteras”.
Lil’ Kahuna Burger. “Kobe beef, Canadian bacon, pineapple, & teriyaki glaze”
Old Faithful “Kobe beef, Tillamook cheddar, tomato jam”
As you can see each miniature burger was expertly constructed, and the flavors were spot on. My quibble was with the size of the sliders. They were literally about two bites, diminutive even for burgers in slider form (and at $4 a pop, no bargain either). You would probably need to eat four sliders to properly get your grub on.
The fresh-cut fries were good, and the house made ketchup (“Nikki’s Ketchup”) was a terrific, tangy complement.
So in addition to combining two overwrought beef trends (“Kobe” beef and “sliders”), these burgers were ultimately a smidgeon too twee for me, I suppose. When I want to get my burger on I’m more in mood for Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run than Belle and Sebastian’s Boy with the Arab Strap.
A platter of biscuits and assorted starches accompany your meal at 50 Plates, including a savory, crumbly cheddar biscuit that my daughter loved dunking in her bowl of “chowdah”. Major bonus points for going beyond the perfunctory bread basket.
50 Plates
333 Northwest 13th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209-3144
(503) 228-5050
Dang’s Thai Kitchen
670 North State Street
Lake Oswego, OR 97034-2437
(503) 697-0779
Ticket Replay: Sarah Palin’s book sparks attack on vegetarian critic. (LA Times)
So it’s not really a surprise that her book, “Going Rogue,” published today, extols the virtues of eating meat.
“If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore,” she wrote. “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?”
But the former Republican vice presidential candidate did not stop there.
“I love meat,” she writes. “I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak. But I especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.”
“Medium-well-done steak”? Fuck that noise. Not fit to govern.
Since it’s winter and the time where many humans are afflicted with “the sickness”, I thought I’d share my favorite form of chicken noodle soup. I guess in Vietnamese it’s officially “pho ga”, but that literally just means “chicken soup”. So the American patois in this instance is far superiour as it includes the word “noodle”. But I don’t really care at all what you call it. It’s a free country—until of course everyone has access to affordable health care at which point we will all be fascists.
Start the Broth
- 1 Chicken
- A lot of water
- 2 teaspoons coriander seed
- 4 allspice berries
- 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon white peppercorns
- 6 star anise
- 1/2 cinnamon stick
- 10 cloves
- 4 dried scallops
- 15 dried shrimp
- 4 tablespoons finely minced lemongrass
- 7 kaffir lime leaves
- 1 large white onion
- 2 carrots
- 3 stalks celery
- 1 medium sized knob ginger, sliced
Put the chicken in a stock pot. Pour enough water in the pot to cover the chicken by a couple inches or so. Add vegetables and spices (all the rest of the broth ingredients) and bring to a low simmer. Lower heat to low and allow chicken to poach for 45 minutes or so, and then remove the chicken and stick it in the fridge. After it’s cooled sufficiently, remove the breast meat (but keep the rest of the chicken on the bone).
Bring the stock back to a low simmer and return the rest of the chicken back to the pot. Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting (and if there are burners on your stove smaller than others, move the stockpot to the smaller burner). “Simmer” overnight (there really should be no bubbling at all).
Season the Broth
The next morning, strain twice (or more!) and place in the fridge. Once a layer of fat congeals at the very top, skim it. Return the pot to the stove (and heat) and add:
- A few, small (nickle-sized) pieces of rock sugar
- Salt
- 1 teaspoon or more of Ajinomoto (aka “MSG”) – this is your call (if you hate MSG, I respect your wishes. The scallops and shrimp do add a significant amount of umami).
- Many dashes of fish sauce
Taste and season accordingly.
Bowl It Up
Bring the broth to a roiling simmer. In the meantime, boil fresh banh pho noodles for 30 seconds and remove to a bowl. Add to that:
- Torn chicken breast meat (see above)
- Chiffonade of thin omelette spiked with a lot of black pepper
- Torn Thai basil leaves
- Sawtooth herb (if you can find it)
- Cilantro
- Thinly sliced onion
- Chopped green onions
- Chopped bird chilies
- Bean sprouts
Pour hot broth over noodles. Finish with a couple dashes of fish sauce and grinds of fresh black and white pepper. Squeeze of 1/4 or 1/2 of a lemon over the soup. Slurp.
Phnom Penh Noodle Soup (aka “Hu Tieu Nam Vang”) at Southeast Portland’s HA&VL.
Fried fish balls, slices of peppery Vietnamese sausage, roast pork, shrimp, squid, ground pork, and quail eggs, topped with Chinese celery and fried shallots. A finer rendition in the greater Portland metro area there is none. Fridays only you can eat.
HA & VL Sandwich and Soup
2738 SE 82nd Ave # 103
Portland, OR 97266
(503) 772-0103
HA&VL Phnom Penh Noodle Soup on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Let’s see…what went into the pot. Olive oil, garlic, shallots, tomatoes…a few crushed chilies. A small bottle of clam juice, a healthy pour of vermouth. Anise-y, fresh Thai basil. And of course a swat of butter at the end to finish things, followed by the squeeze of half a lemon. Hence the grilled, crusty bread chunks, sitting off-focus in the background. The bread truly becomes a joie de vivre when the clams have been excavated and slurped. Each dredge of crusty bread through a liquid layered with these flavors comprises a final act worthy of the chapter that preceded.
Kai Yaang from Pok Pok. That’s a mighty fine bird.
I’ve read interweb notices over the past few years that have sung the praises of the Schnitzelwich. Posts by Portland’s own recipe blogger extraordinaire Michelle@Je Mange la Ville and the fine folks at Portlandfood.org. What’s not to dream of? I remember living in Turkey when I was 15 years old and I discovered a sandwich shop of note and decided that fresh, breaded protein sandwiched between two fine slices of bread can be a beautiful thing.
However, since I don’t find myself downtown during lunch much at all, the Schnitzelwich has long eluded me. But recently I had some business downtown to tend to, and was fortunate enough to swing by the Tabor food cart to before heading back to work and sample this culinary curiosity finally, once and for all.
The Tabor cart itself is one of downtown’s more striking and creative pods, wearing a distinctive DIY ethic on its sleeves.
By the way, the cart does serve other foodstuffs that is not the Schnitzelwich. One day I might be lucky enough to eat all these as well.
But the Schnitzelwich is what we are concerning ourselves with. And man, what a sandwich. A perfectly crispy shell of delicious breading encases a tenderized pork filet. And it is huge–the entire filet spills out from all sides of the Grand Central ciabatta roll (a perfect foil) in which it is sandwiched and is the size of small woman’s foot.
The bread is schmeared on either side with a mild ajvar chili relish and horseradish spread. A couple crisp, green romaine leaves complete the garnish. My only quibble would be with the abundance of the horseradish, but that’s simply a personal preference and I would ask for a light spread my next time.
How safe is that chicken? (Consumer Reports)
You would think that after years of alarms about food safety—outbreaks of illness followed by renewed efforts at cleanup—a staple like chicken would be a lot safer to eat. But in our latest analysis of fresh, whole broilers bought at stores nationwide, two-thirds harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter, the leading bacterial causes of foodborne disease.
Spotted at Barbur World Foods. Coming soon to a dish in my kitchen.
Black Friday indeed.
Dick Cheney slams President Obama for projecting ‘weakness. (Politico)
I haven’t posted something in this vein in some time, and was able to work in a tangential food reference as well.
I found myself with a day off on a recent Thursday. I considered this a capricious stroke of serendipity (even if it was Thanksgiving, which happens on Thursday every year as long as I can remember), because this day is when the warm and generous family that run SE Portland’s HA & VL feature their incredible “Crabflake Noodle Soup”.
It’s difficult to describe just how good this soup is.
Likewise, it’s impossible to overestimate how two perfectly cooked quail eggs transports this meal to an astral plane beyond Shirley MacLaine levels of deliciousness. The broth is not so much a liquid as it is a viscous, primordial sludge with a 10W-40 grade. A distillation of briny crab and seafood essences, imparting a thick umami translucence like liquid gold.
Fat, chewy rice noodles provide the starchy counterpoint to the deep and intensely flavorful “broth”, bolstered by gossamer flakes of boiled crab meat.
The garnish at HA&VL provides just enough lemon verbena, Vietnamese balm, shiso, julienned lettuce, and the right amount of fiery chopped thai bird chilies (bathing in fish sauce and vinegar) to properly spike the punch and round out dish.
Last Sunday, after that afternoon’s televised American tackle football match had ceased, I was greeted with this wonderful program starring competitive bouncing champion and notable television personality
Mr. T.
I trust you found this as enthralling and educational (not to mention fraught with sexual tension) as I did. Here’s a sample.
I found myself out in Beaverton on a recent morning and decided to step into Pho Hung for a bowl of soup for breakfast.
At Pho Hung they don’t bring out the ngo gai (sawtooth herb) that is essential to the pho experience, so ask for it explicitly. Don’t miss the opportunity to add ngo gai in your pho—life’s too short to not enjoy the herbal essence. It’s your right as an American. Don’t be a socialist.
As they leave the kitchen, this branch of the Hung sprinkles their bowls generously with plenty of raw sliced onion, scallions, and cilantro, like any proper bowl of pho should be garnished.
The chin here this morning really rocked it. I’ve complained about the consistency of the various Pho Hungs in the Portland metro area in the past, but in reality they should all be viewed from the perspective that each location is really their own restaurant (exemplified by the location on NE 72nd/Sandy that became an entirely different restaurant a couple years ago). And each restaurant can have its respective arcs. The Hung on SE Powell I haven’t visited in probably 4 years, but when I did (about every other week for the course of 2 years) I would get bowls all over the map, with many renditions feeling a bit “smegma-ish”. The last bowl from the SE 82nd location was tepid and milquetoast. I’ve complained about the consistency at the Beaverton location as well, but the last half dozen bowls of soup (over the course of 18 months) have shown this location to deliver honest bowls of pho with solid components featuring flavorful broths with the appropriate amounts of clarity and depth.
Pho Hung Beaverton
13227 SW Canyon Rd # B
Beaverton, OR 97005-4623
(503) 626-2888
A Nutria Trap Line by Bicycle. (Some awesome guy’s blog via Blogtown)
We then returned with our catch and skinned them, prepared the hides for tanning and butchered the carcass and cooked up a bit of the meat. Most folks seemed pleasantly surprised at the “chicken- like” taste of the meat. I have been asked, and often wondered myself, whether the meat from these critters is clean enough to eat being that they are semi-aquatic and spend much time in Johnson Creek, which isn’t known for being clean. My opinion is this: Eating a bit of this now and then can’t be too harmful because the nutria are feeding mainly on clean organic crops and grasses at the farm where they reside. They are not eating fish and so, I assume, are not bioaccumulating toxins the way tuna, salmon and other seafood (that folks pay top dollar for) does.
I have long wondered about the possibility of eating this noble beast. I imagine it would provide the makings for a fine taco.
Bambuzza is located in a strip mall in Tualatin. There’s also another location on the Waterfront and Seattle (for those keeping score at hon, Seattle is not in Portland).
“Saigon Combination” vermicelli bowl. Mostly flavorless and lacking soul. Kinda like Tualatin.
Tip: stay away from the cha gio. Tiny, with a sparse filling that tasted like raw garlic. Horrible.
Bambuza Vietnam Grill
7628 SW Nyberg St
Tualatin, OR 97062-9427
(503) 692-9800
Lunch in Sherwood @Pho Tuy.
Pho Ty
16068 SW Tualatin Sherwood Rd
Sherwood, OR 97140
(503) 625-1782
I recently enjoyed an hour of relative happiness at the Pearl District’s Metrovino, and these poorly composed, noisy iPhone photos should be considered visual proof of such an incident.
The “Charcuterie of the Day” was duck rilletes. I can’t remember what exactly that fruit dollop was, but I do remember it was tasty.
“Salmon Gravlax Bruschetta” I was expecting…more.
“Tataki of Hawaiian Yellowtail”. With sliced radish and cukes, and a light soy dressing. Refreshing.
This was a damn good burger. Saucy and oozy, sitting on a fluffy, toasted brioche-y bun. The shredded iceberg is a fun touch. For some reason, I’ve regressed to being 8 years old and have had a recent hankering for shredded iceberg lettuce.
A lot of people are talking Metrovino these days, particularly about their sexy modern Enomatic® wine dispensing system that takes up an entire wall behind the bar. I am but a lowland plebeian of boorish fancy, so I know not of such conceits. But the food’s pretty good.
Metrovino Bistro Bar Bottle
1139 NW 11th Ave
Portland, OR 97209-3469
(503) 517-7778
A recent trip to Tigard’s own Taqueria Sanchez confirmed that they’re still delivering excellent tacos on the 99W.
I’ve long been a fan of their tortillas, and the last couple visits have revealed that perhaps they either have changed up their recipe or perhaps changed their process. These tortillas seem to lack a slight bit of “sponginess”. These were still excellent, hand-made tortillas, but they did seem to have more of a “char” to them.
Asada.
The fish is always a crowd pleaser.
Wonderfully crispy pastor.
Full metal jacket taco. At Sanchez, the verde has more heat than its red counterpart. Both combine to cause a fair amount of scalp sweating every time I leave.
Sanchez Taqueria
13050 SW Pacific Hwy
Tigard, OR 97223
Phone: (503) 684-2838
I have a special place in my heart for wonton noodle soup.
Many people wouldn’t be caught dead at Golden Horse considering the location (across the street from a strip club, at the ass end of “Chinatown”) and how much of a dive it’s considered to be, but after a night of drinking (with only have $9 in your pocket) sometimes a hot bowl of soup—with a healthy dollop of chili oil glop—really does hit the spot. And at Golden Horse, they even add a nice amount of bok choy sum, cutting the flour, meat and MSG with a nice vegetal edge. And you’ll still have $2 leftover for the bus fare.
Like I mentioned, I have a special place in my heart for wonton noodle soup. A dirty restaurant, in one of Portland’s lesser neighborhoods, on a lonely weekday evening, only seems to enhance that fondness.
Golden Horse Seafood Restaurant
238 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR 97209-3806
(503) 228-1688
The All-Inclusive All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Guide (Eating the Road, a food blog)
In my more gluttonous days this would be invaluable.
Street food: Is it what’s next?. (WaPo)
Doing street food better is the goal of the CIA’s 12th Worlds of Flavor conference. More than 700 corporate chefs, restaurateurs and writers are here to learn from 75 cooks, hawkers, barbecue masters and authors about street snacks and global comfort foods. Many hope to turn a few of the recipes into the next culinary big thing.
At last night’s welcome session, more than a dozen chefs strutted their stuff. Roberto Santibanez, owner of food New York consulting firm Truly Mexican, made tortas, a Mexican ham-and-cheese sandwich that you can easily imagine popping up on the menu at Panera Bread or Cosi. Bobby Chinn took his five minutes to throw together a fragrant bowl of bun bo xoa, a Vietnamese beef noodle soup. If you haven’t heard of Chinn yet, my bet is it won’t be long before you do. The owner of Restaurant Bobby Chinn in Hanoi is fun, funny and oh-so telegenic.
Food blogging raconteur Eat Drink & Be Merry recently showed Vendr TV a few the finer points of the Los Angeles taco scene.
Tacos are great. They really are.
I’m a big fan of Grand Central. I love their branding, and have been enjoying their bread and pastries since I’ve moved to Portland over 7 years ago.
During breakfast, Grand Central serves an egg sandwich with an absolutely fantastic tomato jam/relish that is at once sweet and savory. I’ve tried recreating it at home a couple times, even creating a sun dried tomato jam that was nice but turned out a bit too cloyingly sweet for a breakfast sandwich. It never occurred to me to ask someone at Grand Central for the recipe. And it probably never will.
So I considered it a moment of great serendipity when The Oregonian ran a special on breakfast sandwiches last year and printed the recipe for Grand Central’s tomato jam. I’ve prepared it at home, and consider this recipe a faithful recreation of the original.
(Above: homemade egg-and-bacon sandwich on toasted Grand Central bolo roll, topped with tomato jam. Recipe below).
Grand Central’s Tomato Jam/Relish
- 1/4 cup sliced sun-dried tomatoes (dry-packed, not oil-packed)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 large white onion, diced
- 1 large leek, diced
- 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes (Grand Central uses Muir Glen brand), drained, juices reserved
- 2 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
In a small bowl, cover the sun-dried tomatoes with boiling water. Let sit until soft, about 10 minutes. Drain, reserving the soaking liquid, and purée in a food processor. Add a little of the soaking liquid if the purée is too stiff. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until they begin to caramelize, about 10 minutes. Turn heat down and add diced leeks. Cook until the leeks are tender, 6 to 8 minutes longer.
Combine the reserved juice from the canned tomatoes with the sun-dried tomato purée. Add to the onion-leek mixture in the pan and turn up the heat, stirring until the liquid evaporates.
Add brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and salt. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Remove from heat, cool, and stir in uncooked canned diced tomatoes. Adjust seasoning to taste. Store covered in the refrigerator for up to 4 weeks, or freeze for up to 6 months.
This market sold a variety of goods. I made note of the precisely hygienic quality that deeply imbued the soul of this well-coiffed, yet strangely alluring, seaside entrepôt.
Ferry Building Marketplace
http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com
I would link to Google Maps, but as of this moment, Google is telling me it’s located in Hackettstown, NJ, which I’m sure is a lovely place, but it is clearly not in San Francisco.
Looks like Eater’s near-term expansion plans included our very own burg (Eater PDX). Must have been all those breathless articles written in the New York Times over the last few years.
I like game hens. They are like chickens, except in diminutively exact scale. You can eat an entire game hen at one sitting and not feel like a glutton. So I eat two.
One thing that worries: are “game hens” simply baby chickens prematurely slaughtered on a factory farm? Is this a moral quandary for which I’m ill equipped to handle due to my own shortcomings? My failure to subscribe to a moral imperative derived from a careful exploration of Kantian ethics? Or are these really indeed “game” birds that have lived a fruitful life wandering the short brush of Appalachian foothills until they met their untimely fate? I’d prefer to subscribe to the fatalism of the latter, though the former is most likely closer to the inconvenient truth.
In any regards, this is some delicious poultry.
This is a simple recipe for excellent grilled game hens. Since they are small, you can grill them on an open flame without having to spatchcock the bird (though certainly if you want to butterfly it to cut down on cooking time you could).
The marinade is simply a deep rub of the Vietnamese “sate” condiment, a wonderfully reddish and fiery paste of lemongrass, fish sauce, and chilies. My recipe is cribbed straight from Andrea Nguyen, who I considered the Julia Child of Vietnamese cuisine in these here United States.
You