Bun Rieu at Pho An Sandy
Whether you want to avoid seeing people making googly eyes and kissie faces at each other while you try to eat or whether you just want to avoid paying double for a meal served by a frazzled waiter, here are 10 options to escape the trappings of dining out on Valentine’s Day. They’re un-hip and non-trendy. And most are inexpensive and casual, too. Also, because most of these places are rarely slammed, it’s a good list to keep around for a Friday or Saturday night when waiting 45 minutes for a table sounds especially miserable.
Paneer Pakoras
I’m using Dining Month Portland not only as a good way to get three course meals for relatively cheap, but also as an excuse to return to restaurants I’ve liked in the past, but haven’t been to in a while. I always liked Vindalho, but Chef David Anderson left Vindalho last spring to re-open Genoa. I hadn’t been since. One friend told me he had a bad meal there after the change. But every restaurant takes time to get its feet under them with a new chef. I wanted to see for myself.
Bun Bo Hue Minh's fabulous $7 bowl of bun rieu
Willamette Week’s annual Cheap Eats issue came out yesterday. Despite a couple restaurants that I’d really like to see dropped from the list (cough…cough….Laughing Planet), it’s a very good list overall. If you want to browse the choices quickly before digging into the reviews, I’ve distilled them at Portlandfood.org.
Included in the issue was a fun listing of bites, snacks, and entire meals $7 or under. Following are 10 additions to the list — some of my favorites — from a whole new set of shops, some of which weren’t covered in the issue at all.
Version 2.0 of Extramsg.com’s dining guide and tip sheet for the Portland metro area is finally finished. You can visit it here or by clicking the link at the left under Portland Food News.
The tip sheet has been greatly overhauled. Categories, such as Indian and Sushi/Japanese have been added, but also many of the entries in each category have been updated or completely changed. There’s also a new listing of “Quick Picks” by neighborhood in descending order by price.
Hopefully this tip sheet will help visitors and new residents of Portland — or those looking to expand their culinary horizons. If you would like to criticize or comment on the tip sheet, please follow the link in the dining guide itself.
Plaza Latina’s Bulk Chiles
I grew up just outside of Eugene, OR, home of the University of Oregon Ducks, although I always rooted for my dad’s alma mater, the UCLA Bruins. I still have family and friends in the area and visit at least a couple times a month. When I was a kid, Taco Time was probably my favorite cheap eat. Mexi fries, veggie burritos, and taco Tuesday — hey, it’s a lot better than Taco Hell.
That was before Thai food had caught on in the U.S. I hadn’t even tried Indian food and I doubt there was an Indian restaurant in all of Lane County. It was a decade, however, when Izzy’s still made all their pizza from scratch with quality ingredients and Pietro’s made a zesty and crunchy pie with a crust that actually had a chewy, airy texture like Italian bread, not spongy Wonderbread.
Despite the local government’s efforts to stifle change in Eugene, the town has grown up a lot since I left for college. It’s more cosmopolitan with all the expected international restaurants — Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, etc. As a result, the cheap eats options have gone far beyond pizza and fast food. The following is a quick overview of some of my favorites, some places to avoid, and some places that have unfortunately disappeared or changed hands. I’ve also included a list of known blogs in the area that at least regularly post on food.
The bustling Richmond Night Market.
Our second full day in Vancouver was set aside mostly for sight-seeing, but somehow (I blame myself) turned into a day of eating to rival the previous day’s adventures. The only place we knew we wanted to go was a nice, four-star restaurant for dinner. Portland doesn’t have any. Other than that, we had nothing planned.
Portland is a lovely town. The city itself is nearly as large as San Francisco, Seattle, or Vancouver, its sisters on the Pacific which all share a certain character. But unlike these cities it doesn’t actually sit on the ocean. It is not a tourist city in the same way these are. Its metropolis is not quite the draw of these. It maintains a small town feel that these don’t, really, which has its advantages and disadvantages.
One advantage is traffic. I would much rather drive through Portland, especially during the busy summer season, than any of these cities. Try coming across the bridge through Stanley Park from North Vancouver at sunset. Ugh. There are also very few restaurants in Portland where you have to wait or worry about a reservation.
But tourist dollars and business dollars often make for good high-end dining options. And like Seattle and San Fracisco, Vancouver has several restaurants that rival the best of the best in the States.
The lamb “popsicles” from Vij’s.
Salad bowl, melting pot — whatever food-related metaphor you want to use, Vancouver is it. Holding a strong kinship with the UK and the Continent, there are, of course, numerous English, Scottish, Irish, French, Germans, and other Europeans. But over a third of Vancouver’s population is Asian. Most of these are Chinese and Indian.
Driving the streets from one part of town to the next, for long stretches — up Granville, down Main, across Robson, name another and it will probably be true — there seem to be nothing but Asian restaurants. And that’s not even including the transplanted Asian suburb of Richmond, where we stayed, that I’ll touch on in a future report.
It was so terrific to see so many mixed-race couples. I wondered if the only non-mixed-race couples were tourists. I imagine this has something to do with the proliferation of great Asian restaurants in the city. When you have Chinese girlfriends taking their Scottish boyfriends to dim sum, or Japanese husbands taking their English wives to a ramen house, or Indian mothers cooking curries for their French-Canadian son-in-laws, the expectations, the knowledge, the passion for great Asian food will flourish. It helps, too, that Vancouver is right on the Pacific Ocean with a bounty of seafood.
The exchange of culinary traditions must work both ways because there certainly were more than round eyes and white faces ordering fish and chips, Belgian waffles, and stinky dairy products.
Clockwise from top left: Desserts at Pix; Margherita from Apizza Scholls; Cherries and blackberries from the Portland Farmer’s Market; Burger and fries from Cafe Castagna.
Version 1.0 of Extramsg.com’s dining guide and tip sheet for the Portland metro area is finally finished. You can visit it here or in the future by clicking the link at the left under Portland Food News.
The tip sheet suggests quality restaurants in a variety of categories and cuisines, plus places to shop for food. Following these recommendations are a list of dining options on Sundays and Mondays, links to online discussions of Portland eateries, and other dining guides. Finally, there is a list of over-rated restaurants to avoid.
Hopefully this tip sheet will help visitors and new residents of Portland — or those looking to expand their culinary horizons. If you would like to criticize or comment on the tip sheet, please follow the link in the dining guide itself.
You know that scene in every movie set in the third world? Protagonist in the congested city streets narrowly avoiding being run down by rumbling buses and trucks coughing black exhaust. People dressed in peculiar garb. Strange advertisements and signs on storefronts. Exotic foods being sold in every storefront. Well, I am now of the opinion that every one of those scenes could well have been shot on Chicago’s Devon Ave.
From just east of the intersection of Western and Devon to several blocks west of the same intersection, is a tremendous concentration of Indian and Pakistani restaurants, markets, and retailers. Bindi decorated women in their saris and men in suits, some with turbans, fill the shops. Caucasians are a conspicuous minority. There are no 7-Elevens or McDonald’s separating the stores. A friend’s wife can’t walk a block without him needing to take a crowbar to get her face and hands off the windows of the jewelry stores. Each side street contains hidden gems, too.
Devon has become a required destination on my trips to Chicago.
