47. Autentica The trio of salsas served with warm housemade tortillas had layers of brightness and heat we’d forgotten existed
46. Zilla Sake This little Alberta Street sushiya is a tiny juggernaut punching well above its weight.
42. Aviv Their hummus takes up about a quarter of the menu and includes eight distinct versions from Hatch Chile to zhoug.
41. Grain and Gristle This little Prescott Street bar is a dream of farm-to-table come to humble life.
37. Chicken and Guns Give up on any idea that food carts are more casual: This is true farm-to-picnic-table food.
34. Maurice The orchestrator behind Maurice is pastry chef Kristen Murray, who honed her craft in Paris.
32. Bless Your Heart Burgers Our favorite is the double cheeseburger with American cheese, but the specialty is a Carolina-style diner burger.
30. Nak Won Lee cooks every dish herself with the individual attentiveness usually reserved for home cooks.
29. Olympia Provisions Olympia Provisions' meat wizardry makes for a nonstop holiday celebration for your taste buds,
28. Han Oak The mood is looser since Peter Cho merged his justly famous noodle and dumpling menu into the everyday experience
26. Enat Kitchen Enat’s platters are gorgeous and overflowing with colorful piles of stewy vegetables and meat.
25. Expatriate In this colonial drinking den, it feels as if all the detritus of human culture has washed ashore and been made elegant.
23. Luce Veggie sides are accented in just the right ways and lightly salted whole trout impresses with directness.
22. Mae Mae is a world we wish existed, clean and generous and warmed by a bottle of brown-bag whiskey.
21. Ava Gene’s The Giardini section of Ava Gene’s menu reads like the ingredients from a particularly challenging episode of “Chopped”
18. Paley’s Place For a restaurant steeped in Continental tradition, there’s a playfulness here that borders on the giddy.
14. Matt’s BBQ There’s really only one barbecue spot we’re excited about. That’s this cart, in the parking lot of H&B Jewelry and Loan between the two Popeyes on Martin Luther King Boulevard.
12. Trifecta Tavern This cavernous inner-eastside restaurant manages to feel raucous but intimate at the same time.
10. Poke Mon Don't hate on them for serving a trendy (and maybe ecologically unsustainable!) foodstuff and having an encyclopedic collection of canned La Croix.
9. St. Jack There are so many little treasures at St. Jack, from the cocktails to Oregon river trout other restaurants can't get.
8. Hat Yai In a tiny, wood-slatted hall of a space with plastic, blue-checked tablecloths, Hat Yai shames full-service restaurants with three times the staff.
7. Tusk The biggest difference between Tusk now and a year ago isn’t any of the tweaks, it’s the city around it.
5. Kachka An ode to her own nostalgia for her parents’ Soviet memories, chef Bonnie Morales’ Southeast Grand Avenue Russian spot, nestled in the central east side’s bar district, combines classic Continental food training with Russian vigor to create a dining experience unlike any other in the United States.
3. Coquine French-trained Katy Millard and her partner, Ksandek Podbielski, have created the most nourishing dining experience in Portland, so far removed from the troubles in the city below as to be transportive.
2. Langbaan In the three years since chef Rassamee Ruaysuntia left Bangkok to join Ninsom at Langbaan, that dim, reclaimed-wood room has evolved from a disarmingly casual ode to Bangkok’s legendary Nahm restaurant to a spot that stakes its own claim as one of the greatest Thai restaurants in the world.
1. Le Pigeon Gabe Rucker’s punky decade-old nook on East Burnside Street is experimental and loose in mood but exacting in every detail, animated by a tossed-off majesty that’s hard not to call genius.
Here’s Where You Can Pick Up Your Copy of Willamette Week’s 2017 Portland Restaurant Guide All the food that's fit for print.