Restaurant Of The Year: Beaker & Flask
Food: American
Blueplate
Welcome to heaven, where mashed potatoes are butter-yellow, salads are just an excuse for creamy dressings and, praise the Lord, egg creams and chocolate malteds never went out of style. Yes, crossing Blueplate’s threshold is a bit like stepping into the Twilight Zone, where life seems too good to be true until fate sideswipes your luck, but the only cruel twist here is a labored waddle back to work. This lunch spot’s much-ballyhooed Northwest sliders are perfect little hand grenades of juicy beef and Tillamook cheddar smeared with basil mayo and dished up with a side of those possibly illegal potatoes (if they aren’t a Schedule I controlled substance, they should be). A rotating specials menu features a different sandwich every day. Friday’s affair, exalted by the same basil concoction that puts the sliders over the top, comprises skillfully stratified bites of thick Texas toast, lettuce, tomato, and generous yet manageable slices of moist meatloaf. You’re half-assing it if you don’t indulge in one of the fountain classics or three-scoop shakes. Remember, this is a place beyond reason, where a butterscotch milkshake topped with nuts and granola (they call it the “R.P. McMurphy”) makes divine sense.
Order this: The Northwest sliders—Blueplate’s specialty and possibly the best thing available for lunch downtown.
Best deal: Friday’s special, the meatloaf sandwich, obviates the need for dinner, and possibly breakfast the next morning.
I’ll pass: The meat in the roast beef dip is just fine, but the accompanying jus is overwhelmingly salty.
Clarklewis
Lunch and happy hour—that’s when to frequent the former capital of the fallen Ripe food empire. Sure, you’ll miss seafood starters (scallops with sweet corn and chanterelles), toothsome antipastos (arugula, burrata, yellow beans and grilled peaches) and heartier entrees (roasted pork shoulder with figs), but you can still sample a decent menu for a lot less cash. Try these sandwiches: peppery lamb bacon with grilled eggplant or in a BLT on the blue-plate special; roast chicken salad with Gruyère; an Italian grinder with olive dressing. Salads (watermelon with feta) seem less bold these days; most desserts don’t wow.
Order this: Any housemade pasta, like tagliatelle with lamb ragu. The smaller plate is ample.
Best deal: $6 happy-hour hamburger.
I’ll pass: Insipid soup and plain sorbet don’t beef up the lunch special. Get the sandwich alone instead.
Clyde Common
It’s fun to pretend to be European for a night. Few places in Portland give you as much opportunity for continental fantasy as Nate Tilden and Matt Piacentini’s stylish hangout in the Ace Hotel building, where any night you’re more than likely to see a local celebrity downing a cocktail or two. The long communal tables and even longer wait (at peak hours) only add to the ambience. The food stacks up as well, with a menu that constantly shifts to reflect the seasons. On a recent visit, highlights included the flat-iron steak, beautifully presented on whole lettuce wedge and surrounded by indelible, rich smoked grape tomatoes and crumbly Cabrales cheese. Clyde Common picks and chooses from the best European traditions, but this is one mutt you can always trust.
Order this: Tagliarini; anything with meat in it.
Best deal: French fries served with harissa and crème fraîche for only $5.
I’ll pass: The dessert board, which is just too much food to stomach.
Country Cat
Adam Sappington’s warm, Deep South-by-way-of-Montavilla pork palace has earned a pack of slavering fans since opening in 2007, much thanks to the butchery-happy, overall-sportin’ chef’s “The Whole Hog” plate. It fairly groans with a greatest-hits trio of Sweet Briar Farms pig bits (crisp rolled belly, tender smoked shoulder and an epic brined chop). The Hog also comes atop a mountain of grits, but don’t skimp on the other sides. You deserve a Paul Bunyan-sized helping of smashed spuds drowned in bacon gravy or a creamy vat of old-school green-bean casserole, too. While the Cat’s dry halibut and lackluster pasta dishes have disappointed in the past, if it once squealed, clucked or mooed, order it immediately. And nab a whiskey or bourbon from the friendly bar while you’re at it.
Order this: Moist cast-iron skillet-fried chicken. Now the Cat serves it with toasted pecan spoonbread at brunch every single day.
Best deal: The Whole Hog lives up to its oinking, fat-coma-inducing name.
I’ll pass: Until pigs start naturally producing pasta somewhere in their bodies for Sappington to harvest, skip the odd noodle dishes.
Daily Cafe
To most Portlanders, the Daily Cafe is a Pearl District diner landmark—though they have two other locations—with mix-’n’-match $14 prix fixe morning fare (scarily, they call it “price-fix,” just like the petrol companies do) ranging from Korean bibimbap to eggy hazelnut pizza to candied ginger pancakes. The decor is Edward Hopper diner gone cosmo-casual, with windowed garage doors. Dinners are often sparsely attended to the point of creepiness—nobody knows they’re serving it, apparently—and deserves much greater recognition as a mid-priced neighborhood option for heartwarming comfort food like pork chops with peach barbecue sauce or housemade pesto tagliatelle.
MATTHEW KORFHAGE. 902 NW 13th Ave. 242-1916. www.dailycafe.net MapEl Gaucho
Most of us can’t afford a $54 sirloin, or even $27 baby-back ribs, especially when said steaks come virtually unadorned. So thank goodness El Gaucho has a happy hour. This money-saving meal is a great way to try the food without emptying your sparse bank account. Order the steak frites ($14) for a 6-ounce piece of sirloin with just as much dry-aged complexity as the $54 option. Sure, it’s topped with béarnaise instead of lobster and comes with fries instead of scalloped potatoes, but who needs all that extraneous decadence when the steak is juicy and the fries are the perfect blend of crisp and tender? The enormous burger, which comes with peppery bacon, pickled onions, cheddar and garlic aioli, looks almost absurdist, covered in red-and-white checked paper, set far left on the plate with a small pile of cornichon pickles stacked on the right. On the “healthier” side of the menu, the wedge salad tastes like crunchy blue-cheese dressing (don’t they all?) and could have used more bacon bits, but the beet salad was flavorful and refreshing, if a bit creatively stale. KATE WILLIAMS.
Order this: Steak frites, beet salad, red wine special. Or splurge and sip on the $240 Louis Sidecar cocktail.
Best deal: 319 Burger: juicy, well-seasoned beef topped with almost all necessary food groups ($8).
I’ll pass: Why order bruschetta at an American steakhouse?
Lincoln
If only all of our forefathers looked so good: This metro-woodsy dining room manages to be both sexy and convivial, filled with helpful servers and an eye-catching painting of a giant, black cock (rooster, people). Lincoln’s a little Northwestern, a little Mediterranean, but it’s all chef Jenn Louis, whom you can spy in the kitchen doling out perfect hanger steaks paired with feather-light onion rings, richly spiced pork ragu with toothsome tagliatelle and burn-yer-fingers-hot roast chickens. Her partner in crime, David Welch, works the front of the house—he’s a charming pusher of excellent value wines and plates of hot, chewy thyme flatbread. With a menu filled with recognizable entrees elevated by clever flavor twists, count Lincoln as a go-to choice for both Meet the Parents and Seduce the Date dinners. Plus, although Louis is all about the meats (the woman once baked an apple pie with a bacon-lattice top), her vegetarian nods, like a panzanella that turned out to be a colorful, puckery crunchfest of nutty toast, heirloom tomatoes, blue cheese and shallots, sing with an earthy vibe that’s tough to match.
Order this: A texturally miraculous dish of eggs and Castelvetrano olives baked in cream, topped with herby breadcrumbs. Best thing I ate last month.
Best deal: Entrees are big and shareable. Close your eyes and pick one.
I’ll pass: The North Williams eatery was nearly packed on a recent Tuesday night. Does that mean I won’t be able to get in on a Friday?
Mother's Bistro & Bar
Don’t let the pictures near the door of President Bill Clinton and Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s visits here put you off: Mother’s is all about homey comfort. The sun-drenched (weather permitting) dining room and unpretentious lounge are like a second home to regulars who line up on weekends to feast on chef Lisa Schroeder’s justly famous brunches, from scrambled eggs with prosciutto, roasted garlic, tomatoes, basil and provolone to a Greek frittata with feta cheese and kalamata olives. Dinners are just as hearty with dishes like slow-stewed chicken with herbed dumplings, Carlton Farms pulled pork with smashed red potatoes and steak frites topped with herbed butter, fries and sautéed spinach. A solid selection of draft beers and fresh-squeezed juices round out the comfort-food bliss, capped with a Thomas Kemper root beer float. Clinton must have been in heaven here.
Order this: Wild salmon hash.
Best deal: “$15,000 Dungeness crab cakes” for $18.95.
I’ll pass: Macaroni-and-cheese du jour. Will this fad never end?
Podnah's Pit
Every five years, Texas Monthly publishes a list of the top 50 barbecue joints in the Lone Star State. This requires months of research, driving across the Hill Country to outdoor smokers that run out of meat before noon. Also, it means living in Texas. Finding the best barbecue in Portland is much easier: Head up the Prescott ridge and follow the scent of slow-cooking coming from behind an unembellished doorway. The only sensible ’cue dispute in this city is which of Podnah’s meats is the best; I’m partial to the pork spareribs, which have so much flesh that they must come from the pig equivalent to Barry Bonds. Others swear by the brisket—especially as served with tortillas and pinto beans on the Plato Tejano—or the pulled pork. The only people who won’t be in hog heaven are vegans (they can’t even be consoled by a divine sour-cream potato salad). But who are we kidding? Like atheists in foxholes, there ain’t no vegans in Podnah’s.
Order this: A half rack of spareribs will nourish your family for generations.
Best deal: The Frito chili pie has higher-quality meat than corn chips have any right to deserve.
I’ll pass: The black-eyed pea salad tastes like Fergie.
Screen Door
Three years into this Southern-food joint’s tenure on East Burnside, and the brunch lines are still around the block. Online reviewers frequently extol items on the menu as the best they’ve ever eaten, and the dining room’s tables and blue vinyl booths fill to capacity even on weekday nights. Is it the buttermilk-battered fried chicken? The rotating menu of local, organic options, such as summer squash griddle cakes with “bodacious” corn? The crispy-skinned pork belly melting into a puddle of peach-bourbon sauce? The impeccable service? It hardly matters, as the menu holds little opportunity for error. If the decision seems overwhelming, choose the Screen Door Plate, which allows a choice of three items from the House Sides menu (don’t skip the red beans and rice, the most authentic this reviewer has tasted outside Louisiana) or the produce-centric Local Organics menu, served alongside a sizable chunk of Southern cornbread. If you’re somehow still able to walk afterward, a full dessert menu awaits. We recommend the banoffee pie.
Order this: Crispy fried buttermilk-battered chicken with tasso gravy and mashed potatoes.
Best deal: Screen Door Plate ($12.95)—your choice of three house sides and/or selections from the Local Organics menu.
I’ll pass: Desiccated fried pork chop.
Simpatica
Simpatica serves you on its terms. That means you eat what they make at fixed-menu dinners ($35 plus wine and gratuity) on Fridays and Saturdays. And you’d better get a reservation early, because they go fast. But Simpatica can get away with this heavy-handed approach because the food is just that good. And if you really feel stifled, Simpatica offers less planning and more choice at its Sunday brunch, which creatively reinvents classic combinations like chicken and waffles and biscuits and gravy. A recent Friday-night dinner began with a sure-handed take on a Spanish classic: gleaming mussels and chorizo fired in a wood oven—briny, salty, smoky and delicious. A lovely Caesar-like salad followed, combining romaine with artichoke hearts and a “creamy lemon dressing,” its richness well balanced by the citrus. The main course was a combination incapable of failing—steak and bacon. Add local chanterelles and roasted tomatoes to the hanger steak and thick-cut smoky chunks and you get a very quiet dining room, everyone’s focus narrowing to the next bite. Let them tell you what to eat. They’re right.
Order this: Simpatica does the ordering, but it’s in your interest to obey.
Best deal: $35 for four superb courses ain’t bad.
I’ll pass: A chocolate soufflé cake for dessert was solid, but who has room?
Tastebud Dining Room
Wood-fired baking fanatic Mark Doxtader was a farmer long before he opened this tiny, bright pizza-and-bagel joint just south of Powell Boulevard. Take a glance at the menu and you’ll see his roots are showing: What makes the pies at Tastebud so appealing isn’t just the chewy crust—which is very good, with a flavor similar to that of Ken’s Artisan, but thicker and saltier—but the surprising combinations of excellent, impeccably fresh produce. Ever had a peach and pancetta pizza? How about sausage and shiitake? Salads and appetizers (try the corn on the cob if it’s available) taste like they were tossed on the way in from the garden. The one-page menu is rounded out with oversize fruit crisps (superb) and a smart selection of affordable beer and wine, heavy on Hair of the Dog and bright Italians.
Order this: Vegetarian pizza with artichokes, mozzarella, ricotta, Parmesan and arugula.
Best deal: Enormous pile of clams with garlic and toasted focaccia ($10).
I’ll pass: Padrón peppers are better fried than roasted.
Three Square Grill
The house salad here isn’t complicated, with lettuce and pickled carrots spritzed in a light almond vinaigrette, but if you order it, be prepared to sink your teeth into some of the best lettuce you’ve ever had. That sounds strange, but Three Square Grill elevates straight-shooting vegetables and greens, and sometimes meat and seafood, to stardom. This should come as no surprise; these are the folks behind Portland’s famous Picklopolis pickles. Three Square Grill’s farmers market platter midsummer is a straight-from-the-source flavorful medley of grilled baby artichokes, zucchini, wild mushrooms, warmed housemade sauerkraut, green beans, citrusy garlicky collards and more. Although the Hillsdale-proper dining room isn’t much to speak of, it’s comfortable and feels like family.
Order this: Pickle platter with briny-good fiddlehead, asparagus, beets, green beans, etc.
Best deal: Fried okra, fried pickles and hushpuppies platter with jalapeño jelly, $6.
I’ll pass: On the crab cakes, which are a little mealy and batter-heavy.
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