No Dishes to Wash

My husband and I have been in love with Portland City Grill for a long time.  And now that he gets off work earlier, we can catch the early Happy Hour at this popular place.  In the US Bancorp tower, on the 30th floor, where Atwaters used to be. If you can snag a window seat, it’s great.  We usually head up early, (about 4:15, for the 4:30 HH) or really late (11 or so for the later one) to get a window seat.  In fact, the HH is totally slammed and hard to get a seat unless you go early or late.  The piano man is playing, your waiter is in a tux jackets, the yuppie crowd is in, talk about ambiance.  And the food can be truly sensational.  Don’t expect big portions, because they don’t exist here.  Just like if you were coming here for a meal, it is all about fancy-shmancy pants artsy food.  But that doesn’t mean the food is not delicious!  I love the Thai Lemongrass beef tenderloin satay (think skewers),  with coleslaw, and the Ginger Hoisen Chicken satay.  Caleb almost always gets the cheeseburger.  The drinks are pro-fessional here.  They even have the number one cocktail waitress in Oregon working for them.  If you go after a Blazer game, don’t be surprised to see a few Blazers, and or coaches to show up - I think the time before last, we saw Patrick Ewing.  Or maybe the time before the time before last.  Anyhow, this is where the IN crowd hang out.  So, expect it to get a little noisy with young 20-somethings giggling over the guy getting his mac on with them.  I do swear, I have heard THE funniest conversations here.  It is a veritable meat market towards the weekend.  If you have anyone visiting Portland, the view of downtown, the river, and Mt. Hood is spectacular, you must take them, they will be very impressed.  (Unless they are the type that hate on the rich and famous, or wannabe rich and famous, in that case, definitely don’t take them here.)  There is a dress code, although I don’t think it’s very strictly enforced, I believe that ripped jeans, shorts, baseball hats and bikini tops are no-no’s.  Besides, if you show up in anything remotely like that, you will feel slightly out of place, unless you are totally oblivious to that kinda stuff.  (Read=most men.)  There is not a late HH on Friday or Saturday, although they do have the early one on both days.  Last year, they had a leeetle problem with health inspector reviews, but not one word has been heard since then, so, (whew) I think it’s safe to enjoy.  Portland City Grill is located at 111 SW 5th Ave, 30th floor.  Open M-Th 11am-midnight, F 11am-1am, Sa 4pm-1am, Su 4pm-11pm.  HH 4:30pm-6:30pm M-Sa, 10pm-midnight M-Th and 4pm-11pm Su.  Props to Operators are Standing By for the picture of the view from the Grill.

The more I blog, the more I realize a) how much I eat out (scary) and b) what nice places we have in P-town.  Laurelwood Brewing Company is a great home-town brewery that serves decent food.  I’ve only ever had the happy hour, and there are a few tips and tricks to that.  Nachos- great.  But they have a tendency to keep them under the heat lamp for a while until all your chips are brown.  Feel free to make them re-do them.  Garlic Fries - are weird IMO.  The garlic is funny tasting every time.  It’s like the crushed garlic out of a jar, and they put a LOT on with parsley… I think they may be trying to counteract the garlic breath with the parsley, not sure if it works though.  Pork sliders - don’t bother.  It’s dry pork smothered in BBQ sauce on a white bun.  Hummus plate - good.  Has marinated artichoke, eggplant, kalamata olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and pita bread.  Fish tacos - great.  Their beers are all hand crafted, I really enjoyed the seasonal they have right now called Imperial Hefeweizen.  Their most popular beer is their red ale called Free Range Red.  They also have won a few awards with a spinoff of that, called the Double Deranger.  All of the Laurelwood brewpubs are really kid friendly, which has made them really popular with our parent-friends.  On Monday nights, they have wings on special, and happy hour every night.  The original Laurelwood, at 40th and Sandy, is now a pizza joint…. have yet to try it.  Our server last time was Matt, and he was super friendly… even let me get a  kiddie fry instead of having to order the garlic fries.  I’ve had a few girls their, too, who are super sweet, always including the kids at our table.  Overall, this is a nice way to support local business without breaking the bank, because their prices are reasonable. The HH is $4 a pop… watch out, because as soon as you at meat to the nachos, they are $7.  Laurelwood also gives back to the community - for example, Sept 15th, 20% of all sales go to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a great cause.  So let’s all eat out Monday Sept 15th at Laurelwood!  Located at 5115 NE Sandy Blvd. Open M-F 11am-11pm, Sa-Su 9am-12am.  Brunch served weekends 9am-3pm, and HH 3pm-6pm and 9pm-cl every day.

Everytime I hear the full name of Sayler’s, I think about the Country Kitchen, one of those chain restaurants.  Let me emphasize, NOT EVEN REMOTELY the same place.  I’ve been frequenting the Happy Hour in the lounge for a long time… long enough to remember when the pepper steak bites were $1.95. (Which actually wasn’t that long ago.)  But I promised myself in this post I wouldn’t complain about HH prices going up.  Sayler’s is a family run business, with 2 locations, one Eastside, the other Westside.  They serve a good steak, but sometimes you feel like you are transported back to the late 70s, early 80s in their dining rooms.  The HH draw has always been their Pepper Steak Bites, which were the trimmings off all their hand cut steaks, marinated in a pepper sauce, and served, as I mentioned before, for $1.95.  Now they are $3.95 each, I believe, and the other HH menu items are $2.95, except for the cheeseburger, which is $4.95 (and not nearly as good as the McCormick and Schmick’s HH cheeseburger!)  They make decent drinks here, too, not too weak (although I have also had stronger.)  This is the type of place where everyone knows everyone, and back when I was a regular, the waitress even knew my name.  I had stopped going for a while, because the HH is only in the lounge, which can get extremely smoky. (Can’t wait for Jan 1st, 2009!!!!)  Also, the small video poker section (which is about 4 machines) can get a little irritating…. if you forget to sit on the other side of the lounge.  Which it seemed I was always doing.  They have a nice fireplace, and the lounge has a true “loungy” feeling to it, with overstuffed chairs that roll about, instead of restaurant tables and chairs.  Our server was Shannon, and these waitresses really know what they are doing, they have all been around for a while at Sayler’s.  I think they are a little too busy sometimes, if it’s a full night they should really have 3 cocktail waitresses, and I think they only do 2, but these girls make sure you have drinks in front of you all the time.  So after Jan 1st 2009, I think this place will be a regular for me again… ok, maybe give it until Feb 1st for all the old smoke to clear out.  Located at 10519 SE Stark St (just look for the huge rotating steak sign). Open M-Th 4pm-10pm, F 4pm-11pm, Sa 3pm-11pm Su 12pm-10pm.  Happy Hour is 3pm-6pm M-F and 9pm-close daily.

Alessandro’s bills itself as fine Italian food, and has the prices to match.  But the funny thing is, you just don’t feel it.  Caleb and I are wondering how they stay in business.  It’s at the bottom of Caleb’s parking garage downtown, and everytime we go by, there is NO ONE there.  So we took pity on them tonight and had dinner there.  It’s a little creepy to go into a restaurant that has only 2 other couples in it.  Maybe it’s the layout… maybe it’s the lack of hustle and bustle, but it just feels cold and empty inside.  By the time we left, there were about 8 tables filled, but still the same feeling persisted.  Caleb’s Caesar salad had bitter romaine,  but the starter of minestrone soup was good.  Rather brothy, but lots of fresh vegetables.  Our server, Elio, was very pleasant, and cracked a few one-liners, but still, this big, cold, empty room feeling pervaded.  The girl that filled my water was there about every 5 minutes (or maybe even less)… a little too often for me.  But what else are you going to do with only 3 tables filled at the restaurant?  I didn’t think the food was any better than a chain restaurant like Romano’s Macaroni Grill or Olive Garden, I had the fettuccine pesce, with shrimp, scallops, clams, and salmon.  The cream sauce that accompanied it was very rich, it made it hard to eat a lot (which is probably a good thing!)  Caleb had the tortellini with alfredo - I think he was in love with it.  He described it as

“Having one food in an Italian restaurant, and one foot in a soul food restaurant… It was a cross between an alfredo and a sausage gravy.”

Me? I think he was exaggerating a little bit.  Overall, this restaurant has fine food, but something is just not right… I mean, they would be a lot busier on a Friday night than 8 tables at 7 pm, if there wasn’t something off about the place.  Located at 301 SW Morrison St, open M-Th 11:30am-10pm, F 11:30am-11pm, Sa 12pm-3pm and 5pm-11pm.  There is a Happy Hour in the adjoining bar.  Oh, don’t let me forget the bread! It was the best thing.  The bread was a moist sourdough, fresh from the oven, and they had an olive oil with crushed garlic and chopped kalamata olives.  It was the only redeeming thing about dinner!

We are really fortunate in Portland to have a LOT of happy hours, whether just for drinks or with food as well.  But the day of the super cheap happy hour is coming to an end, I think.  It used to be that almost all places had food for $2-3 and drinks were $3.  Not anymore.  But one place that still packs a punch is any of the McCormick and Schmick’s happy hours.  We’re talking Jake’s Grill, Jake’s Famous Crawfish, The Pilsner Room, McCormick and Schmick’s, the M&S Grill, or McCormick’s Fish House.   Last night we enjoyed McCormick’s Fish House with some friends.  It’s on the westside (shock and Horror!) but well worth the drive (especially since it’s right off Hwy 26.)  Each McCormick and Schmick has a slightly different happy hour menu, and I like this one the best. (My least favorite? It’s a tie between McCormick and Schmick’s Seafood and the Pilsner Room. Which is sad, because the Pilsner room is such a cool place to go!)  We all ended up ordering the same thing, except for me.  That was 6 half-pound cheeseburgers with french fries,  thank you very much.  Oh yeah, and they put bacon on it too. For….. only $1.95.  Crazy Talk!  And this burger is big, with all the trimmings, as big as any Red Robin burger out there, for two bucks.  And a lot of places happy hour (Newport Grill, Stanford’s)  don’t even put fries with their burgers anymore.  So this is a total score.  I tried the Vegetable plate last night, it was meh.  The hummus was just weird tasting, but they had a curry mayonaise that was pretty good, and then a dill aioli.  I also had the buffalo wings.  The thing is, they aren’t wings.  They are entire drumsticks, and not small ones at that.  Each one is a good 5 or 6 bites of meat.  The sauce is good, not anything spectacular, but the amount of meat on these babies blows me away.  And you get about 7 or 8 of them for, again, $1.95.  Crazy Talk!!!  It’s a plate full!  They also have Jarlsberg Cheese Fondue, Fresh Cut Potato Chips, Cheese Quesadilla, Southwest Black Bean Dip, and Roasted Chicken Flautas.  And that’s just on the $1.95 menu… for $3.95 they have Cornmeal Fried oysters, Ahi Tuna Skewers, and for $4.95 you can get Surf and Turf Kobe Beef Sliders.  There are a few more choices on the more expensive menus, too. They also have a happy hour Dessert selection for $3.95.  Their drinks aren’t crazy cheap, but they are not expensive either.  Most of their cocktails are about $7-8, and they are well made, no skimpy watered down drinks.  So please, go and enjoy the many McCormick and Schmick Happy Hours - I’d love to hear which one is your favorite.  McCormick’s Fish House and Bar located at 9945 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, Beaverton.  Happy Hour is 3pm-6pm M-Sa, 4pm-6pm and 8:30pm-11pm Su, 9pm-11pm M-Th, and 9:30pm-12am F-Sa.  (Whew, got all that?)  Our waitress Whitney was a little slow with our waters, but also, we kinda trickled in at different times, so every time she came back to our table, we had more people there.  She did a excellent job splitting up the bill (most waitresses balk at having to split 7 people 5 ways,) and also let us take home our extra food (usually happy hour is no to-go.)

I was blown away.  Quite literally.  The hand dryers at Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) are the loudest, noisiest, strongest and driest hand dryers around.  That’s the first thing you have to try out there.  The second is the hummus!  It rocks!  It’s way smooth, garlicky, and has roasted red bell peppers.  It’s on the appetizers list… called Humus among us.  (That’s just how they spell it.)  Our server ROCKED because he brought us another thing of hummus and bread for a dollar!  That’s the kind of service I’m talkin’ bout.  He was from Iran, his name was Farhad, and he was teasing us because none of us were drinking beer because we really don’t like it.  (Ok, I like it and Andrew likes it, but none of us wanted it that night.)  Turns out, after he was giving us all crap, he likes cider better anyway!  He made us shandy’s (at HUB they call them Radley’s. I think.  It was hard to hear him.)  Half lager and half lemonade.  (JUST IN CASE some of you didn’t know what a shandy was.)   We loved it.  We had a large 18″ pizza, the four of us (me, Caleb, MANdrew and Micah). We got a  D.N.F (never found out what it stood for, sad) but it had bacon, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, olive, green and red bell pepper. I like their thin crust pizza, they also make a sicilian style, too, but their thin crust is just crisp on the bottom, not crunchy through the whole crust like some.  Hopworks is a little spendy… probably because you are paying for all the organic-ness.  This is the same guy that was the brewmaster at Laurelwood.  Except everything here is organic.  It’s pretty amazing, a whole restaurant and brewery that is completely organic and sustainable.  Very green. Parking for up to 50 bicycles.  Very Portland.  This is why I love living here.  Located at 2944 SE Powell Blvd, open Su-Th 11am-11pm, F-Sa 11am-12pm.  Happy Hour Su-Th 3pm-6pm and 9pm-close.  F-Sa 10pm-close.  Don’t forget the hand dryers!

I would much rather be telling you about some of the “cool” McMenamin’s around, like Kennedy School, Edgefield, or Baghdad, but tonight I happened to be at the Mall 205 McMenamin’s, so that will have to do.  These are local brewpubs that are only here in WA and OR, aren’t we special! (BTW, I just heard officially that Portland has more microbrews than anywhere in the world - it used to be anywhere outside of Germany.)  I had the Ruby, which is a light wheat beer with raspberries - very refreshing and light.  If you like something a little darker, there is Terminator Stout, or the Porter, which is slightly nuttier, and I prefer it, especially if they have it on nitro.  If you don’t like beer (shock and horror!!!)  you can go with Caleb’s choice, homemade hard cider, or they have fresh pressed apple cider for the kids.  They have a full bar as well, if you’d rather take the hard road.  Our server tonight was Danie, (such a doll, she was from Newcastle, England) and she was right on the money, at my elbow as soon as my pint was dry.  Our table was dirty when we sat down (that happens a lot here) but she was over to clean it in seconds.  I got my usual, the hummus plate sans pita, I just have them put extra cucumbers and tomatoes.  The hummus is not really anything to talk about, it tastes rather pasty in fact, could use a little more olive oil.  It tastes like it’s made from a powder mix.  So why do I keep getting it, you ask?  Because they serve it with large chunks of solid feta, olives and red onions marinated in red wine vinegar.  Yummy!  Caleb likes their spinach artichoke dip, it’s very cheesy, not so much runny like the Newport Grill counterpart next door.  I kind of feel about McMenamin’s that the food is kinda the second reason you would go, the first is if you like McMenamin’s beer.  You can buy it to go, bring your own LIDDED container and they will fill it for you! (Must be beverage style container, they don’t do just tupperware, guys.)  Located at 9710 SE Washington St, open M-Sa 11am-1am, Su 12pm-12am.  Happy Hour everyday.  Check out their Kennedy School (hotel, theater, restaurant and bar) at 33rd and Killingsworth, or Edgefield (a former poor farm and then nursing home, situated on 74 acres) where you can see a movie, concert (just recently went to Death Cab for Cutie there, best outdoor venue I’ve been to, which is another topic for another time), watch a glassblower, get a massage, or a myriad of other things.  McMenamin’s also makes their own wines, whisky, brandy and gin, and roasts their own coffees.  Or don’t pass up the Crystal Ballroom, where you can “dance on air” (the wooden floor is on springs!).  Anywhere you go, I’m sure you’ll love the drinks! 

Tonight we enjoyed a few bottles of wine with our friends Gina and Joe at Cru Wine Bar.  I was planning on having a nice cultured “adult” night at Southpark downtown, because it was the first wine bar that came to mind.  But Gina said “Why don’t you go to Why Not Wine?”  I said, “Because that’s a wine store, I want to go where you can sit down and drink and have canapes.” (Feeling very adult because I knew the word canape!) Boy was I wrong.  Why Not Wine (recently changed to Cru Wine Bar) is not a store at all.  Far from it.  It is a very dark, intimate wine bar that only serves local wines, and a few beers.  They have sides such as a meat tray or cheese platter, a chocolate ganache (which was lighter than an angel food cake), Belgian chocolates, vinegar and oil bread tray, olives, etc.  Their website is not up to date - we had a cheese plate that had Gouda, Roquefort, Brie and an italian cheese with truffles that was amazing, sadly the hostess didn’t know what it was called.  Crackers and grapes rounded it off for $10.  The boys enjoyed a syrah from Naked Vineyards, the Vixen 2005 Applegate Valley, while us girls polished off a desert wine, 2007 Foris Late Harvest Muscat, Rogue Valley.  We finished with chocolate ganache, which I was really impressed with, the cake part of it literally melted in your mouth… very light.  I wanted Belgian chocolates, but they were out, which reminds me, they were out of the bread tray as well.  The hostess just said it was because it was “the end of their week.”  But wouldn’t you want to be stocked on a Saturday night???  There was live music -a musician who switched between his accordion and his guitar. (Personally, I liked the guitar better.)  This wine bar was a sweet little find in Montavilla, which I think is going to be an up and coming neighborhood, and was very laid back. I mean, the hostess was wearing a “Nasa Rocket Science” t-shirt.  She was very friendly, but I didn’t get the impression she knew a whole lot about what she was serving.  Like I said before, intimate, cozy, dark, definately romantic…  I was impressed for Montavilla.  Located at 7907 SE Stark St.  Open Tu-Th 5pm-11pm, Sa-Su 5pm-12pm.  I like those late hours!  Live music every Saturday, happy hour 5pm-7pm daily, and $2 beer specials on Tuesday.  

Buen Provecho is Spanish for Enjoy Your Meal.  And I love the atmosphere at Pambiche.  Every time I go, I just love listening to the Cuban music and enjoy the outdoor seating.  Today I had Lengua en Salsa, which was not as good as other dishes that I’ve had there.  It’s slow braised pork in a tomato sauce with almonds and yellow bell peppers.  I think their oxtail is some of the best stuff around.  And Caleb never swerves from their Vaca Frita, or “fried cow” which is crispy fried shredded beef with onions and garlic, and they serve it with a garlic yucca sauce that is great.  All the entrees come with beans or rice and beans and fried plantains, which are the french fry of Cuban.  Caleb describes their sugar cane lemonade as “sangria without the wine.”  I had a cortadito, which is Cuban espresso with a float of milk, and it was horribly bitter.  They get a special just-for-them roast from Stumptown, but I have to say, espresso making is an art, not just anyone can do it!  The service was SUPER fast tonight, but we also ate early, at 5 pm… we had our appetizer by 5:09, and our food at 5:17, WOW!  

The appetizer was the best part for me, they have these croquetas with different stuff in them, and we tried the jamón, which was a pork paste inside.  It was great, with or without the spicy salsa or banana ketchup.  Since it’s the only Cuban restaurant I know of, we’ll be headed back when Caleb needs a Vaca Frita fix, or me and my oxtail.  Located at 2811 NE Glisan open Su-Th till 10 F-Sa till midnight.  Also serves breakfast Sa-Su 7am-2pm and have a happy hour!  Take out is available. And don’t forget to enjoy the desserts! Buen Provecho!