Tienda de Leon

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16223 NE Glisan St., 255-4356. Lunch and dinner daily.

If you go west, you go to Taqueria Hermanos Ochoa's. And if you go east, you go here, to the back of a little grocery store, where Lucy de Leon serves magical guisados and barbacoa and pollo asada, with perfect housemade tortillas, at prices that seem too cheap; addictive nopales just at the edge of tartness; and spicy green salsa sweetened and thickened by secret ingredients like lettuce and probably cocaine. On certain weekends her father, Anselmo, will arrive to make tender short ribs whose recipe only he knows. Soon, de Leon said on our last visit, the restaurant will move to the front of the store and will feel less like a secret. What's more, New Seasons will soon carry her tamales on its hot plates at select stores on the westside; it's already selling her salsas. But if there's one thing we've learned, it's that the best food is best when shared.

Check out the Willamette Week's 2016 Cheap Eats guide here.

Willamette Week

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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