Michael C. Zusman

Push x Pull provides a cup above the rest, and Cloudforest’s chocolate can brighten even the grayest winter day.

Grilled stuff on sticks was a particular pleasure at Ping: bacon-wrapped quail eggs with spicy mayo, simply salted chicken hearts, little pork meatballs, baby octopi dressed in a tongue-searing chile-lime sauce.

If I had to recommend one dish that best showcases Denison’s hard-earned expertise, it would be his ultra-rustic pâté en croûte ($14), a mixture of ground pork—forcemeat or farce in charcutier’s vernacular—and other ingredients cloaked in pastry, baked, then chilled and sliced for service.

Located in the former home of Pearl District sports bar On Deck, the restaurant is an expansive, 8,000-square-foot rooftop venue shared with gin bar the Botanist.

The long-awaited Malka is the restaurant version. Items on the menu have nutty names and even crazier compositions. Each dish is a madcap mélange of a dozen or more ingredients that, on paper, couldn’t possibly work together, yet invariably do. A meal at Malka is chaos that magically coalesces into harmony. And everyone seems to leave happy.

Dóttir, the restaurant that occupies the lobby of Kex, the new “social hotel” with roots in Reykjavík at the east end of the Burnside Bridge, thankfully does not serve hakarl. In fact, there is little on its menu that’s distinctly Icelandic. Of course, not serving rotting fish flesh is a low bar for success. But so far, it’s one of the 2-month-old restaurant’s few notable achievements.

Finding credible Sichuanese food outside its home territory can be a challenge. So for any connoisseur of “ma la,” the arrival of Szechuan Garden deep in suburban Beaverton is cause for elation.

The selection of traditional Jewish deli favorites at Beetroot is limited, and most items offered are purchased from elsewhere.

Chef Vince Nguyen elevates fine dining to the astral plane: delicious, mysterious, stylish without pretension, invariably thoughtful and focused. But it’s not just the food that makes this one of Portland’s best new restaurants. A meal here is a fully formed experience, where everything from the music to the restroom plays a part.

For meat lovers, Korean barbecue is the perfect DIY treat. You take a seat at a table with a burner in the middle and a smoke-sucking hood above, slap your chosen cut on the grill, and within minutes, dinner is served. This is well known to K-BBQ aficionados in Beaverton, where most of the good spots are located. Now, denizens of the outer eastside have an alluring spot of their own.

“Selamat Makan,” reads the sign in the dining room at Wajan, an Indonesian newcomer to Portland’s kaleidoscopic restaurant scene. The phrase translates to “bon appétit”—or, in rough English, “good eating.” It turns out the sign isn’t really necessary. The truth of that statement is self-evident.

It’s the time of year when natives and tourists alike descend like a swarm of ravenous mosquitos on a handful of better-known and often mediocre places to devour whatever cold snack is on trend at the moment.

These earnest young chefs have made “by-catch,” “invasive species” and multiple varieties of seaweed the center of their culinary universe.

To say Bullard’s menu is meat-centered is accurate as far as it goes, but fails to capture the restaurant’s essence.

It faces multiple pitfalls—some beyond its control, others of its own making. But the biggest problem it suffers from is the disease of more, with a menu that tries to do too much, too often.