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Boston Chowhound hits Portland for a few days

Chowhound - June 2008

In a continuation of our Northwest trip, we hit Portland for a few days after Seattle, by way of 101 down the coast. Had lunch at the scenic Lightship restaurant in Long Beach first...fried haddock sandwich was fresh (but bland as usual w/ haddock unfortunately) while the Oregon shrimp sandwich was tastier w/ the tomato/mayo/chili dressing (though these tiny shrimp also don't seem to have much taste, or perhaps a "delicate" taste like our Maine shrimp). Had dinner at Jake's Crawfish w/o realizing that it was the original McCormick&Schmick's and tried crawfish (tastes like shrimp), a halibut with tasty dungeness crab sauce, and sturgeon for the first time which tasted great.

Wandered around downtown, the pearl district and chinatown the next day and hit an unmemorable wonton soup at one of the ghost town restaurants that we don't remember the name of (and the name isn't on the charge slip); it was on one the corners and had large glass windows. What used to be the 2nd largest chinatown in the country looks like it's dying quickly and we wondered where in the world the chinese went? :-P Then we tried Park Kitchen and unfortunately ordered somewhat bland dishes...the rabbit leg over sweat pea pasta (the rabbit tasted like chicken tagine or costco rotisserie chicken) and the lamb trio (lamb was chewy) over peas. The locals seem to have all ordered the asparagus tempura. No bread basket was given at the start which we thought was odd.

Before hitting the Gorge, we had a good lunch at Pok Pok and tried their roasted chicken and dungeness crab fried rice. While it was good, I'm not sure why folks think it's the best thing to try in Portland? On the way back, we hit Pix Patisserie and had a few excellent chocolate mousse cakes...an almond one (looks like a sunflower), and a orange cream topped one. We were beat, so we just hit Lauro Kitchen (mediterranean) across the street and found it to be excellent and tasty and less expensive than the in-town choices. We had the sturgeon special over an onion/raisin risotto and the pork loin w/ plums and fried yukon potatoes. The calimari appetizer was the least battered one we've ever had and cooked so the squid was still very tender. Surprisingly, this turned out to be the best dinner/dessert combo we had in Portland.

The last day, we decided to see if Wong King's was decent and were pleasantly surprised that it was...service (the tables were cleaned quickly of empty plates and the tea was filled often) was much better than other places we've tried except for some spots in Vancouver/Toronto. The food was probably on the China Pearl level in Boston. The place was pretty hopping and it looks like the asians have mostly moved to the SE side of Portland from all the storefronts in the area. Then we hit the Portland Saturday market and were surprised to find a tasty mango smoothie (some I've tried just taste like pineapple juice but this tasted like mangos) at Mai's in the food court area on a 100F day. For dinner, thinking maybe Park Kitchen was just a mis-step in-town, we tried Higgins. The baked oysters were horribly salty. The mussels were ok unless you tried the really salty sauce. The paletone (sp?) was just a mix of 5 mussels, 5-6 small pieces of halibut, and 4 shrimp in a very light red wine sauce with some small chopped chunks of undercooked carrots and some small leeks tossed on top...the seafood was cooked properly, but the taste overall was pretty bland. We didn't stick around for dessert since we had to catch a flight in Seattle. We probably should have tried La Tarasca in Centralia on the way back instead.