Portland Oregon in January

July 16, 2016 by Mariah 8 Comments

Howdy, blogging friends!!! I thought I would pop back in and finally share my post on our trip to Portland Oregon this past January. We liked Portland so much we are actually going back this month! So needless to say we loved our trip in January. I’m actually so glad we went in January (the off-season), it was a lovely trip and I got Voodoo Doughnuts (original location) with NO wait ? The weather wasn’t too bad either, we actually had some sunshine, and overall it was not too cold. Of course the trip was ALL about the FOOD and BOOZE, like we seriously did not do anything else. We did stop by Powell’s books, which I fully intent to pay a longer visit to on our trip back and that was about it other than walking or riding to our next bar or meal.

FOOD

Dinner

Beast

My favorite first! Beast was AMAZING, I highly recommend it. Do the late seating (they only do two seatings a night) and get the wine pairing. The food was great and we enjoyed the overall experience. The seating is communal and you are all served at the same time, our table mates were so friendly and all around our age. There are no menu choices, other than drinks and you get six courses. I thought it was well worth the price. Pictures are in order of courses, the second being my favorite course, the foie gras truffle is in the far back with the square gel on top (so good).

Le Pigeon

This is considered a Portland foodie destination, and it was certainly good, but Beast won out if I had to choose just one. With that said we did have a very good meal. Le Pigeon went on the must-go-to list as soon as I read that they had Foie Gras profiteroles. We enjoyed the 5-course chef tasting menu, all our dishes were lovely and huge. I could never have made it through the 7-course. My favorite course was the first one, the scallop crudo. It’s a very small space, with communal tables, not exactly a relaxed fine dining experience, it’s a bit uncomfortable to get in and out of the tables. The profiteroles were good and unique but I would have liked a little more saltiness than sweetness. The foie gras truffle we had at Beast was better. I’m very happy we got to say we tried Le Pigeon and add it to our foodie passport.

Taylor Railworks

Some of the dishes were really good, some were pretty blah, continuing down to the dessert being just terrible. It’s hard to leave with a good perspective on the overall meal when the final dish is SO terrible. No flavor, the pear was undercooked, the whole dish was ill-conceived. If you don’t want to come up with a decent dessert than just offer cheese and be done with it. The scallops that started our meal were amazing, though. This is one of those places you can walk away with an amazing meal or a blah meal, just depending on what you choose to order. Pictured below the best dish and the worst dish.

Breakfast/Lunch/And In Between

Tasty N Sons

Just look at that biscuit sandwich and bloody marys, the picture says it all. In need of a cure for (maybe) overindulging the night before? This is your spot. We went for breakfast, but I’m sure their dinner would not disappoint.

Voodoo Doughnuts vs Blue Star Donut

The Portland donut/doughnut smack down. While I’ve wanted to try Voodoo Doughnuts FOREVER, I’m ruling in favor of Blue Star Donuts. I’ve been ruined by our neighborhood donut shop,Nomads and just prefer the less sticky sweet version of the yeasty breakfast bite. Again, glad I got to check Voodoo Doughnuts off my food bucket list, but it’s not on the revisit list. Blue Star Donut’s fancy flavor combinations won me over.

Blue Star

Voodoo Doughnuts

Olympic Provisions (Southeast)

Such a cool interior, and of course you can’t keep me away from any place that the central theme is cured meats. We stopped in for a later lunch, where neither one of us were all that hungry. So we opted for the cheese and meat plates, both great. The sandwiches looked amazing, and I wished we had more stomach space to try one.

Genie’s Cafe

This was a last minute change to the itinerary based on our Lyft driver’s suggestion. He won us over to change directions by his description of over 10 varieties of bloody marys. The food was good, in a laid back kitchen cafe vibe. I liked my bloody mary from Tasty N Son a bit more, but not bad and such variety!

Beer & Booze

I’m sharing my two favorites first.

Commons Brewery

Exceptionally done Belgian style beers and cheese, what more could you ask for. Oh and a big, open space, they still felt warm…perfection. I just HAD to order a cheese plate, even though we had dinner in less than 2 hours. I love cheese and cheese with good beer is hard to beat. Very friendly staff. This is on our revisit list!

Hamlet

A bar that serves only ham…how could we not go here?!? Very friendly, funny bartender, beautiful interior and one of the more memorable cocktails I’ve had. Trumper’s Revenge, house-infused horseradish vodka, mint and fresh carrot juice, OMG so good. This and the Dream Weaver (from Husk in Charleston) are two of my top cocktails ever. This is also on our revisit list!!

Baerlic Brewing Company

My favorite space award for a brewery goes to Baerlic, really cool, well designed, and well lit tasting room. The beer was good too, but I just really liked how bright and fresh their space felt. It’s tucked away in a neighborhood which only added to it’s cool factor (not that anywhere in Portland would try to be cool or anything).

Hair of the Dog Brewing

This is one of the original breweries of Portland, so we just had to go. I’ve never been a huge fan of their beer, but it was neat to visit their space and get to try a wider variety. We stopped here before walking over to Taylor Railworks for dinner. We had a little fun on the way while waiting on a train to pass.

Ex Novo Brewing Co

This was our very first stop for a bite and beer when we landed in Portland! It was a great choice, the food and beer were both great. Cool space to boot, that filled up quickly as people started to get off work.

Base Camp Brewing Co

A very open, warehouse style brewery. Cool space and nice variety of beer, I especially liked that one of my tasters came with a toasted marshmallow. We are actually staying in this neighborhood on our return trip this month.

Burnside Brewing Company

Home of a million beers. We got every single one of their beers as a taster (15 beers!). Not my favorite brewery of the trip, but very friendly staff and worth a stop in (just maybe stick to a few tasters at first to see how you like it).

Lodging/Transporation

We stayed at the River’s Edge Hotel. I would not recommend it, it’s a bit out of the way and the rooms were clean but not overly nice. We did the Priceline Name Your Own Price, and it was the one that was furthest away from downtown. We got a good deal so I don’t have too much to complain about, but if I was paying what the asking rate was I would have been disappointed. Really we didn’t mind the location too much because so many of our destinations were on the other side of the river anyway, and we would have been calling a car even if we were closer to downtown. Portland is fairly spread out and while they have public transportation (which we did use for some trips), it’s not that convenient/quick to get from neighborhood to neighborhood and requires a quite a bit of walking to get to stops. Lyft/Uber rides were readily available so no problem there, just be prepared to do some car rides unless you are only concentrating on downtown for your itinerary.

I’m looking forward to reporting back on our Portland adventure this month, hopefully, it will not take me 6 months to get it published ? We have decided to do AirBNB for this trip that way we can stay in more of a neighborhood area. I will let you know how that works out for us.

Finally Thoughts: I highly recommend visiting Portland in the off-season, our trip in January was awesome!

Have you been to Portland, Oregon? If so, what was your favorite stop?

Portland Maine~The Food

July 15, 2014 by Mariah 22 Comments

Eventide: We went here twice…enough said. 🙂 This place was incredible, fantastic food, creative drinks, and friendly service. We ordered lots and lots of oysters, and tried the brown butter and mayo lobster rolls. The brown butter was my preference. The oysters, oh the oysters, just amazing. The oysters from the Damarisscotta were my favorites. You have to get the horseradish ice…it brings a new meaning to horseradish and a new dimension to the oysters. And, then there is the drinks. So creative and I may of had three at our very long lunch 🙂 The Green Mimosa was my favorite but the Briny Martini (pictured below too) was a close second. We stopped back in one night on our way to dinner and grabbed another 12 oysters and one more of those Green Mimosa…it was that good!

Fore Street: Quite impressive. This was listed on the Business Insider Best Restaurants in America, and I can see why. We had already made a reservation here before seeing the list, as Fore Street did came up in searches as THE restaurant to try in Portland. It was an amazing meal. We opted to take a seat at the bar, instead of the dining room. We tried the fiddleheads, as we were told by several people we that this is a local speciality that we must try while here. The fiddleheads were interesting, I think the flavor is derived from the cooking and not the fern itself. The mussels also came highly recommended, and were really complex in flavors since they are wood smoked. Fore Street is not a restaurant to miss on a trip to Portland.

Portland Lobster Company: Right on the water and the perfect spot for eating a full lobster with a cold beer. P and I each had a lobster and then split a lobster roll. The lobster roll was brimming full of sweet lobster meat, and came with some delicious fries. Even after being stuffed I was still munching on those fries and that says a lot. I do not have a picture of the lobster roll as I did not touch the camera once we touched our lobsters…it is a messy meal! This is the best way to experience the lobster meal–outside, in the sun, with a cold beer.

Duckfat: This was the perfect after brewery tour stop. Duckfat is known for their fries, so of course we got a sample of those and we split a sandwich, as we still had 9:00 dinner reservations. Duckfat is a small restaurant and was pretty packed even at 5:00. We enjoyed playing with the magnetic word board. Was it good…yes. Is it a must stop…let’s just say if I had to pick here or Eventide, it would be Eventide.

Vinland: This place boasts a very unique concept of serving 100% local (within 500 miles) food. Highly creative fare. No olive oil is used, no pepper, and all the vermouth/bitters/mixers for the cocktails are made in house. I would love to go back and try dinner, but I have to make due with just getting to try brunch.

Holy Donut: The Holy Donut was listed on 21 best donuts in the US from the Huffington Post. It was ok, but I still think that Glaze in Charleston holds my spot as best so far. I had high hopes for the raspberry iced cannoli donut, but the filling was disappointing and the donut was a bit greasy. The cake variety was better.

Central Provisions: Excellent small plates. The tuna tartar was amazing! It was a great way to start our first night out in Portland. They also had a great list of local brews and unique cocktails.

Bintliff American Cafe: Lobster eggs benedict and blueberry pancakes…need I say more, need i say more!?! The blueberry pancakes were maybe my favorite out to the two, but lobster in the morning tastes pretty good too 🙂 P and I broke one of our cardinal eating “rules” by ordering the same dish, but really who can turn down lobster benedict.

555: Excellent dinner! This was a 4 course dinner, that did not disappoint, unfortunately the same cannot be said of my pictures. I may or may not have had one too many cocktails (or really the free tasting at Maine Craft Distilling), and kind of forgot my blogging duties 🙂 We had a lovely dinner here despite my lack of photos to prove it.

THE REST:

Boda: We decided to go here based on a ton of recommendations by locals. I was really disappointed overall. I felt like none of the dishes had that much flavor. I don’t recommend it. Since, I’m not recommending it I’m not putting up the pictures. It was not bad, there is just so many better choices.

Make sure to visit the prior two posts on Portland to get our full trip:

Portland~The Views

Portland~The Booze

I’ve put together a Jauntful guide of the restaurants included in this post, our hotel, and few other restaurant recommendations that we thought looked good but could not squeeze into our trip.

Portland~
The Food

Portland~The Views

July 1, 2014 by Mariah 18 Comments

P and I have talked about going to Maine for a while now. I wanted him to experience eating a full lobster and what better place to do that than Portland, Maine. Our trip also marks off #36 on my 101 in 1001 list!! True to form it was mostly eating and drinking (is anyone shocked, anyone?!), I still feel like I’m recovering and we went in May 🙂 I’m starting the Portland recap off with the views, followed by booze, and finally the best part, food.

Portland is a nice city, with the airport being very close to downtown, and lots to see and do. We did not rent a car for this trip, though a drive up or down the coast would have been fun. There was so much in the city to do that we did not feel a need to venture outside the city limits…plus you know the drinking 🙂

We stayed at The Inn at Park Spring, a charming little bed and breakfast, centrally located. It was nice and cheaper than staying at one of the chains. While it was comfortable and we enjoyed it, I did feel that the innkeeper was a bit put out that we did not attend breakfast. We had too many other meals planned to accommodate one more. I’m not sure P and I are bed and breakfast people, as we really only use our room to sleep and shower. I got the feeling that we were not “enjoying” the property as expected.

We walked A LOT, and explored downtown:

The Portland sign below, we went by all three days to see if I could capture it without this stupid truck…nope that truck was there all three days!

At the Salt Cellar, P and I picked up some flavored salts to bring back. We got sriracha, ghost pepper, and balsamic flavored salts. The shop was really neat and had lots of flavors to choose from.

Portland hosts its own little take on a love lock bridge, in this case just a fence. They also have a part of the Berlin wall….there was no plaque or anything about why it was obtained by the city, but still neat.

P and I planned on doing a boat tour as part of our visit, but it was cancelled due to lack of interest. We instead, grabbed the ferry over to Peaks Island. Peaks Island was a small, charming little island community. We really enjoyed our walk around the island. I imagine during tourist season it is a lot more crowded, but our walk was nice and quiet.

As I mentioned, we went in May, about a week before official tourist season starts (May 14-May 17). The weather was chilly staying in the 50s and 60s, dropping to the 40s at night. I recommend packing a warm coat, especially if you are going out on the water.

Have you ever been to Portland, Maine? If so, what are some of your recommendations?