Portland Trip 2021
/As a celebration of being fully vaccinated, we decided to take a group road trip down to Portland to eat all of the things. Here’s a recap:
Day 1:
Lunch part 1: Upon arriving in Portland, we headed straight for Hat Yai which offers food from Sothern Thailand. We ordered fried chicken, sticky rice, curry, and roti (and were so hungry we forgot to take actual food pictures). The best dish award goes to the brisket curry - we’ll be talking about that for a very long time.
Lunch part 2: We continued on to a spot serving Hawaiian food called Grindwittryz for Ono’ chicken, garlic shrimp, and poke nachos. We took the food to go and ate in a nearby park - it was lovely.
Lunch dessert: We had heard many recommendations for an ice cream spot named Fifty Licks, so we had to give it a try. I had the most glorious bananas foster ice cream ever. Jeff had a scoop of blood orange creamsicle and a scoop of Thai rice. 10 out of 10 - would definitely eat again!
Dinner part 1: Sizzle Pie serves pizza by the slice which made it easy to sample multiple pies. I never stray far from classic pepperoni because I’m boring, but Jeff had a slice with meatballs and garlic that looked pretty darn tasty.
Dinner part 2: We were intrigued by Canard’s small plates, so we had to check it out. Our order included steak tartare, steam burgers, and the duck stack (pancakes with duck gravy - a surprising star of the meal). We got to sit outside and it was a pretty great spot for our group.
Dinner dessert: We finished up our food day at a soft serve spot called Eb & Bean. I got the coffee caramel because a random person walked by and told us that was the best flavor (they were so right) and Jeff got the passionfruit since he’s more into fruity flavors.
Day 2:
Brunch part 1: No trip to Portland is complete with a visit to Pine State Biscuits. I know that Jeff makes really delicious biscuits at home, but there’s just something about the Chatfield sandwich (fried chicken + apple butter) that I can’t pass up. We also ordered a lemon poptart, biscuit beignets, and a biscuit with marionberry jam.
Brunch part 2: We visited the Prost Marketplace food cart pod and scored some tacos from Little Conejo in al pastor, lengua, and carnitas.
Brunch part 3: I got a black widow sushi burrito from Teppanyaki Hut (also in Prost Marketplace food cart pod) . This was essentially a huge soft shell crab sushi burrito and I was really into it.
Brunch dessert part 1: We checked out What’s the Scoop for dessert. I got a scoop of coffee, but Jeff’s Thai iced tea with a fortune cookie cone was really great too.
Brunch dessert part 2: We walked a bit further up the street to Kimura Toast Bar for a red bean toast and an apple toast. They were just as tasty as the looked.
Dinner part 1: We returned to the same street for dinner. The first stop was Kayo’s Ramen Bar for shio ramen, pork potstickers, chashu pork tacos, a tantan pork taco, and pineapple ginger garlic fried rice. The group agreed that the non-ramen dishes were better than the ramen.
Dinner part 2: More pizza - this time from Life of Pie Pizza. Since the goal of food trips like this is to sample at each spot, we only ordered two pies: margherita and mushroom/garlic confit/onion. They were devoured pretty quickly.
Dinner part 3: Back up the street, we stopped at a Thai place called Eem for Massaman and white curries in addition to papaya salad. We took the order to go and ended up eating out of the back of our car like the weirdos that we are. I think we’d like to try eating here again, but next time inside.
Dinner dessert: Our final stop of the day was Lauretta Jean’s for slices of pie. This was a highly anticipated stop and the assortment was a bit overwhelming in a good way. Jeff and I landed on a slice of banana cream pie and a slice of blackberry raspberry streusel. This will probably become a Portland “must do” for us… next time I want to try a slice of the salted honey!
Day 3:
Breakfast: Jeff woke up early and headed to Blue Star Donuts to pick up a dozen for national donut day. We chopped them all up and had a really great time sampling the various flavors.
Brunch part 1: We tried the oxtail French dip and Polpetta (meatball) sandwiches at Stacked Sandwich Shop.
Brunch part 2: Our next stop was Matt’s BBQ Tacos food cart for a chopped brisket taco, G.O.A.T. taco, and a migas taco. They were all winners in our book.
Brunch dessert: We wanted to show our friends a dessert place we had visited on a previous trip called Pie Spot. The baker’s dozen to go (2 weren’t pictured since they needed to be refrigerated) worked out great for our group and they were just as delicious as we remembered.
Dinner part 1: Near the food cart pod we had visited earlier in the day, there was a restaurant called Farmhouse Kitchen Thai Cuisine that we were excited to try. We ordered a slew of tasty items including Thai iced tea, calamari, crying tiger beef, crab fried rice, and the volcano noodle (it was REALLY spicy by my standards).
Dinner part 2: There is a neat spot called The Zipper that houses a fried chicken restaurant called Basilisk. We split a fried chicken sandwich and the hot chicken plate.
Dinner dessert: Our original plan was to visit another location of Fifty Licks for a second round, but the line was long. Jeff spotted the Cheese & Crack Snack Shop across the way and it had a line, but slightly shorter so we decided to give it a try. I had a banana sundae while Jeff had a soft serve cone with espresso dust (and a cute little chocolate cowboy hat!). It was so much ice cream, but I loved it.
Day 4
Lunch: We hit up the Hawthorne Asylum food cart pod for a variety of items including:
A Peasant chicken wrap from Pleasant Peasant
A Thai tea boba, tornado potato, and sweet chili chicken waffle cone from Bobablastic
A bake with jam from Bake on the Run
Fernando’s special burrito from Fernando’s Alegria
Hawthorne Asylum was our final stop before hopping back in the car for the trip back north. All in all, great food was eaten and this was a good way to dip our toes back into travel for the first time since February 2020 without the anxiety of plane travel.
