Eating Our Way Through Portland


We love Portland, Oregon. We love it so much that, instead of embarking on a more exotic trip to Montreal this summer, we jumped at the chance to head back to the land of food carts, bustle-y sidewalks and painted signs on buildings that admonish the population to "Keep Portland Weird."

We ate... a lot. Despite our determined, enthusiastic enjoyment of all the Portland cuisine we could find in five days, I only managed to gain one pound... because we also walked a LOT.

Pretzel with mustard and cheese at Deschute's

We walked to all our favorite spots, like the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, or OMSI, as it's usually called, we walked to Washington Park with the amazing Rose and Japanese Gardens, we walked to Powell's Books (where I spent at least half an hour drooling over the travel/food memoirs) and we walked to the Saturday Market.

Testing our boat-building skills at OMSI

Tired feet in the Japanese Garden

But, mostly, we walked from one food venue to the next. Every trip brings an opportunity to find a restaurant with food from a country that we haven't marked off on our world map. (Sadly, the two we enjoyed from the last Portland trip, featuring Indonesian and delicious Turkish doner kebab, are gone.) Patrick did a little research on Urban Spoon, and discovered a food cart  with South African Indian food.

Fortunately, my incipient bridge-crossing-panic-attack never fully blossomed and we made the long, humid trek to Mum's Kitchen without incident.

Mum FORCED us to sample all the dishes before she allowed us to order...

We ate in a tin-shed!

Delicious!

My favorite meal of the whole trip was here, at  PBJ's. Yep, another food cart! Who knew grilled peanut butter and jelly could be so magical? Patrick got the Spicy Thai and I enjoyed the Oregonian. Blue cheese on a peanut butter and jelly?!! I had to try it and I'm glad I did.

Some other Portland highlights...

Boba at the Saturday Market.

 Boba, with its amazing, chewy balls of tapioca is readily available in Salt Lake, (I recommend Cafe d'Bolla) but these were just what we needed on a hott-ish Portland morning!

Little Big Burger

Little Big Burger, recommended by my cousin Adam's adorable wife, Amy, has only 6 items on the menu. Because who would want anything besides their burgers and truffle oil fries?

Drinking Chocolate at Cacao

Cacao was a dream come true. We drank our cup of slightly spicy, thick, drinking chocolate with something close to reverence.

Bedtime Snack- Old Dirty B**tard

Finally, a trip to Portland would not be complete without treats from Voodoo Doughnuts. Happily we waited in line for only 15 minutes, unlike the traumatic visit last time with the hour long wait, the unruly children in front of us who kept hopping on my feet and causing mayhem and their truly, truly ineffectual mother.."Johnny, if you do that again, we're leaving!"... over and over until the little rascals finally got their undeserved doughy deliciousness.

Thank you for the food, Portland! I already can't wait to visit again.