Picks and Pans – In and around Portland

Our first night in Portland, Margot and Lance introduced us to Ned Ludd, a restaurant that cooks every item on the menu in a wood fired stove (true to its Luddite name). The tastiest as well as the most memorable items were on the charcuterie platter. Tastiest: pancetta. Most memorable: coxcomb terrine.

While in Portland, we finagled several meetings of the Reedie minds remaining in town and in the process met some of their progeny. The BBQs, bike rides, breakfasts and beverage imbibing were great fun thanks to Margot, Emily, Jonah, Jodi, Dan, Rio, Finn, Yumi, Neil, Alex, Kristi, Dylan, Vera and Doug.

Portland is what you always thought a city should be like with respect to bikers, but never thought it was possible. Well, Portland and its thousands of bike commuters (purportedly 10% of all commuters in the city) are there to challenge your ideas about what is possible. Convenient bike lanes crisscross the city (including over multiple bridges). Street layouts are designed to funnel traffic off smaller and residential streets onto larger throughways with well-timed traffic lights. Selected streets are shut down to cars during rush hour in order to create bike thoroughfares. It is down right pleasureable to ride your bike in most places in Portland.

Many a Sunday morning in Portland can be spent waiting for your very own chance to sample Cup and Saucer’s breakfast and the reason people will wait is because……well, it’s worth the wait. I have yet to try something I didn’t like and, believe you me, I’m adventurous when it comes to menus.

Sean says: Since living in NYC, dorkbot has become somewhat of a metric of livability for me. Dorkbot is a group that was started by Douglas Repetto in New York with the motto “People doing strange things with electricity”. Since it’s inception in 2000, dorkbot has caught like wildfire and groups have been springing up in cities around the globe. Dorkbot Portland is an impressive group, meeting every two weeks (!) at Backspace to socialize and show-off the latest gizmos and whazits that the local dorky and arty types are creating in their spare time.

Sean says: I’m not a regular patron (nor even an occasional fan) of strip clubs. But being in Portland, formerly a mecca of strip joints, and getting married in less than a week set the stage for an impromptu “breakfast and boobies” at the old Portland classic to take the place of a more traditional type bachelor party. Although Tuesday at 10:30 in the morning is a strange time to go to a strip club and the dancing is probably not at its peak, steak and eggs for $10 is a darn good deal and was a perfectly absurd way to say goodbye to my unmarried days (especially dressed in my G-spot costume). Thanks to Sten and Dave and especially Jonah, who rented a zip car to join me, and thanks to Jared for the great suggestion.

Sean says: Hoping to get a view of the Portland art scene, I was lucky enough to be in Portland during the Time-Based Art Festival. The festival included various types of installation art and video as well as music, dance and other types of performance.

If I have time, I like to make my own cards, but if I want to buy them Presents of Mind is the type of place I’m looking for. It has plenty of witty or intriguing cards, many of them designed by local artists.

Old Wives’ Tales makes itself easy for everyone. There are delicious menu offerings for nearly all dietary inclinations (vegan, vegetarian, seafood and meat eaters). There are spacious booths and tables with window views. There is even a children’s room with a fort to occupy the younger restaurant goers until even the most leisurely meal is finished.

If I was having the kind of day where I wanted to sit on a park bench, lean against a good friend and listen to the trees, this is the kind of park I would be looking for. Tryon Creek is quiet, completely under forested shadow, and has art and deer hidden among the foliage in equal measure. It’s kind of a trek from downtown Portland, but will reward you once you arrive.

Dot’s is one of my old Portland loves. It’s unassuming on the outside, but inside its macabre sense of humor (evidenced by black velvet wallpaper, velvet paintings and dim lighting) is alluring in a Lou Reed, strong cocktail, moody Sunday kind of way. Plus, the food is good, there’s a pool table, and the booths can suck you into their depths for hours.

Thanks to occupational hazards, my all time favorite pair of glasses bit the dust right before we left Jersey City and, given the time constraints, I was forced to compromise in my search for new frames. My current glasses (the ones I’ve had for the whole trip) are the redheaded stepchild of my spectacled life. They’re acceptable, but I sincerely miss my old ones. Given my level of (dis)satisfaction, I am on the look out for good frame shops. While in Portland, I found blink. Their selection was amazing. Their staff is incredibly knowledgeable, friendly and patient. I did not, however, find a sufficient replacement (my love for my old frames is hard to trump). The search continues.

There are plenty of places to get delicious, expensive sushi in Portland. Meiji-En is not one of them. They have delicious, cheap sushi, which is by far the superior option.

Really, really good wings. Seriously, really, really good. I’m not speaking in hyperbole here. It was suck the bones dry good. We got the medium, sweet BBQ, bourbon chipotle and buffalo lime cilantro sauces and thoroughly enjoyed all of them (especially the classic medium and the bourbon).

Portland is a breakfast kind of town, which comes close to describing what it is that I like about it. There is a critical mass of people who think that it is an entirely worthwhile activity to meet friends, eat eggy-potatoey goodness accompanied by coffee (at the very least) and bloody marys (at the very best) and shoot the breeze for a couple of hours. Genies is one of many places in Portland which will meet such breakfast needs.

Bookstores (and libraries for that matter) give me a pleasant ache somewhere behind my ribs that feels like kinship. And Powell’s is my closest of bookstore kin. It’s the largest independent bookstore in the country and I was happy to be reunited, if only for one afternoon.

Apparently gelato is to Portland now, as Thai food was to Portland of the late 90’s. Or said more succinctly, it’s a gastro-fad. That said, gelato is yummy and the two chances I had to sample Mio Gelato’s offerings were not disappointing on the yummy front. I can recommend without reservation both the pistachio and amaretto and am fairly certain that the other flavors are worth a try.

Sean says: Portland is a relatively flat city, lending itself to great leisure and commuter biking. But if you want a ride to test your fitness with super  views of downtown and Mt. Hood, riding across the St. Johns Bridge and up the steep and long hill to German-town and skyline drive is great one. Once up the hill you can more leisurely ride the rolling countryside along the West hills on skyline drive. And on your plummet back to downtown Portland, be sure to take a stop at the Rose Gardens for a not-to-be-missed aromatic treat. Thanks to Jonah for taking me on this great ride!

Sean says: I’m generally a pretty “let’s get stuff done” type of person, with a somewhat high bar for leisure activities. But when it comes to smelling roses, I can spend hours sipping the wildly different aromas that roses offer the world. And if you’re into smelling (and viewing) hundreds of different types of roses, the International Rose Test Garden is THE place to do it. Lots of favorites, but Scentimental certainly lived up its name.

Portland’s bridges form the infrastructural and aesthetic backbone of the city, and the Willamette Waterfront path cuts a loop through the center of bridge-dom, adding public art and fountains to the mix. If you’re in Portland, especially on the rare sunny day, take a constitutional along the river.

Even on a non-Tuesday day, the Baghdad is a destination of distinction. Another McMenamins’ invention, it’s an old theater that has been restored to its former beauty with the ingenious improvement of ripping out every other row of seats and replacing them with long, narrow tables enabling people to drink beer, eat food and watch second run films. And on Tuesdays (oh, glorious Tuesday), all showings are $2 and from 3-6pm you can get a $3 pint of McMenamin’s very own brews. Movie and beer for a mere 5 bucks. Hard to beat that one.

If you want to see Portland in all its finest neighborhood-y glory, get thee to Alberta Street on the last Thursday of every month. From about 5-10pm, the street is a sociological P-town smorgasboard: hoodie-wearing fixie riders, hipsters and their hipster offspring, skateboarders sporting briefs, fishnets and not much else, midriff bearing hula hooping girls pedaling crystals and artists of all stripes…which brings me to the reason that all these people have gathered: Alberta Street is packed with galleries and art-displaying coffee shops, restaurants and bars, all of which spill out onto the street in the name of the Last Thursday art walk. It’s a chance to eat good food, drink in good company and see yourself some art.

I thought, perhaps, that Voodoo Doughnut’s success was due in some part to Portland’s burning desire to embrace the eccentric. I mean, this is a 24 hour doughnut shop that serves up your favorite fried treat topped with everything from Pixie Stix dust to Froot Loops. That hypothesis was quickly discarded when I bit into my Butterfinger topped doughnut and wondered how I had paid only 75 cents for such sticky perfection. And they have pinball.