Category: Portland

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Portland! It’s where I live, work, and play. It’s where the food news happens (at least most of it). This category is one of the real constants on Bridgetown Bites and is probably a part of almost every post on this blog.

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Anchor End Eurocafé and Bakery and Its Beautiful Mural in Portland

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Photo credit: Anchor End

A new spot is opening up on NE Fremont in the old Thrive Sauce & Bowls space — Anchor End. While I’m sad to see that Thrive shuttered, I’m eager to give Anchor End’s food and drink a try.

One of my morning walks sometimes takes me up the Alameda Ridge, usually for a stop in at the NE Fremont location of Prince Coffee (I love their lattes and the aroma of fresh made stroopwafels). On a recent jaunt up the Ridge I noticed that Thrive had closed (I so enjoyed their healthy salads and bowls) and a “Eurocafé and bakery” named Anchor End is moving in.

Continue reading “Anchor End Eurocafé and Bakery and Its Beautiful Mural in Portland”
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Top 5 Posts On Bridgetown Bites, March 2018

As they say, “better late than never”—here’s the top five posts from March on Bridgetown Bites. As always, thanks for reading!

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5. Portland Area Food Events, March 8-15

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Each week we will bring you a roundup of public food events in the Portland metro area. It’s not every single event that’s going on, but the ones in particular that catch our eye. Be sure to confirm the availability of the event before you head out to attend, due to last minute changes that sometime happen. Want to submit an event? Fill out this form. Listings curated by Meg Cotner. Continue reading “Top 5 Posts On Bridgetown Bites, March 2018”

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Four Things I Learned This Week (April 6)

I was out of town for a week, but I still learned some stuff about food in Portland! Here’s my list.

I’ve craved Hat Yai’s fried chicken, roti, and curry. While I was up on the Olympic Peninsula I kept thinking back to the meal I had at Hat Yai that was a plate of fried chicken, fried roti, and a rich bowl of curry. It’s an incredible flavor bomb of a meal—my favorite of 2018 so far.

I finally had a drink at Wilf’s. When I got back into town Wednesday night, I stopped in at Wilf’s, next to the Amtrak station. I didn’t know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised at the interior, which was moody in a kind of dark NYC lounge way. I sat at the bar and had a lovely cocktail—gin, St Germain, citrus, and champagne. I can see myself stopping in again, maybe to hear some live music next time.

Current lunch fave: Fleur de Lis’s Harvest Bowl. I’ve now had this twice and love it for lunch. It’s a base of farro topped with cubed roasted squash, roasted golden and red beets, red onion and kale. It comes with tahini dressing and a couple pieces of the bakery’s amazing rustic bread, and you can get it topped with chicken. Pro tip: add avocado to make it even better.

Excited about Kinn Kao’s happy hour. Andrea Damewood wrote a helpful article in the Merc about the happy hour at Kinn Kao, a  Northern Thai bar downstairs from Sweet Basil Thai restaurant on NE Broadway (not far from Bridgetown Bites HQ). I’d been to the space when it was still Sweet Basil, celebrating their 17th birthday party with them last October; that was shortly before they changed it over to the Kinn Kao name. The happy hour sounds super tasty and I plan to stop by soon.

 

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Four Things I Learned This Week (March 30)

I’m spending a little time outside of Portland this week and next, so first-hand experiential tidbits are halved this time around. Still, here are four things I learned this week about (mostly) Portland food:

Tempeh! When I was in Laughing Planet recently, I asked about their crazy delicious tempeh and how they cook it. I was told they bake it, a treatment I had never considered. It’s wonderfully savory, and perhaps what is essentially roasting helps draw out delicious flavors (I think they must use a marinade of some kind, too). Another thing I learned from the staff is that if you steam tempeh first, it makes it easier to work with. Brilliant! I plan to try this soon.

French press your nuts. And by nuts I mean those ground up nuts you use to make nut milk (yes, this all sounds vaguely dirty). In the recipe for strawberry almond milk over on 101 Cookbooks, Heidi recommends one way to extract the milk—by using a large French press coffee maker. I think that’s a really smart idea. When strawberries arrive at the Hollywood Farmers Market, I’ll be making some strawberry almond milk for sure.  P.S. Thanks to reader Lindsay Ingalls of Running With Tongs for alerting me to the availability of nut milk bags at People’s Co-op.

New brunch menu at Jackrabbit. After participating in the March For Our Lives + Rally last Saturday, I decided to have a solo brunch at Jackrabbit. The bartender told me that they had launched a new brunch menu that day. I enjoyed the Braised Pork Sugo—a base of soft polenta topped with pulled pork (rich, porky, and a bit sweet with vinegar notes), two poached eggs, and a dusting of grana. I think next time I’ll try the savory waffle. Jackrabbit is located at 830 SW 6th Avenue.

Eight restos just say not to straws. Over on Portland Food and Drink I learned that eight restaurants in Portland, members of the Independent Restaurant Concepts hospitality group, “will no longer be serving plastic straws as of Earth Day 2018.” This is great news! Conventional plastic straw are a negative on the environment, so they’ll be serving drinks with compostable straws (and sometimes no straws at all). Yet another step forward toward sustainability in our fair city.

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It’s National Spanish Paella Day Today in Portland

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Photo credit: Can Font

Can I admit something? I kind of like these “National [pick your food] Day” holidays. Sure, they are not as serious as Passover or Easter—both coming up soon—but they are not as uncomfortable and awkward (for me, at least) as April Fool’s Day. They are about enjoying a particular dish or food, and that’s good by me. The reason I tell you this is that apparently today is Spanish Paella Day in the US, and I got a nice press release about it. It was so full of useful and interesting things for Portland diners and eaters, I thought I’d share the bulk of it here. Continue reading “It’s National Spanish Paella Day Today in Portland”