2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
We Just Updated our Portland, Ore., Dining Guide
To me, Portland is the best food city of its size in America. I've been eating here for years, and the mid-aughts spirit of invention, variety and excellence driven by restaurants like Beast, Pok Pok and Le Pigeon — not to mention the food cart and truck boom — is still apparent in the food scene today.
The variety of kitchens operating at a consistently high level makes a list of the 25 best restaurants in Portland a challenge, and a joy, to maintain. You can find some of the country's best Thai food at Langbaan, Korean dinner party vibes at Han Oak, dynamically spiced modern Haitian cooking at Kann and — after nearly 20 years — a slightly punk rock foie-forward tasting menu at Le Pigeon — just to name a few.
So, we update the list every so often to reflect the breadth of what's on offer in Stumptown (and to reflect closures, like the unfortunate, but temporary one at Ringside, because of a fire.) The two recent additions are a study in contrasts, particularly on a subject that made some news last week: meat in high-end dining.
As you might suspect, Ox is on the pro side of the ledger, a live-fire homage to Argentine cooking in the Pacific Northwest. The chefs Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quiñónez Denton, partners in restaurants and in life, opened this local mainstay in 2012. Needless to say, meat is the move here. I like the Asado Argentino, a mixed grill monument of short rib, house chorizo and morcilla sausages, skirt steak and sweetbreads all on one plate. The clam chowder is also raved about, with good reason: A creamy, smoky broth (made with bacon, of course), it has both whole clams and a smoked marrow bone bobbing around in it. A half dozen oysters on the half shell are the perfect briny counterpoint to the meaty mains.
2225 Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Eliot
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