Best of Portland: PALATES

[August 9th, 2006]

Best Vintner Invention

Oregon wineries have discovered the next frontier in drinking: wine-bottle closures made of glass. Manufacturing giant Alcoa has created this replacement for the traditional cork, and it's gradually being embraced by vintners around the world, including Oregon wineries Sineann (sineann.com) and Solena (solenacellars.com). Winemaker Peter Rosback at Sineann marvels at the beautiful new glass corks , which only need a little pressure from your fingertips to pop out. Since old-fashioned corks ruin 2 to 15 percent of wines and plastic corks cause wine to age prematurely, the glass plugs will please everyone. Shed a tear if you really enjoy pulling the cork out of your wine bottle, but be happy that you'll no longer get a bottle of sour grapes.

Best Frog-Accented Sushi in the Suburbs

Ah, the pleasures of a fine Japanese meal: fresh fish, sweet sushi rice, dry sake and satisfying, smooth custard. Wait—custard? It's not something you'll find at most sushi joints, but Maki Japanese Restaurant (12430 SW Main St., Tigard, 639-7005) is anything but typical. Owner Shiro Ameda trained at a French cooking school in Japan and has brought his culinary skills learned there and as a chef in ritzy Marin County, Calif., to humble downtown Tigard. In his small space, he enriches more typical Japanese fare with Euro-style innovations, making each visit memorable. In addition, Ameda's wife is a talented artist who's contributed to Maki's unexpected chic-ness with tastefully simple paintings and menu designs. A recent bento lunch included an unfussy baby greens salad with French vinaigrette, savory grilled salmon, excellent spicy tuna rolls and rich housemade tapioca served in a demitasse. That's an offering worth the drive.

Best Brewer's Mocha-festo

It's not hard to come by an excellent cup of joe in this town, but what do you do when you just don't want to walk a half-block to the nearest cafe for a perfect serving of caffeine? As usual, the coffee obsessives at Stumptown Roasting Company have pondered the problem and produced a solution: the Stumptown Brewer's Guide, a tiny, letter-pressed booklet with step-by-step instructions for five ways to make better coffee. And, no, your Mr. Coffee isn't one of them. To get a copy of the guide for yourself, stop by any Stumptown Coffee Roasters Cafe (128 SW 3rd Ave., 295-6144, and other locations) or order beans from stumptowncoffee.com ; a copy is included in every shipment.

Best Place to (Soon) Throw Back a Cold, Stiff One

As if building a resort hotel at a former poorhouse (a.k.a. Edgefield) weren't weird enough, the McMenamins brothers are renovating the Little Chapel of the Chimes , a long-abandoned NoPo funeral parlor, to hold their ever-expanding empire's corporate offices and a new pub (they've topped 50). Slated to open in early September, the Chapel Pub (401 N Killingsworth St., chapelpub@mcmenamins.com) will have pew seating for 100 and will feature, appropriately enough, the fully restored ironwork of Orion B. Dawson, a master craftsman of the Depression era whose work adorns the Oregon Grand Lodge in Forest Grove. McMenamins spokesperson Renee Rank told WW the Chapel's cremation facilities have been entirely removed . What? No wood-fired pizza oven? (BW)

Best Place to See What the World Looks Like at 3 am (Without Ever Leaving Home)

It's cool enough to find Latin brands like Jarritos and Bimbo bread at a chain warehouse store, but the very worldly Food 4 Less (7979 SE Powell Blvd., 774-4665) has flavors from way beyond south of the border. How about the far reaches of Outer Mongolia or Siberia? Aisle signs are in Cyrillic and Chinese characters. There are 11 kinds of dried chiles and an entire section dedicated to soy and fish sauces, but you can still score a case of Otter Pops for $2.98. Even better, for those of you who are still living life as if you were in a different time zone, it's open 24 hours. Sure, any Plaid Pantry offers after-hours Aquafina, but have you tried Borsec, the Romanian "Queen of Mineral Water"? For a more ambitious night, grab a jar of Super Macho: Formula Alta Potencia con Glandula de Toros. No bull.

Best Former Best of Portland(That We're Glad to See Is Still Kickin' It)

When long-dead Vogue editor Diana Vreeland said, "Elegance is refusal," she might well have been talking about the Driftwood Room (729 SW 15th Ave., 219-2094, hoteldeluxeportland.com). Saved from the wrecking ball when the former Mallory Hotel became the super-fancy, movie-themed Hotel deLuxe, the DR's been largely untouched since the 1950s, and, except for recent slight nips and tucks during the hotel's massive remodel, the kidney-shaped room is still a paean to midcentury swizzle-stick modernism . A wood-panel-lined holdout against coercive progress, it's suave, soft and moody; its low banquettes could easily bear the likes of Jack Lemmon, Trini López or maybe Angie Dickinson. While there's a perpetual 1960s Blake Edwards VistaVision sensation that's swell and hopeful, it's simultaneously a patina-ed reminder that it's always 5 o'clock somewhere in this swingin' world.

Best Dentist's Best Friend

Chad Gierlich likes sugar. The outer east Portlander really likes sugar. He likes it so much that he made a website to share his passion with the world. Those brave enough to navigate the labyrinthine sugarpacketchad.com are rewarded with photos of Chad's alarmingly large collection of sugar packets, sugar sculptures and other assorted sugar paraphernalia. Want something more academic? Chad has also scanned a pile of articles about the history and science of sugar. Topping it all off is the guide to making your own sugar skulls . Nutritionists seeking proof that sugar is the root of all hyperactivity and distraction need look no further.

Best Visually Impaired Gourmet

If juggling a career, social life and trips to the kids' Pilates lessons has left you strapped for time to cook, put down that take-out menu and call the guy with the right name for the job, Chef Ricky Joe Cook. While the Beaverton caterer inherited the perfect surname, he lacks something most in his profession consider crucial: eyesight. Undeterred, he handles knives and pans with panache, measuring by feel, preparing custom-tailored meals for families and individuals tired of TV dinners. After organizing culinary tours for 10 years, the trained dietician started Cooks Comfort Cuisine (1060 SW 170th Ave. Suite 100, Beaverton, 740-7438) to feed his passion for the culinary arts. At 50 bucks an hour (plus groceries) for a dinner for two, it better feed yours, too. Cook says being blind makes him a better chef: "It has taught me to keep it simple and not to overcomplicate dishes."

Best Bible for the Blurry-Eyed

Snoots dominate the wine-writing business, leaving intelligent quaffers in these parts but two paths. The first is the poetry and short fiction of Charles Bukowski. It does a drunken heart good but adds little by way of wine knowledge. The other is E&R Wine Shop's (6141 SW Macadam Ave., 246-6101) Wine Explorer. Leave it to the smartest wine guys in town (Ed Paladino, Richard Elden and Lyle Railsback) to put to paper the most engaging tip sheet any serious tippler could ask for. One look at Issue 52 tells you this ain't your great aunt's uppity verbiage. There's a barechested hunk of a guy in a U.S. Cavalry hat. (Could it be Robert Duvall as Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now?) Below him is this caption: "You smell that??? Do you smell that...? Rosé, son. Nothing in the world smells like that! I love the smell of Rosé in the morning." (Yup, Kilgore it is.) Mixing the wit and wisdom of Rodney Dangerfield with images of rock stars and vivid flights of the imagination, the Wine Explorer could make an oenophile out of a Woman's Christian Temperance Union diehard. Stop by E&R Wine Shop today and demand your copy of the Wine Explorer. While you're at it, tell the knowledgeable gang there what you're eating at your next special occasion and how much you want to spend for a bottle or two. They'll hook you up just right.

Best House of Drunken Spirits

What hath Steve McCarthy wrought? The man who behind Oregon's successful Clear Creek Distillery may now be the inspiration for the latest development in a scene that has produced some of the world's finest wines and beers—a whole array of locally and artisinally distilled libations. There've been wonderful vodkas from New Deal and Medoyeff. This year's Best Local Distilled Beverage is dark rum from the Rogue House of Spirits (80 proof, $26.95 for a 750 ml bottle, available at Rogue Ales Public House, 1339 NW Flanders St., 222-5910). Distiller Kieran Sienkiewicz starts with Hawaiian cane sugar, Champagne yeast and what Rogue calls Range Mountain Water (talk about foo-foo!) and allows them to ferment as a mash. Then he double-distills the lot, filters it through charcoal and lets it age in oak bourbon barrels from the Jack Daniel distillery in Tennessee. The result is a rich, smooth rum worthy of the pirate displayed on the label. In the heat of summer, the best way to take it is in a tall glass with soda and a lot of fresh-squeezed lime juice over ice.

Best Way to Take a Bite Outta Culinary History

It's alive! When local restaurant kingpins Bruce Carey and chef Chris Israel closed their popular Northwest 21st Avenue hotspot Zefiro in 2000, hungry patrons thought the restaurant's heavenly, just-baked pain levain, among other gustatory triumphs, was lost forever. But 16 years later, that one small piece of Zefiro has been resurrected. Since early August, the same round, hard-crusted sourdough loaves that were served at the long-gone spot have topped tables at two of Carey's current restaurants: Pearl District haven Bluehour (250 NW 13th Ave., 226-3394) and his new Northwest 23rd Avenue Italian house Balvo (529 NW 23rd Ave., 445-7400). According to Carey, when Bluehour ditched the levain for a more cost-effective bread in 2002, (now former) Bluehour pastry chef Melissa McKinney spirited away the levain's "starter" (that's the original yeasty blob used to make the loaves rise) for safekeeping and has been "feeding" it over the course of the past few years. Now Bluehour's pastry chef James Blake and new artisan bread maker Andrew Griffiths have brought the nutty-flavored loaves back to life and back to Carey's tables. "It was kind of a flashback. It's [created from the 1990 Zefiro] starter that we made from Oregon pinot noir grapes fermented with flour. It's been kept alive all these years," said Carey on tasting the levain 2006. "Originally, the Zefiro loaf was modeled after the loaf we served at Zuni Cafe, when Chris [Israel] and I worked there in San Francisco. Zuni's was based on Acme's loaf in Berkeley, [and that was] based on the loaf from Pain Poilâne, one of the most famous, ancient bakeries in Paris," he marvels. History never tasted so good.

Best Clearance Sale

Dust off your black turtlenecks: Legendary local coffee-shop owner Anne Hughes is selling (almost) everything she owns. For you philistines wondering why you should care, this means you have a shot at laying claim to everything from first-edition Gertrude Stein books to gorgeous silkscreen posters from local music shows. The huge wooden namesake of the now-defunct Anne Hughes Kitchen Table Cafe is also for sale, as are copies of Hughes' "When you're not rich, you either buy art or you buy clothes" poster. Talk about selling the shirt off your back. Email anne97214@yahoo.com for more information about the sale.