Skip to main content
Our Restaurant Guide picks the best restaurants in Portland every October. We hem and haw and fuss to recommend 100 restaurants we think best represent the city.
This is not that list.
Rather, these are five spots we're excited about right now. Maybe that's a taqueria we've loved forever, maybe that's a seafood spot with a special menu this week or a new burger joint we stumbled on Friday night. It's designed to answer that age-old question: Where should we go out to dinner tonight?
Where to eat this week:
1. Smallwares
4605 NE Fremont St, 971-229-0995, smallwarespdx.com.
Sept. 24 is the restaurant's final day. Crowds have been thick, but brave them to wish well to chef Johanna Ware, not to mention eat her fried kale and transcendent mapo dofu. $$-$$$.
Related: One of the Finest Restaurants in the City Is Closing
2. Oyatsupan Bakers
16025 SW Regatta Lane, Beaverton, 503-941-5251, oyatsupan.com.
Oyatsupan is Portland's first introduction to the estimable Japanese baking tradition—but savory lunch dishes are even better, with British-style pork tonkatsu tea sandwich ($6.80) and curry in a lightly glazed pastry. $.
3. Poke Mon
1485 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-894-9743.
Poke Mon is both peak Portland and peak poke, serving up bowls of delicious, sauced-up, sashimi-style albacore or octopus at an affordable price point, with a side of sake or La Croix. $$.
4. Rue
1005 SE Ankeny St., 503-231-3748, ruepdx.com.
French "neo-bistro" Rue toes the line on two very dangerous ingredients and wins big with a terrific Sharknana banana cocktail and delicate lavender carrots. $$$.
5. Jacqueline
2039 SE Clinton St., 503-327-8637, jacquelinepdx.com.
Wild-mushroom small plates and fine cioppino thick with shells. $$$.
Willamette Week