Cheap Eats 2011: 4-4-2

Muhamed Mujcic-Mufko’s 4-4-2 is Portland’s lone soccer bar, its walls adorned with the flags of favored teams, from FC Bayern to the Timbers’ green and yellow; the bar’s stock clientele is mostly drawn from the ranks of the American Soccer Fan, which is to say: foreigners, hippies and ex-expatriates. Some of us, however, come in simply for the hospitality and the bar food (as well as the draft beer served in true half-liter mugs). Bosnian lepinja bread, made in-house, is a singular version of the Mediterranean pita: half an inch thick and fluffy as a baguette, with a sweet outer crispness that comes from being baked in olive oil. The šiš (rich, spicy sausage patties, pronounced “sheesh”) and cevapi (beef-lamb patties akin to mini-hamburgers) are served in an array of options ranging from $8 to $12; each comes with lepinja bread, sweet-bitter yogurt sauce and ajvar, a spicy pepper-eggplant relish. My favorite, however, is the peka sandwich ($8.75), which sports wafer-sliced meat so smoked and cured as to be beef’s own thundering answer to bacon. Dear Lord.

WWeek 2015

Matthew Korfhage

Matthew Korfhage has lived in St. Louis, Chicago, Munich and Bordeaux, but comes from Portland, where he makes guides to the city and writes about food, booze and books. He likes the Oxford comma but can't use it in the newspaper.

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