Honeymoon: Three Doors Down, SE Portland OR and Heading Home

Saturday May 4, SE Portland OR

After munchies with beer at noon on Saturday and so-so cart food later in the afternoon, it was finally around 8:45pm that we got somewhat hungry. For our final meal in Portland, Ann wanted a simple plate of pasta so we searched the web for the closest reasonable sounding Italian joint, which proved to be at Hawthorne and 37th, called Three Doors Down.

As an aside, how nice is it to go out somewhat late and still have lots of restaurants open? Living in small town Winchester VA, we are done with our dinner service by 9pm even at the end of June when the days are the longest of the year.

That said, I judged the crowd to be slow and asked our server about it. In Portland as in Winchester, it seems you cannot compete with Mother Nature. Because it was one of the first beautiful weekends of the year, so many were people out of town at the beach or otherwise enjoying the gorgeous weather and grilling out.

We commandeered a table out on the sidewalk and people-watched for a while with a bottle of Brick House Gamay Noir, which tasted exactly as Gamay should taste. If you told me I was drinking Beaujolais, I wouldn't have argued with you. But really, I don't know enough about New World Gamay to understand how it differs from Beaujolais.


Ribbon Ridge Gamay

Because we weren't super hungry, we ordered a couple appetizers followed by a plate of pasta. Both our starters were good. First up was a large slab of grilled bread spread with goat cheese and topped with arugula and duck confit. Yep, it was every bit as good as you might imagine, though an informed palate might be wishing it had some of our house-cured duck confit on it. There's no hiding the extra flavor that ours develops over the three-month curing process.

Duck Confit, Arugula, and Goat Cheese

Next up was a board of burrata topped with tapenade, some so-called jamón ibérico, and flatbread. We enjoyed this plate, but two things confuse me. First, look at the mash up of ingredients from at least three different cultures. How does this make intellectual sense? Second, look hard at the jamón ibérico. Really, if you're going to spend that kind of money on some of the world's best ham, are you then going to cut it thick and then partially cook it?

"Jamón Ibérico", Burrata, Tapenade, and Flatbread

By the time we finished our appetizers and the server delivered our plates (they split our pasta for us; kind of them, but they needn't have) of house-made ricotta cavatelli bolognese, it was really dark out on the sidewalk. Our server had brought us a candle earlier in the evening, but it was way too gusty to keep it lit, so Ann downloaded a candle app on her iPhone and set it to flickering.

I must say that the cavatelli was deftly made and deftly sauced but was desperate for salt. And doesn't anyone make true bolognese with shredded meat anymore? Really, you're going to the trouble to make cavatelli, but you won't do the same for your meat sauce?

In the end, it was a really nice low key dinner that we shared on our final night in Portland. We were very comfortable and enjoyed sitting and talking and watching the street parade. If I lived in Portland, I think I would like this place a lot.

Sunday May 5

Sunday the 5th is a day I would like to forget. I forced myself up at 0600 local time, trying to wean myself off Pacific time to help with the transition back to work on Monday morning. In retrospect, maybe this was a bad idea. We skipped breakfast at the B&B and hurried to return our rental car and get through security to catch our early morning flight to SFO. I managed to set off the millimeter wave scanner again: I'm simply too tall for the little booth. When I looked at the monitor, it had alerted right on the top of my head, the usual location, so I got my (lack of) hair patted down. All the TSA agents here were very friendly, unlike at Dulles, and the tiny guy doing the pat down started chuckling when I had to bend down so that he could reach the top of my head.

It proved that all that hurrying was for naught. Because of weather and because of weekend runway closures at SFO for federally-mandated safety improvements, our plane was over two hours late arriving at PDX. Our plane arrived at PDX *after* we were supposed to depart SFO for Dulles; how's that for late? The flight crews were bitching too: they have to deal with runway closures all the time and naturally, the brunt of passenger fall-out lands mostly on their shoulders. And their layovers are impacted as well. The whole situation is screwed up.

The weather continued brilliantly nice and we had awesome views of Mount Hood from the tarmac while we sat at PDX and the rest of the major Cascades peaks: Ranier, St. Helens with its flat top, Adams, and the Three Sisters down near Bend once we got airborne. We also saw Shasta and the peaks in California before weather closed in a few minutes out of SFO.

Mt. Hood from the Tarmac at PDX

We managed to get re-booked on a flight out of SFO that departed not 20 minutes after we landed (and need I mention that our inbound flight sat on the ground waiting in SFO waiting for a gate to open?). When we got to the Washington departure gate, mercifully only about four gates from our arrival gate, the monitor above the gate read "Delayed - Awaiting Inbound Aircraft"), which confused me because there was a plane at the gate. The plane had just arrived and so we stood around for about 45 minutes while they turned it around, giving me time to nip over to the concession just behind us and grab some power bars and a couple sandwiches. At this point, we had been going all day without food.

"Delayed:" Just What Every Traveler Wants to See

Once we boarded, we had to sit at the gate for about 20 minutes before ground control would give us permission to join the long line of jets waiting to take off. We were about an hour on the plane on the ground before we finally got underway to DC and with weather ahead of us, we were unable to take the most direct route in. We finally arrived at just after 1am and by the time we got our car, got home, and got the dogs walked, it was 3am. Waking up just three hours later to go to work was a doozy!

This is the final post in the Honeymoon series. We had a wonderful time at the Oregon coast, in the Willamette Valley, and in Portland proper, along with some of the most fantastic weather ever to grace the first week in May in that area. What an amazing trip!

Honeymoon: BridgePort Brewing and Portland Food Carts

Saturday May 4, NW and SW Portland OR

BridgePort Brewing

After touring the incredible farmer's market at Portland State University, we decided to grab a beer and check out the food cart scene, not necessarily in that order. Because we were already in SW, we drove over to the food truck pod at 10th and Alder SW, the one that we had driven by on our way into town and scouted the offerings. Because it was still before noon, a lot of the carts weren't open, but Ann and I each picked a cart to sample later in the afternoon.

Bridgeport: Still Great Beer

We decided to make a beer detour for a while until the food carts got fully ramped up, so we drove a few short blocks up to NW to BridgePort Brewing for drinks and appetizers. I spent a lot of time drinking IPAs and Blue Herons at Bridgeport when I was making regular visits to Portland back in the 1980s. The beer was very good back then and I am happy to report that the beer remains good to this day.

Since then, I have moved up in style from pale ales to imperial pale ales and I really enjoyed the first pint of Hop Czar, a big hop monster of a beer. Me like. After this pint, our server tasted me on a couple of other beers (including the Kingpin Double Red Ale) that he thought I would like as well, but I ended up having another Hop Czar. After you start with a hop monster, it is hard to go backwards.


Ann's "Margarita"

While Ann was off in the restroom, I ordered her a Summer Squeeze Bright Ale, but she wasn't much of a fan: her taste runs mainly to straightforward lightly hopped lagers, Mexican or Asian. So she ordered a pinkish Margarita that looked pretty good. I didn't taste it but it seems like she enjoyed it. I'm totally drawing a blank on what was in it.

At this point, it was about 1 pm and we decided to get a little bit to eat while we were there. And it turns out that they have pretty decent food; in any case, it way exceeded my expectations (which are admittedly pretty low when it comes to brewpubs). We ordered a Mediterranean Plate and an order of warm soft pretzels.


Mediterranean Plate: Decent Brewpub Food

The Mediterranean Plate was pretty tasty even if the pita was a bit odd. I don't believe I have ever seen a whole white pita docked so that it wouldn't rise. It wasn't bad, just odd. On the plate was hummus, a quinoa "tabouleh" that was kind of fun, olives with feta, and a so-called "Moroccan carrot-walnut pate." This appears to me to be a riff on halwa and I liked it because it wasn't sweet.


Pretzels, Quintessential Beer Drinking Food

The pretzels came with a Kingpin Ale-Honey Mustard and a Porter-Cheddar spread. I liked the honey mustard but I didn't get much cheese flavor out of the cheddar spread.

[Note: The iconic BridgePort Brewery founded by Willamette Valley icon Dick Ponzi and Oregon's second craft brewery finally closed in 2019 after years of mismanagement by new ownership. I really miss the great nights there back in the day.]

Portland Food Carts

On our way back to our B&B in SE, we stopped back by 10th and Alder SW to grab a couple of things from the food trucks there. I will say in advance that I think we struck out here. The food we got was not great and not what we expected of the vibrant cart scene. Clearly, we chose poorly. It happens; not often, but it happens.


Click to Read the Fine Print on the Downtown Sign

Ann Chose a Fancy Burger from Sideshow

The Sideshow cart has pretty good reviews for their fries and poutine, but it was the window sign that got Ann's attention. She loves a good burger and was seduced by the Fancy Burger at the Sideshow food cart. Reading that description, what foodie wouldn't want to try the burger? The burger was really meh. Really meh. Super, super average. Meh.

I fared about equally well with a porchetta sandwich at The People's Pig. I am a big porchetta fan and if I do say so myself, I make kick-ass porchetta. I always like to taste other people's versions though, just to widen my frame of reference. Sadly, the People's Pig porchetta might as well have been a smoked pork shoulder sandwich. It had a good smoky flavor, which most porchetta does not, but who can fault a guy for throwing some smoke to a pig? My porchetta is cured for several days in a great fennel, rosemary, and garlic rub. This, this had no flavor other than smoked pork. Which would have been fine chopped with a good bit of East Carolina sauce. But to call it porchetta is something of a crime.


Porchetta? Who Can Resist?

How about So-So Pork Sandwiches?

Love Me Some Pig. Pig Didn't Love Me Back

Honeymoon: Portland Farmers Market @ PSU

Saturday May 4, SW Portland OR

When I am traveling (or I should say, before restaurant when I used to travel) I love to spend time at local markets and the Portland Farmers Market at Portland State University is consistently ranked by those who rank farmers markets in the top ten in the country. Naturally the PSU market was first on our list of things to do and see after breakfast. It turned out to be a great way to start the last day of our trip.

Having spent our first night in Portland proper, at 9 am we went downstairs to the dining room to have a communal breakfast with the other two couples staying at the B&B, one from Chicago and the other a hippie couple from Ann Arbor. We were the youngest ones at the table by 15 or 20 years. We got to meet our hosts Jason and Ann at breakfast as well, when they brought out platters of spinach frittata, made in part with eggs from the back yard.

There was also some kind of cured pork product, in long strips that were uniformly lean and pink; I never got the chance to ask what it was. Each of us had a bowl of fruit as well and there was a plate full of muffins in the center of the table, but I didn't taste them, not being a big sweets fan, but they certainly looked good.

Right after breakfast, we took off to the market and as we got close, we couldn't find any parking. Maybe the locals know where to park, but we were several blocks away on the street before we found anything resembling a free spot. As we made our way there, I sure wasn't prepared for the size and diversity of the market that we found. It is a vast market with up to 200 vendors of produce, mushrooms, meat, seafood, charcuterie, bread and baked goods, cheese and dairy products, honey, ready to eat food, and value-added products such as sauces and condiments. I've never seen anything like it, not even in Europe, especially with thousands of shoppers at any given time crowding the walkways and making it difficult to move.

Judging from the market managers and conversations with vendors, there seem to be a ton of rules and regulations, but at the end of the day, it is a producer-only market. One consequence of these rules and the pervasive hyperenviroconsciousness is that although there are stations for refilling water bottles, there is no place at the market where you can buy a bottle of water. So on our way out of the market, we stopped in to a little corner market for a bottle of water. Naturally, there were shelves and shelves of bongs, bowls, and hookahs of every size and description. Toto, we surely aren't any Kansas any longer!

Honeymoon: Whiskey Soda Lounge and Pok Pok, SE Portland OR

Friday May 3, SE Portland OR

After our scenic tour of SE looking for an open bar earlier where we could get a bottle of wine, we pretty much had the lay of the land and finding our B&B, The Clinton Street Guesthouse, was a breeze. It's one of many nicely updated and well cared for Craftsman-style cottages along Clinton Street, this one built in 1913. After we let ourselves in with the key code, we made our way to our second floor room and found that the room has a private balcony overlooking the back yard, which is complete with a large fig tree and a chicken coop with several Barred Rock chickens, which we heard from inside the room long before we ever saw them. We wouldn't meet our hosts, Jason and Ann, until the following morning.

Given our very close proximity to the universally acclaimed Thai restaurant Pok Pok, which like Lardo also started as a food cart, I wanted to go, not because everyone has to go here—I don't give a crap about that, but because Andy Ricker is doing food there that is unknown in this country and barely known in most of Thailand. This is an opportunity that a chef doesn't willingly give up and so we planned to walk there around dinner time.

Pok Pok is situated about a 10-minute walk in the absolutely perfect spring weather from where we were staying. During the walk to the restaurant along Clinton Street, we marveled at all the gardens in full bloom and at the swarms of bicyclists traveling along Clinton Street, designated a Bike Boulevard where bicycles have priority to motor vehicles. The poppies and the lilacs are all bursting forth in full bloom now along with dozens of other plants that being from the East Coast, I don't recognize.

When we arrived at Pok Pok at 6:45, we checked in and were told that we were looking at a 60-90 minute wait, which on a pretty night was not a horrible thing, but certainly not something that we are accustomed to. I generally wouldn't wait this long at a restaurant, but this was the one restaurant that I came to Portland to visit. We walked across the street to their bar, the Whiskey Soda Lounge, and commandeered a picnic table on the sidewalk of 32nd at Division and watched a veritable parade of people, mostly youngsters. Portland proper appears to be a young person's town. In fact, one young waitress told us, "This is where 30-year olds go to retire."


Punny Khing and I

Parked outside on the street beside a drinking establishment on a phenomenal spring day is rough duty, I know. But we suffered through it by ordering drinks, my favorite Asian lager, a Singha for me and one of the house specialty drinks, a Khing and I for Ann, and settling in to watch the people go by. Ann's cocktail was mekong (a sugar cane whisky much like rum), lime, ginger, and ginger syrup, the pun being that ginger in Thai is khing. I doubt a lot of people get that little pun, but I have cooked a ton of Thai food in my life, albeit southern Thai food and not the northern and Chiang Mai-style food served at Pok Pok.


My Favorite for Spicy Food

And what is the point of being at a drinking establishment at happy hour without having some drinking food? A dish on the menu caught my eye: Som Tam Thawt. I know enough to know that this is the traditional green papaya salad, but the last word—thawt—got my chef wheels spinning. That's one transliteration of the Thai word for deep-fried. Deep-fried green papaya salad?!?!! Gotta have it! And what a beautiful sight it was too. The papaya and long beans were battered very lightly and fried gently and the traditional dressing was served on the side. Too awesome!


Som Tam Thawt (Deep Fried Som Tam): How Freaking Awesome!

Sitting on the sidewalk, we have passed the hour mark and are now at an hour and fifteen-minute wait for Pok Pok. Ann, who has been suffering silently for weeks, can no longer suffer in silence and it is perfectly clear that she is feeling poorly and needs to go back to the B&B. I know this and I resign myself to asking for the check and passing up on the one restaurant that I came to Portland for. I would do this for her. Just at that moment, a server came up to us and asked us to cash out, that our table at Pok Pok was ready to go. Knowing how much I wanted to go, Ann put a brave face on it and we walked across the street and entered the bedlam that is Pok Pok on a Friday night. She would do that for me.

Because Ann wasn't feeling well, we ordered in a hurry and ate in a hurry. We ordered an appetizer and two main dishes to be delivered at the same time. Like everyone else in the place, we ordered a plate of Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings, huge fried wings tossed in a gooey fish sauce caramel. I won't do that again. I liked the wings, but they weren't stellar. They were huge to be sure, but I have made lots better fish sauce caramels in my life. Chicken wing box now ticked off, I would explore the rest of the menu if I ever had the chance again. If you are visiting Portland and want the wings, go to Whiskey Soda Bar and grab a couple drinks and some wings. You won't have to wait on line.


Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings

The two main dishes we ordered were Da Chom's Laap Meuang, a Chiang Mai-style spicy minced pork dish, and Kaeng Hung Leh, a Chiang Mai-style pork belly and pork shoulder curry of Burmese origin. The Burmese curry powder tastes predominantly of coriander and I noted lots of long thin strips of ginger in the curry as well; it had a slight sourness that I attribute to tamarind though I could be wrong about that. The laap/larb was exquisitely superior to any other I have ever eaten in my life. I would have liked less oil in the dish, but the flavor was incredible. I have had lots of larbs and lots of curries from all over Asia, but nothing like these two dishes. And that's why I came to Pok Pok. Mission accomplished.


Da Chom's Laap Meuang

Kaeng Hung Leh

One thing about the Pok Pok business model confused me. Rice costs extra and the servers are constantly hawking rice, it seems as a ticket builder. The three kinds of rice are all around $2 a portion. I'm not looking to cheap out and I want rice with my meal, so ordering rice wasn't a big deal, but it was an issue for several tables that I saw. Why not build the rice into the price of the meal and save the servers the song and dance and having to deal with pissed off wannabe cheap customers?

If I lived in Portland, Pok Pok is where I would hang out on my days off. I would finagle my way into the kitchen and would happily pound chiles in the pok pok all day long just to see how the dishes are made and to start picking some brains about northern Thai cooking.

[Note: Andy Ricker closed his entire Pok Pok empire as of the fall of 2020. I'm sad.]

Honeymoon: Olympic Provisions, Portland OR

Friday May 3, SE Portland OR


How to Tell You are in the Correct Location

After begrudgingly leaving Lardo and its wonderful pork sandwiches, Ann had the idea of finding a place to hole up and have a bottle of wine while waiting to check in to our B&B. We started driving around Southeast looking for a place to sit and have some wine, but nothing doing. Very few places are open before 5pm.

I admit that I was getting a bit frustrated (read "bitchy") when Ann hit on the brilliant idea of going to Olympic Provisions' original store in SE. We had already visited the "new" store in NW, where the charcuterie fabrication has now moved, the preceding Sunday on our way from the airport to the beach. Are you sensing a theme here? What could be better on top of meat than more meat? It's really kind of funny, but in our regular diets, we don't eat much meat. But we do have a crazy fondness for the pig!

I Want One!

When we arrived at the beautifully restored industrial building right on the river, the telltale hambulance was parked beside the building. We meant to get a picture of it when we visited the Thurman St NW store, but we forgot.

We perched ourselves at the bar just opposite the range at the tail end of lunch service and right at the beginning of happy hour and happily chatted away with each other and the staff as they were changing shifts. One thing is very apparent when talking with the people at Olympic Provisions and that is that they are all very proud of the product that they serve and are happy to be working there. As well they should be: their charcuterie is the best I have yet tasted anywhere. I've got a couple of other places I want to check out, but they have it down.


Yeah! Go Meat!

While sitting there, we ordered another bottle of Scott Paul "La Paulée" (the first bottle of which we purchased at OPNW and consumed the previous Sunday). We found this wine a bit disappointing the second time around after we had calibrated our palates to really good Oregon Pinot earlier in the week.

Once Again, Not Quite as Good

After a glass of wine and a few minutes to digest lunch, we ordered a chef's choice charcuterie plate. From the upper left corner clockwise, there was lomo, nduja, pork and pistachio terrine, loukanika, and chorizo andalucia, along with fabulous pickles: celery, bread and butter, and rhubarb.


Chef's Choice Charcuterie

For those of you without a working vocabulary of Italian charcuterie, nduja ("en-doo-ya"; recognize the similarity in pronunciation to andouille?) is a spicy and spreadable Calabrese salame. Nduja is cured in a casing like a hard salame, but it has a soft, spreadable texture because it is made from about three parts of fat to one part of lean, just the opposite of a hard salame.

Honeymoon: Lardo, SE Portland OR

Cool Logo

Once we crossed the Willamette River from downtown in Southeast, we were rolling down Hawthorne Blvd on a GPS-guided pork mission to find chef-owned sandwich shop and biergarten Lardo, a brick and mortar restaurant that started as a food cart. Ann, in her pre-trip planning, decided that we were not going to miss eating at a place called Lardo. And how cool is their logo? It finally dawned on me three weeks after eating there that the logo is actually a stylized pig. Am I stupid or is it that subtle?

You know it is a chef kind of place when you walk in and you see the following wall decorations:


Don't Mind if I Do

Oink!

All the sandwiches are listed on a chalkboard behind the counter and while there are a bunch of tasty sounding options (Rapini: aged provolone, red pepper agrodolce, caper mayo and Griddled Mortadella: provolone, marinated peppers, whole grain mustard) we were there for the big pig feed, so we ordered the Pork Meatball Bánh Mì with sriracha mayo, pickled vegetables, and cilantro, and a Korean Pork Shoulder sandwich with kimchee and cilantro.

Food ordered, Ann went outside under the big tent next door to scout out a couple of places at a picnic table while I stayed behind inside and ordered beers for us. I happened (through no planning whatsoever, didn't even realize it was one of the random shirts that I packed) to be wearing my Boccolone t-shirt, the one that reads "tasty salted pig parts" on it. The whole counter crew got a kick out of that. I guess it wasn't that difficult for them to pick me out as a fellow traveler.

The beers are listed on a separate chalkboard over a line of about a dozen taps and most are from Oregon, but range as far afield as Stone Brewing in San Diego and Epic Brewing in Salt Lake. I picked a Crux Imperial Mosaic IPA from Bend OR, and for Ann a pilsner from Commons Brewery also located in Southeast. Our second round of beers was an Epic Spiral Jetty Malty IPA and an SOB (Southern Oregon Brewing Medford OR) Na Zdraví pilsner. I can't say that we were blown away by any of the beers. I really think that I am spoiled by having Tröegs beers as our house beers. Too bad the folks from Oregon have to come back East to taste them!

As I walked outside, Zeppelin was jamming on the speakers and I finally found Ann at a picnic table sporting a wooden spoon bearing the number nine, making it easy enough for one of the food runners to find us. As we waited for our food, Zeppelin morphed into some old-school bluesy Clapton and then to more true blues. Good tunes for a wonderful afternoon sitting in a beer garden drinking beer with my girl who doesn't like beer! She keeps trying though!



Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine...

OK, Twist my Arm!

Pork Meatball Bánh Mì

Korean Pork Shoulder

Now these were great sandwiches and I am truly amazed (after living in our painfully culturally deprived, uptight, and conservative food market) to find a place where these sorts of restaurants not only can survive, but can thrive and become institutions in the cultural landscape. I do have to say that my pork meatball bánh mì is better though!