Cafe Castagna’s Caesar
When I recently told a friend that I’d be renewing my caesar reports, revisiting places I had backlogged from when I started the surveys, they asked, “Why do you bother with such a boring dish?” For them, the reports I do on eyeball tacos and raw vegan lasagna are what they look forward to. For them, it’s more about entertainment than information.
Caesar salads are simple. They’re easy. They’re ubiquitous. Not that exciting, sure, but they are a great indicator of how committed a restaurant is to quality. There’s no excuse for a bad caesar.
Caesars are like a canary in the coal mine, for lack of a less tired metaphor. If a restaurant can’t prepare a balanced, uncooked dressing with only a few ingredients, what can you expect from a complex sauce? If a restaurant does something special with a common $9 salad, how much more will they do on a $30 dish with an exotic ingredient? If a restaurant gives you wilted, rotting greens, what is their fish like? In Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential he warns that if a restaurant can’t be bothered to keep their bathrooms clean — a place their customers will see and smell — they almost certainly won’t do better with their kitchen, an area generally hidden from their customers.
So, yeah, caesars aren’t the most exciting thing on the menu. But they taste good, many restaurants around town have them, and they’re a cheap way to compare what’s coming out of Portland kitchens.
For this report, I’ve included five restaurants: Alameda Brewhouse, Basta’s Trattoria, Cafe Castagna, the Heathman, and Ken’s Place. While Ken’s Place is closed, I decided to include it anyway, which I explain below. One of these salads has changed over the years, was one of the best in town before, and has possibly even improved. So click on…
Photo Album
Alameda Brewhouse
Basta’s
Cafe Castagna
Heathman
Ken’s Place
While the kitchen at Alameda Brewhouse has certainly screwed up orders for me in the past, generally they provide adequate food at reasonable prices with rarely a dish over $13. Like a chain, only better, and my beer-loving friends can taste interesting house-made brews on tap. The restaurant takes a shotgun approach to pleasing customers with enchiladas, fish and chips, linguini, ribs, meatball sandwich, reuben, falafel, and filet mignon all on the same menu. The place is big and busy. I enjoy their fish and chips better than most.
The caesar, however, isn’t among the best. It is a good value. The small is only $5.95 and plenty for one person — a meal if you add the chicken or salmon for two dollars more. The large, still only $8.95, needs to be shared.
The dressing is okay. It tastes first of lemon and doesn’t need the additional lemon wedge. Any garlic or anchovy are in the background. Occasionally it can taste a little mayonnaisey, but it remains creamy, not clumpy. The croutons seem to be made of sourdough. What really holds back the salad, however, is the lettuce. The last time I ordered it, the salad was made up primarily of chopped outer leaves. A good portion of the greens were wilted, and a small number were on the edge of rotting. Another time, there were mostly romaine hearts, but they had started turning brown where they’d been cut, as if they’d been sitting in the fridge for several days. Further, they seem to use a poor quality parmesan that is very bland. They have done a good job with the chicken. It’s been lightly grilled, well-seasoned, and not dry or overcooked.
Alameda Brew House
4765 Ne Fremont St
Portland, OR 97213
503.460.9025
http://www.alamedabrewhouse.com
I enjoy Basta’s. Not just because of the food, but because it’s one of only a few restaurants in NW Portland with a parking lot, a relief for us suburbanites. But I do like the food. The menu is simple trattoria fare, nothing too fancy or too involved. Carpaccio, calamari, scaloppine, bolognese — dishes that define Italian food for Americans. And the caesar, even if it is an Italian-American original.
Dishes tend to be good, not great, but with nothing topping $20, and most items about five bucks cheaper, it makes Basta’s one of Portland’s better values for Italian food. The caesar, too, is a good value.
Especially if you like garlic. The goopy dressing packs a wollop, and for some, including myself, it can be overwhelming. A spritz from the supplied lemon wedge helps a lot in balancing out the flavors as does lots of parmesan and even more parmesan brought to the table in a jar. It’s still more restrained than Gino’s, but it can’t really be said to be in balance. Croutons have often been more hard than crunchy. But the mostly romaine hearts have been fresh. An olive on the side is superfluous.
At $9 for a very large portion, it’s a fair deal. At happy hour, though, it’s only $4. An order of that and their $4 carpaccio is a low-carber’s delight for under $10.
Basta’s Trattoria
410 NW 21st Ave
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.1572
http://www.bastastrattoria.com
Cafe Castagna is one of the best restaurants in Portland at providing modest-priced meals that nevertheless are interesting, use local/seasonal ingredients, and are executed nearly perfectly. They’ve been deservedly busy for years. Their burger is always mentioned as one of the best in town. Likewise, when asking local food lovers who has a good caesar, Cafe Castagna is always one of the first and most-oftened mentioned. And even moreso than their burger, people are right on about the caesar, easily one of the city’s best.
My earliest recollections of their caesar — and my earliest photo of it as well (see photo immediately above) — was of something very classic: whole leaves of romaine, a creamy, mild dressing with no anchovy flavor, with some croutons and a bit of crumbled cheese. It was good then, but it’s damn near perfect now.
I’m not sure what happened. Perhaps Ken’s Place closing left a vacuum of flavor in the neighborhood that Cafe Castagna decided to fill with a bolder caesar. While still a light, creamy dressing, it begins with a strong hit of lemon and garlic followed by a firm shot of anchovy. Ground black pepper cuts through now and then to add a spicy aroma and an earthy bite. Crumbled, pungent parmesan coats the crisp chopped romaine like a brief snowfall on doug fir branches. The salad is intensely flavored, but restrained enough to stay in perfect balance. While a caesar could fit someone’s palate better, a caesar could not be better than Cafe Castagna’s. (The photo leading off this survey is their most recent version.)
Cafe Castagna
1758 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97214
503.231.9959
http://www.castagnarestaurant.com/
The Heathman isn’t fancy, but it is elegant, even if they do make their poor doorman wear that goofy outfit. Sitting along the large-windowed front as businessmen in suits and well-dressed shoppers walk by almost makes me want to eat my soup with gentle strokes of the spoon away from my body. But then a salad comes with whole romaine heart leaves and I decided to eat with my fingers despite my wife’s disapproving gaze. And so it goes.
Being a large, busy hotel restaurant, consistency isn’t The Heathman’s strong suit. About a year ago, I had some chewy sweetbreads that made me not want to return. But I must admit that my last caesar there was quite good and it’s renewed a bit of trust in their kitchen.
The salad came as a large plate of whole leaves of romaine entirely from the heart. They were fresh and tasty. The creamy dressing coated the leaves lightly, but thoroughly. The dressing was eggy, with anchovy and lemon flavors foremost, a light garlic note throughout. Crumbled, nearly powdered, grana padano added a dusting of nuttiness. The croutons were large — a bit too large –, light, and crunchy.
The salad is $9, $14 with chicken, $15 with bay shrimp, or $16 with salmon.
Heathman Hotel Restaurant
1001 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97205
503.790.7752
http://www.heathmanhotel.com
Yeah, Ken’s Place has closed. Yeah, Ken is now my business partner. And yeah, we’ll probably have the caesar on our menu at Kenny & Zuke’s. So yeah, to some degree this is just one more example of shameless self-promotion. But moreso, I was going through my pictures and my notes and there was Ken’s caesar, one of my favorites, the dish I had more than any other at his restaurant, so I decided to write it into this report.
For only $7.25, it was quite large. A huge mound of torn romaine was coated, sometimes a bit heavily, with Ken’s aggressive dressing. Aggressive? Definitely. But also well balanced. It’s bold in the best sense with three strong, competing flavors battling for supremacy: garlic, lemon, and anchovy. Wagner on a plate — from a Jew, no less. The garlic acted as the main theme with the lemon and anchovy harmonizing. Grated parmesan, liberally sprinkled over the top, added saltiness and another pungent flavor to harmonize with the dressing. Crunchy and well-toasted garlic croutons added to the dominant theme. One of the best examples of a boldly flavored caesar in Portland.
A little more money and he added chicken, making it a complete meal.
Ken’s Place (Closed)
1852 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97214
503.236.9520
