PDX Food

And now for something completely different and wholly unexpected, a food photo blog from this Pringles and chicken nuggets connoisseur. If one of you posted this on your blog, I would probably be like, "Snooze!" But it seems like I'm the only person that I know who isn't completely, totally in love with food - so who knows! Maybe you'll enjoy it.

Delicious, decadent chocolate bouquet filled with some sort of mousse and chocolate cake from Pix. It was so incredibly rich that I couldn't finish it. I always finish everything.

Breakfast, a farm scramble with eggs, bacon, peppers, onions, and other assorted vegetables, from New Deal, a lovely restaurant a mere two blocks from Liza's abode. Also, that biscuit was almost perfect, a little heartier and buttery-er than should be allowed by law. Also, a very good book by a Nobel Prize winner.

This was a delicious lunch discovery from the Pearl District: a bowl of brown rice and red and black beans garnished with a slice of avocado, black olives, a generous pinch of cilantro and cheddar cheese, and awakened by a yellow tali sauce that had hints of mustard and paprika. The Whole Bowl. Fantastic, unpretentious, everything that a person who doesn't care about food secretly wants his food to be.

Pizza from HOTLIPS on Hawthorne. The Friday veggie special was green chilis, roasted peppers, mushrooms, feta, and cilantro pesto. It was outrageously delicious. There was a salad on the side also, so I basically got more vegetables in one meal there than I do in a month here at home.

I did a lot of breakfast-time hanging out and reading. This trio was at a nice working bakery/cafe near Liza's home in the Hollywood District called Fleur de Lis. The cinnamon roll was uninspired but satisfying, the chocolate croissant was delicious with a remarkably generous vein of chocolate running through the middle, and the coffee was bold, tasty, and not devastating to my caffeine-sensitive constitution.

Late one afternoon during my Portland wanderings, I found a bubble tea shop that fairly and adequatley approximated the Taiwanese tea experience that I miss so dreadfully. Here is an iced mango green tea and the netbook on which I am currently typing this blog. Web 2.0 can be so eye-rollingly meta.

And now, my friends, the piece de resistance: a $5 bucket of day-old doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts. This is no small bucket; this is a 3 gallon bucket. I would guess there were between 20 and 25 doughnuts inside, and then 6 enormous fritters that were as big as your face. I don't exaggerate when it comes to baked goods, people. This may be the second best reason to move to Portland. A convincing case, indeed.

There is some focus on incorporating different kinds of cereal as doughnut toppings. You'll notice Froot Loops and Cocoa Puffs here. That little voodoo man contained some strawberry jam filling, which was appropriate and wonderful. That's also a pentagram doughnut. Didn't get eaten.

We played and posed with the doughnuts for longer than you'd like to know.

The fritters aren't as photo-friendly, but they were enormous and delicious. A winning combination, right?

Just one more: my last night in Portland we went to Branch, a new restaurant and whiskey bar. We had delicious drinks and fantastic food. I actually had a steak, which doesn't happen more than once a year, because who really likes to eat an enormous slab and/or pile of animal flesh? NRA members, that's who. And that's not me. But anyway, the steak was served on sauteed kale with potatoes and wonderful garlic and spices that I could not begin to isolate. It was divine.

Sorry that I overused the word delicious, but I'm fairly vocabulary-limited when it comes to taste descriptors. Guess I should start downloading Top Chef.

Currently Not Downloading:
Top Chef