No Dishes to Wash

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! 

So for a long time Cadillac Cafe has been a favorite.  I mean, who doesn’t love the place, especially since they remodeled?  But we hadn’t been there in while, and today I was really bummed about my breakfast!  I remember days when your plate was heaped with a huge omelet, and those crispy Cadillac potatoes?  Mmm-mmm-good.  Back then it was, anyway.  I noticed when we went this morning that there was no line.  NO LINE on a Saturday morning.  I though, well, it is only 9:30.  But still, you used to have to camp out to get a table Sat and Sun mornings. Or order to go.  So we waltzed right in, sat down, and ordered.  Everything came super fast, we had mimosas (funny, I told our waiter Justin that I was fine with water, but I got a mimosa anyway, I just figured what the heck, that’s what brunch is for, right?) Caleb ordered the special, which was french toast with pomegranate molasses syrup, but when he got it, there was hardly any syrup on it, Justin said the kitchen was “going light” because it was running out.  So he also brought regular syrup, which was nice, but wouldn’t you think that the kitchen would keep giving normal portions until they ran out, not half portions because they didn’t want to say “We’re out”?  The french toast was wonderful though, dipped in custard, the syrup really tangy.  I had the special omelet, which came with potatoes and breakfast bread.  I subbed the potatoes out for fruit (which cost $2, ridiculous) and all I got was a small slice of pineapple and a small piece of watermelon.  For an extra $2.  You goddabekiddinme.  The omelet was about the size of a Reser’s burrito, and the onions were still raw inside.  It had (some) chorizo sausage, cilantro, tomatoes and sour cream.  For $9, you can get much better omelets elsewhere.  (Like even Elmer’s for heavens sake!)  The breakfast bread was still super yummy though.  And two mimosa’s later, I was not caring as much.  Caleb tried the pear mimosa, really good stuff, and only $4.50.  I think I’m going to be headed for fuller plates next time I want brunch though.  Justin, our server, was attentive and great.  Although I would have appreciated being told my fruit was going to cost me so much, especially after giving up the potatoes. Which brings me to  a funny, at first I just asked Caleb if he wanted my potatoes (he loves hash browns and stuff) and he looks around furtively, and says “Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t really like the Cadillac potatoes.”  But I think he is in the minority, most people love them.  Located at 1801 NE Broadway, open 6am-2:30pm M-F, 7am-3pm Sa-Su.

As you may have read yesterday, Caleb and I had a lovely dinner at Country Cat Dinnerhouse Bar.  I saw what looked like a great drink on the menu… and like the retard I am, I didn’t order it.  How can I truly say that I review things when i don’t even order a drink?  Shame on me.  So tonight found us BACK at Country Cat with our friend Brooke.  We just decided to linger a few minutes at the bar, since I had been thinking about the drink ALL DAY.  I ordered said drink, Russell’s Reserve Bourbon with muddled cherry and orange, topped with sweet tea.  It was great.  The cherries are in a thick yummy syrup, I had to ask for more!  The bartender Daniel was great, what a funny guy.  He knew just when to jump into our conversation, and just when to pretend to not be listening.  (Oh if only every waiter, waitress or barstaff kept a journal of “overheards”.)  Caleb ordered his usual, a Maker’s Mark Manhattan.  Now, he does normally order it with Maker’s Mark everywhere we go, but it’s the norm here.  And he said it was the smoothest he ever had.  Brooke had the Mt. Tabor Sunset (I think that’s what it was called, again, what reviewer doesn’t write this stuff down???? I’m dropping the ball here, people!)  Indio Blood Orange Vodka, Campari, OJ, and soda.  Yum.  We enjoyed a few pieces of the house made beef jerky, which sells for $15 a pound.  This is what Caleb said about it… I thought it was funny:

“When you eat beef jerky, you normally feel like you had dinner at 7-11.  This beef jerky was high class.  And tastes like celery, so you feel like you were healthy.”

I think I would like to make Country Cat a regular haunt… we had some nice conversation about the beer festival, and the Iphone, and just general stuff.  Great place to hang.  And can the person who drew the flowers on the wall come draw some on mine???  Open 5pm-close, which I found out tonight means 10 pm.  The bar menu (with the cool flowers on the wall) is available 5pm-6pm and 9pm-close.  Bring a sweater, because I noticed it gets a bit chilly inside.

I am getting more and more amazed at this little Stark St strip!  In 10 years this is going to be THE new neighborhood, mark my words.  Country Cat is located at the corner of 79th and Stark, where Dickson’s Drugs used to be for many, many years.  Which I was sad when Dickson’s went out of business, because I loved the Post Office there.  Anybody go there?  They still hand weighed your packages on a (gasp!) non-digital scale, and still had “licky” stamps.  In fact, I just saw the younger girl who used to work there walking on the street yesterday… funny coincidence.  ANYWAY, back to the subject at hand.  I wish I had ordered a drink today, but since I had imbibed plenty of wine this weekend I was abstaining… but they had this delish sounding drink called an Old Fashioned Iced Tea, it was Russell’s Reserve Bourbon, muddled orange and cherry, topped with sweet tea.  If you’ve tried it, let me know how it was.  Caleb ordered the Heritage burger (which our friends Shaun and Zina had a bad experience with, so I was going to tell him not to, but he was on the phone while we ordered, so… cest la vie!)  but the burger turned out great.  And even better was the onion rings with it!  Really similar to the Sayler’s onion rings, but better.  I had The Farmer’s Market Vegetable Soup, and the House Prosciutto, Brooks Cherries and Green Bean salad.  I had to ask, how do you manage to make prosciutto here?  (I’m amazed at how many places have in house stuff like that now, like Nostrana’s mozzarella.)  I was introduced to the owner and chef Adam, who told me he takes his “little” 68-70 lb pigs, and has just one big ham from them.  Then, (if I have this straight) that lil’ ole’ ham sits in a salt brine under pressure for a month.  The pressure is necessary to get the blood out and the salt in.  So then it is slathered in a layer of lard and hung for 10 months.  So the prosciutto I ate tonight was 11 months old.  Good to know.  He said a lot of italian prosciuttos actually use a 48 month process.  We sat outside tonight, and my only gripe is… get some comfortable chairs!  The outside chairs were really horrible to sit on… I will be sitting inside next time.  We were the only couple outside for most of our meal, so Brianna our waitress wasn’t overly “hanging around”, which was nice.  She left a jar of water at our table, so that was good, less trips for her.  Oh, I could have used a little more salad, it was a pretty small portion (a very gourmet portion, you could say)  but at the same time, I think it was meant to be an appetizer, so that could be it.  Maybe they need to offer a dinner size salad????  I’ve had brunch here before too, and the skillet fried chicken was really good.  I would like to come back again for brunch soon. (Hint, hint, Caleb.)  They also have a bar menu available from 5pm-6pm and after 9pm nightly.  Located at 7937 SE Stark St, open daily 5pm-close, Sa-Su brunch from 9am-2pm.  Chef Adam Sappington is definitely bringing the class of the Montavilla neighborhood up, but don’t expect to pay usual Montavilla prices.  Then again, this is NOT your usual Montavilla food!

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.  

Take out.   Not really sure how I feel about take out.  I mean, sure, you don’t have to cook, it keeps your house cooler during the summer… but you still have dishes to wash.  Unless you are really good about eating out of the containers.  Or use paper plates.  There’s a novel idea, my whole blog could be useless if we just all used paper plates.  But anyway, Caleb worked late tonight and so I brought him take out down town.  Now, where we used to live in New Jersey, it was great, all the take out places were like total fancy restaurant food, and they delivered for nothing.  Here, you never get delivery unless you call Delivered Dish.  So I called India Grill and ordered a chicken vindaloo, chicken cheera, choley and garlic naan.  This was the first time I had chicken cheera (I’m a big chicken tikka masala fan myself)  but it was good, they should really just call it chicken in saag paneer.  (Saag- spinach, paneer-Indian cheese).  I’m actually a little suspicious, because chicken cheera is supposed to have tomatoes in it, and there were no tomatoes in my dish.  Not even tomatoes masquerading as something.  So maybe I just got leftovers of something.  Their garlic naan is ok, nothing like the naan at Bombay Cricket Club.  I didn’t get my choley (chickpea dish) but they didn’t charge me for it, either.  So I guess that part was a wash.  All told, if you pick it up, it’s an ok price, but if you get it through Delivered Dish it is SOOOO much more expensive!  Probably because you feel like you need to tip the driver.  India Grill is an ok place to eat, the ambiance is horrible (you are upstairs in a victorian house, and it’s smelly and dirty.)  I like the tikka masala, saag paneer, and chicken cheera, but everything else I’ve ever tried was not that great.  And the waiters are never very friendly. I always feel like I’m doing them a disservice by being there.  They do a LOT of take out business… maybe because the waiters make you feel like you need to leave??  Honestly, I like their spices better than Bombay Cricket Club and their prices are better, too, but if you are going for a sit down meal, stick to the Bombay Cricket Club, the ambiance is much better.  India Grill located at 2924 E Burnside, open daily 11am-2pm for lunch and 5pm to 10pm for dinner, M-Th till 10:30pm F-Su.

So I’m really sad when I think a place has so much potential, and just isn’t living up to it.  Take Cooper’s Coffee for instance.  Let me recount the things that have happened to me there….. 

1. The first time I was there, they were a little busy, like 2 people ahead of me in line.  It was about 11:30 in the morning.  Both people in front of me had ordered sandwiches, and all I had was a coffee.  Instead of making the coffee first (which would have been the quickest, also since I was headed back out the door, and the people with sandwiches were eating in) they made the sandwiches first.  Which is fine, the sandwich people came first.  But they made the sandwiches separately.  Not together.  Doubling the time it took.  Ouch.  It was a FULL 15 minutes before I got my coffee to go.
2. The next time, my husband ordered a bagel sandwich, and I had a pastry.  Caleb’s sandwich had a orange juice lid in it.  THE WHOLE LID!  And they didn’t even apologize.
3. Then there were a few ok times, where the coffee was nothing to write home about, but they didn’t screw anything up either.
4. But, yesterday when I went with some friends, 2 out of 3 coffees were made wrong and had to be re-made, and none of the coffees were mixed the second time around, so all the syrup and espresso was at the bottom, with the milk on top.  At first I just thought my coffee was gross, and then when I got to the bottom realized what had happened.
5. And today, when giving them their last chance (obviously I am a big believer in many chances) they fed me the most disgusting mushroom gouda quiche I’ve ever tasted.  And this is just a matter of taste, some people may think it’s wonderful.  But it’s full of nutmeg and cloves - NOT a combination that goes well with gouda and mushrooms.  Who the heck is thinking these things up?  

So, obviously some of these things are matters of personal taste, and some are just plain laziness.  But overall, just not happy with Cooper’s Coffee.  And so sad about it, too, because I think it’s a neat little place with cute artwork every month and nice to sit at with your laptop, but unless they get their act together, they are not going to have a lasting clientele.  (Unless there is a big population out there that like nutmeg clove mushroom gouda quiche!)  I haven’t come across the employees being overly friendly, but not really rude either.  Just sort of blah.  So if you have a good experience, let me know, because for some strange reason I really WANT to like this place!  Located at 6049 SE Stark, on Mt. Tabor.  Open daily 6am to 9ish pm.

I have been here several times now, and am definitely impressed with the owner’s friendly service.  Bahn Cuon Tan Dinh is known for its cuon, or rolls, which are like roll-your-own salad rolls.   You receive a bowl of hot water, and a plate of thin half moons of rice paper. Your plate is filled with mint, coriander, cilantro, basil, lettuce, daikon, carrot, cucumber, vermicelli noodles, peanuts, scallions and your choice of meat.  Dip the rice paper in the water, fill it with food, and roll!   For $8 you get a big plate, enough for at least 8 salad rolls.  Love it!  They make avacado shakes, salty lemonade (think margarita without the tequila) and you can have a whole coconut to drink if you want.  The pho here is nothing to write home about, (Pho Hung is the best if you are looking for beef noodle soup), but anything with their BBQ pork or pork sausages is good.  They also sell their BBQ by the pound for take out.  Located at 2850 SE 82nd Ave in the FuBonn Market.  Open daily 9am-9pm.

Two places in one night, wow!  My brother in law and his wife invited us downtown to Descutes Brewery and Public House right after we had returned from dinner, and since beer is always a good thing…. we went!  Deschutes Brewery is well known in the Portland area, and the main brewery is located in Bend.  The building in the Pearl used to be Jim Stevens Auto Body… I still marvel that they got the smell of paint fumes out of the air!  We sat outside, but the inside seating looked cool too.  And then, instead of ordering beer, we ended up having wine. (Go figure.)  We shared a bottle of 2004 Kitara Syrah from the Willamette Valley. It had a heavy butterscotch taste, and I was thrilled, because it was the first time that I had really identified a “taste” in a wine before.  I was so excited, I had to tweet Garyvee right then and there!  The wine was great, and I loved the ahi tuna I ordered, it came with tapico caviar (yum!) and sesame-ginger marinated cucumber (also yum!)  But sadly, the rest of the team wasn’t so impressed.  My sister in law Charlotte’s veggie burger was too spicy, and Caleb’s ribs were stringy, no fall off the bone meat here.  Jacob (my brother in law) had mac and cheese with salmon (which I thought was a strange combination, but to each his own, right?) and he said it was just “OK.”  The Brewery was busy, no more than any Saturday night, I’m sure, but our waiter Daniel was great.  He was attentive, and went out of his way to answer my pesky questions.  He was funny and friendly, too. (Something that was missing from Pambiche earlier, I forgot to add in my last post.)  It was a half hour from when we ordered to when we got our food, but it didn’t seem like a long wait, we were well kept with drinks in the time. If you are a fan of Deshutes Brewery, be sure to check out their specials on tap.  Located at 210 NW 11th Ave in the Pearl, open daily 11 am to midnight.  

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!