Willamette Week Restaurant Guide 2002

Yeah, it's us again. The same people who eat our way across Portland every year. We're the poor saps sucking down pinot noir, chomping on luscious steaks and forking foie gras into our greedy, insatiable mouths--all on the company dime.

It's hard work--we all agree on that, right?--but we do it because we hope that offering a rundown of our favorite 100 restaurants will inspire you to take in some of the amazing eateries Portland has to offer. Each restaurant was visited in recent months (as anonymously as humanly possible, in a city this small), and, after all that unseemly scarfing of rich, decadent food, the check was paid by Willamette Week, in order to avoid any ickiness. If there's not a puddle of drool by your feet when you're finished reading this, then we haven't done our job.

Every year we like to highlight a restaurant or two as top players on the scene. Usually this is a new restaurant, but this year we shed that contrivance in order to respond to the zeitgeist. Our picks for Restaurants of the Year are the Cuban eatery Pambiche and Pho Van Vietnamese Bistro in the Pearl, two stellar examples on how to survive an economic bellyflop by offering good food at reasonable prices; read all about them on page 6.

And while the lines seem increasingly to blur, please note that the Restaurant Guide you have in your hands covers the more heavyweight hitters. Look for our Cheap Eats guide--which trolls the lower-cost options--in March.

The key for restaurants costs as rated in this guide is:

$$ Moderate: most entrees under $20

$$$ Expensive: most entrees under $30

$$$$ Very expensive: most entrees more than $30

And as always, this gentle reminder: Please call a restaurant before you go. We've checked, double-checked and triple-checked the information here, but restaurants change faster than Darcelle between acts.

In a smug nod to the world of self-promotion, we'd like to acknowledge the clearly brilliant judges at the Association of Food Journalists, a national trade organization of writers, who bestowed on last year's Restaurant Guide a second-place honor in their annual awards. Thank you. Where do we send that check, again?

Caryn B. Brooks
Editor

And the whole Restaurant Guide crew

EDITOR Caryn B. Brooks
ASSISTANT EDITOR Byron Beck

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sonja Al-Sofi, Byron Beck, Caryn B. Brooks, Kelly N. Clarke, Katherine Cole, Katherine Deumling, Jim Dixon, Zach Dundas, Elizabeth Dye, Ian Gillingham, Brian Libby, Margaret Seiler, Roger J. Porter, Otis Rubottom, John Schrag, Patty Wentz

COPY EDITORS Margaret Seiler, Ian Gillingham, Matt Buckingham

DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Anne Reeser, Jesse Woodruff, Jason Landis, Thomas Cobb, Samantha Gardner, Frank Zurbano, Kendon Gray, Amy Ryan, Shawna McKeown

WWeek 2015