Portland Part II: Foodie Paradise

Ok folks, drumroll please! It's time for the rundown of our foodie weekend in Portland, Oregon. As mentioned in my last post, Stuart and I went for a quick one-night trip to celebrate my birthday, and had a fantastic time sampling a few of the things Portland has to offer. 

Our trip included delicious Thai fusion, Spanish tapas, local artisinal ice cream, Stumptown coffee, and more. As my aunt mentioned to me in an email, calories don't count on your birthday! Let's hope she was right :)

 

We started off our trip with Lunch at Pok Pok, aThai fusion restaurant that is well known in Portland, has several locations, and over 1,000 Yelp reviews. 

We ate: Ike's Vietnamese fish sauce wings, Khao Soi (Thai curry noodle soup) and  Khao Man Som Tam (green papaya salad with sweet shredded pork). Every dish was so unique and tasty.

  

 

 For dinner, we ate at Toro Bravo, a Spanish tapas restaurant that was my favorite meal of the trip. 

We ate: bacon wrapped dates, Brussels sprouts with bacon sherry cream, squash dumplings with braised lamb, stewed butternut squash with sheep's cheese, and baked polenta with roast beef. Each dish was to-die-for delicious.

  

For dessert, we discovered the best ice cream we have ever had at Salt and Straw. It was so good that we went twice: once on Friday and again of Saturday before we left town. Both times I got a scoop of the sea salt with caramel ice cream in a waffle cone, pictured above. It was so good that we were discussing how we could get this shipped to us by the pint (news flash: you CAN! But it costs $$).

For breakfast the next morning we went to Tasty n Sons, which I only then discovered was owned by the same chefs that run Toro Bravo, where we had dinner! 

We ate: biscuits with venison gravy, Baked apple with cheddar and bacon, and the English breakfast.

 For an afternoon pick-me-up, we stopped at the iconic Stumptown Coffee Roasters for a local Portland cup of joe.

 We wrapped up the trip with lunch at Kenny and Zuke's, a lovely delicatessen with an amazing potato salad and house made bagels. We took the bagels to go to enjoy a taste of Portland back home in Seattle. I hope you have a chance to travel to Portland and try these or other top notch eateries!