Little Bird's 2010 opening marked an important turning point for Portland's restaurant scene: With Le Pigeon chef Gabriel Rucker and general manager Andy Fortgang choosing to open their charming spin-off bistro on the bus mall, it was finally safe to go back in the downtown dining water. I'm confident that visit will be better than the last. Next time, I'll throw a few classics in the mix. This was my first disappointing meal at Aviary in half a decade of eating at the restaurant, and it featured a roster of almost entirely of new dishes. Claypot chicken in a pool of intriguingly piquant vermillion sauce made from Szechuan peppercorns and fermented chile bean paste arrived with an individual bowl of gummy rice. Brûléed tomato with baba ghanouj and the daikon-wrapped oxtail "cannelloni" was more strange than satisfying. Soy-cured, stem-on artichoke with a citrus-spiked bearnaise didn't make sense next to a swizzle stick of goat cheese strudel. But a meal earlier this year failed to pop, with kitchen-sink dishes that didn't cohere. On most visits, that high-wire act results in some of the most surprisingly creative combinations this side of Le Pigeon, and Aviary has been listed among our top 10 restaurants ever since we first ranked the restaurants in this guide in 2015. At Aviary, dishes seem to be built through connections among colors, flavors and textures. That change will happen too late for this guide, though we've been assured that Portland's best happy hour will remain.Īt some restaurants, the game is to figure out which childhood memory or fast-food dish the chef is riffing on. Last month, the restaurant announced original chef Rich Meyer would be replaced by former Clyde Common ace Chris DiMinno. This was the year we decided to stop holding Trifecta's best aspect against it, embracing that killer happy hour by starting our meal with deviled eggs, fried oyster sliders and cool Negronis augmented with some oysters baked with pork sausage and lemongrass and a "big-ass" 28-day dry-aged ribeye steak from the dinner menu. It's not just a great deal, it's the distillation of baker Ken Forkish's vision for Trifecta, a big-city tavern with killer food, fine drinks and bread baked fresh on-site. If standing is an option, some of our favorite experiences here have been no-wait meals eaten at the high tables up front, with a few bites paired with an oh-so-Spanish goblet of gin and tonic.Ĭan a happy hour be too good? For nearly half a decade, this close-in Southeast Portland restaurant has dominated late afternoons, serving $1 oysters, $5 cocktails and a double cheeseburger that drips pimento cheese onto the office shirt you didn't have time to change. Yet some of the best dishes are the most restrained, like the nicely seared scallop with fennel salad over good romesco or the cut of fine Iberian pork cooked gently in a wood-fired grill and served plainly with salt and oil. Like the restaurant itself, the bacon-wrapped dates, patatas bravas and seafood paella are big and loud, scattered with salt and drizzled with oil. Just around the corner, Argentine steakhouse Ox wishes it had Tuesday night lines like this. Opened by chef John Gorham in 2007, the restaurant remains one of the city's busiest, with hour-plus waits and crowds spilling out onto the sidewalk seven days a week. With bold flavors and a menu expanded smartly around its own greatest hits, Portland's most popular Spanish restaurant remains intimately familiar with what the city wants.
Marshall St.), notable mainly for the fact that it's the first in the group to accept reservations, though there's talk of adding some new dishes grilled over live coals. Last year, the Pok Pok family added a charming Northwest Portland location (1639 N.W. We've been visiting Pok Pok long enough to have our happy little ruts: the fiery boar collar, the lemongrass-stuffed roast game hen and the fragrant cha ca La Vong, a supremely addictive Vietnamese catfish, noodle and herb dish stained with turmeric. Visit the original location today and you'll find those wings still hot, sticky and sweet, a flavor combination profound enough to draw tourists from all over the world. Now stretching to six restaurants across two cities - seven and three if you count the new employees-only pub at Beaverton's Nike headquarters - the Pok Pok empire was mainly built on the back of a single dish: Ike's Vietnamese fish sauce wings. No other restaurant serves this specific collection of mostly Northern Thai street food all in one place, let alone this well.