Skip to main contentNeighborhood restaurants come in lots of shapes. There's the bumptious tavern, the placid storefront, the intimate dining room. Portland has more than its share of converted houses, and since many parts of town boast Victorian-style homes, when these old manses sit in an area zoned for business there's an irresistible urge to fix them up and turn them into restaurants. The lure is obvious: You put your diners in a serene mood the moment they enter, since they feel more like guests than paying customers. And if the place is modest, there may be another benefit: Expectations are seldom stratospheric. There's a difference, after all, between a meal in someone's home and an elegant four-star affair. Your tolerance enzymes take over.
The Sellwood House, domiciled in a pretty 1907 Victorian, doesn't really need to depend on the diner's forbearance, since it's doing quite nicely, thank you. Still, there's some unevenness, so a touch of magnanimity is useful and can go a long way toward making an evening here pleasant, if not exactly stunning. The setting is homey, comfortable and familial.
The cuisine is basically American, with echoes of France and the Mediterranean. It mixes a bit of old-fashioned harvest cooking with modern touches; it's hearty rather than refined, copious rather than austere. There's a winning simplicity about a meal here. Nothing will overwhelm you, but it won't underwhelm you either.
Among the starters, two stand out. Duck confit with wild mushrooms on a gratin of squash ($7.75) is quite delicious, the butternut squash with goat cheese baked and brought under the broiler an uncommon treatment of the vegetable. A curious but tasty item combines soft, aromatic tacos with tender braised lamb and red cabbage ($6.75): Mazatlan meets München. The only appetizer that left me cold was a very ordinary baked goat cheese ($6.25) with points of toast and a decidedly unperky tapenade.
For a steamy respite from the glooms of winter, I liked a substantial lamb shank on a mound of chèvre accompanied by a very respectable potato gratin ($17.25): A bit too salty perhaps, but the lamb is full of rich flavor. This is doggy-bag territory, but I finished it with groans of pleasure. Great roasted winter vegetables come with. The restaurant obviously loves squash, also the base of a risotto that forms the bed for pan-seared scallops ($19.25). I have some difficulties with this dish: I don't think the scallops and the sweet arborio rice really go well together, and the risotto was somewhat mushy. But an order of roast duck confit ($16.25) is cooked to perfection, bringing back memories of farmhouse dinners in Gascony.
Grilled pork loin ($16.75) makes for another good cold-weather dish; I'd urge the restaurant to cook it a bit less than they did for me in order to preserve its succulence. Best of all, the dish arrives with herbed barley; you don't often find this grain on Portland tables, and its crunch makes a splendid contrast with roasted beets--an unusual and enticing ensemble. The only dish that seemed truly a mistake was a special of grilled tilapia (originally an African fish): overcooked and over-the-hill. It tasted frozen, but that's probably because the farm-raised variety inevitably has a muddy flavor.
The restaurant's dessert list is small, but a few nice items, each $6.25, finished the meal in style. There's an excellent toasted almond tart made with the delicate pastry known as frangipane and filled with apricot fruit and glaze; it's puckeringly sour and satisfyingly sweet at the same time. And a double chocolate ganache cake is wonderfully moist, profiting from a luscious raspberry sauce. Save this one for Valentine's Day.
The Sellwood House is also a nice place for lunch. They do a mean grilled pastrami-and-fontina sandwich (a kind of krautless Reuben), and rotelli (corkscrew) pasta with shrimp and sausage in a broth densely laden with saffron. I've been back several times at midday, and I leave with my spirits raised. The restaurant also serves brunch.
It's good to see such a place in the ever-burgeoning Sellwood neighborhood. The place is modest and certainly unpretentious, and it serves food in keeping with its ambience and tone. If you're in the midst of a hard day's afternoon of Sellwood antiquing, I can't think of a better place in the vicinity for lunch, and after dark it's a bit like coming home.
7937 SE 13th Ave., 231-6544
Open 11:30 am- 2:30 pm Wednesday- Friday, 5:30-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday, 9 am-3 pm Saturday- Sunday. Credit cards accepted. Children welcome. Moderate-Expensive.
Duck confit on wild mushrooms, roast duck leg confit, braised lamb shank, double chocolate ganache cake
Charming old house with a cozy, informal ambience
WWeek 2015