We only actually ate two real meals while in Portland. If you read my drinks and snacks post, maybe you can understand why.

the huckleberry pub

the huckleberry pub

the huckleberry pub

Burgers and beer at Huckleberry Pub. I had the Black & Blue burger (burger with pepper, cambozola, bacon and pickled vegetables), and Scott had a BLOTCHA (bacon, lettuce, onion ring, tomato, cheese, avocado). I guess the H stands for hamburger? Heh.

I drank a Peachy Keen and Scott had a flight of Oregon craft beer.

The burgers were great and the fries were awesome. This meal was right after our epic 4T hike so it was very satisfying. I liked that my burger had a hefty slice of blue cheese on it, and the pickled vegetables were yummy. The black pepper taste was very strong though so don’t order if you don’t like black pepper that much.

The Huckleberry Pub Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

screen door

screen door

We arrived at Screen Door fifteen minutes before it opened and there already was a huge line. It’s a pretty big restaurant though so we decided to wait. Someone came and took our names and party size so at least we could walk around or sit down while we waited.

I ordered the Fried Oyster Benedict (bacon eggs benedict with crispy cornmeal fried oysters), and Scott had chicken & waffles.

The food arrived super hot. I definitely burned my mouth on the first few bites but it was so delicious I couldn’t stop eating, haha. They were not kidding on the crispy part of the fried oysters. They were super crunchy and then tasted like ocean on the inside. Delightful. The eggs benedict was very rich and tasty too.

Scott’s chicken & waffles had THREE pieces of crispy crunchy tender chicken on it! The waffle was quite soft. He covered it with maple syrup for that sweet/salty combination.

It was an insane quantity of food. I didn’t even touch one half of my eggs benedict and left a lot of potatoes and still was almost in pain from eating so much. Scott didn’t finish his waffle and took an entire piece of chicken home in a doggy bag (which he made into a delicious sandwich the next day for work).

We didn’t have lunch or much dinner that day after that delicious feast.

Screen Door Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

There are so many tasty things to eat and drink in Portland.

voodoo doughnuts

voodoo doughnuts

Obligatory tourist stop at Voodoo Doughnuts. We tried going there on Saturday afternoon but the line was too long and it was raining pretty hard so we gave up. The next morning we happened to be driving past again on the way to brunch so we stopped in at 9AM and there were only a handful of people in front of us. Success!

They have this big menu board of all the types of doughnuts but it’s not very helpful because the names don’t really reflect what flavour of doughnut it is going to be. Example: Diablos Rex Doughnut. Thankfully they also have rotating cases of doughnuts and you can just point at ones that you think you would like.

I chose the two on the top, a Triple Chocolate Penetration Doughnut (chocolate cake doughnut with frosting and cereal), and Dirt Doughnut (raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting and Oreos). The cake doughnut was meh, I didn’t like it that much, but the yeast doughnut was extra yummy. It was so big I could only handle eating half at a time. Could someone mail me another one please?

Scott had Raspberry Romeo doughnut (glazed raspberry filled yeast doughnut) and an Old Dirty Bastard (raised yeast doughnut with chocolate frosting, Oreos and peanut butter). He says the raspberry one was just average, but the ODB was quite good, but overwhelming.

Voodoo Doughnut Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

rogue brewery

rogue brewery

I don’t like beer, but I thought Scott would like this place so we stopped in for a flight of beer and some tater tots. I did order a flight too but it hasn’t changed my opinion on beer. Well the hazelnut one was pretty good (Hazeulnut Brown Nectar). Scott ordered a flight of extra flavourful beers and enjoyed it. He liked a lot of the dark beers, something he doesn’t drink that often in normal life.

We learned all about IBU in Portland. It stands for International Bittering Units and the higher the IBU the more bitter and intense the beer is going to be. The hazelnut beer one has an IBU score of 33, which is fairly low. I didn’t like ANY of the beers with high IBU.

Rogue Distillery & Public House Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

salt & straw

salt & straw

salt & straw

salt & straw

Salt & Straw ice cream was life changing. Really busy but WORTH IT. We went two nights in a row. SO GOOD.

The first night I had almond brittle with salted ganache, and Scott had coffee & bourbon. My cone had tons and tons of delicious almond brittle in it and the ice cream was so nice and creamy and delicious. 10/10. Scott also gives his cone an A++.

The second night I had almond brittle with salted ganache. !!! This was pretty unlike me, to not try a new flavour, but it was just so good!! Scott made fun of me a lot, since I always make fun of him for ordering the same things every time. He was especially teasing because he was going to order that flavour the first day but I hijacked it and told him he had to order something else. HAHAH I am awful. Anyway on day 2 he had strawberry balsamic with black pepper, which was good, but you couldn’t taste the black pepper at all and even the balsamic part was extra subtle, so it was more just like nice strawberry ice cream. Good, but not as special.

Can someone please send me 5 pints of almond brittle with salted ganache please?

Salt & Straw reminded us of La Casa Gelato in Vancouver, but instead of having 218 flavours of mediocre ice cream they have about 20 flavours of top notch ice cream. Quality over quantity!!

Salt & Straw Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

blue star doughnuts

Someone told me that Voodoo Doughnuts is not worth the wait and we should go to Blue Star Donuts instead. The donut on the left is lemon poppyseed and the on the right is hazelnut dulce de leche. We thought these donuts were good but not extraordinary.

Blue Star Donuts Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

oysters on a half shell

We stopped in for Happy Hour at The Parish. I’m surprised that they only got 69% on Urbanspoon because we really enjoyed our afternoon there. We sat at the bar for drinks and oysters and were thoroughly pleased. They make their own ginger beer in-house and it’s delicious. We had a couple of dark & stormys and some oysters on the half shell. The bartender was friendly and blew us away when he made a spanish coffee right in front of us. It was like a magic show, haha. That link has six pages of instructions on how to make one, btw!

The Parish Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

Other stuff we did in Portland:

  • Drove out to the Expo Center to go to a mega garage sale. They had lots of interesting old stuff, like old toys and dishes and furniture, but we didn’t buy anything. All the dust made my allergies go nutso.
  • Went to a sweet farmers market in the university area. SO MANY SAMPLES!! SO MUCH CHEESE!! It was a great farmers market, I wish we could have brought some produce home. We did get some nice sharp cheddar and a delicious cured meat stick thingy.
  • Went out for ice cream at Salt & Straw AGAIN.
  • Drank a lot of types of craft beers.
  • Got drenched by rain.
  • Ate a lot of doughnuts.
  • Waited in line at Screen Door for brunch. IT WAS WORTH IT.
  • Shopped at Trader Joe’s.
  • Strolled up and down Mississippi Street window shopping. We both got little keychain thingies and Scott got a Portland bridge t-shirt.
  • Drove Eastwards to see that waterfall, which we looked at for about 5 minutes, and then left, haha. By the way why was the entire tourist population of the world all at the waterfall?? I mean, it was tall, but not that special? IDGI.

Then Sunday afternoon we drove back to Vancouver.

Very good trip, mostly because of the food and drink!! Huge mega post of that coming up ASAP!

 

Scott and I went to Portland for Easter this year. We left early on Good Friday hoping to beat the lines at the border but we still had to wait a pretty long time. Cannot wait until Scott gets to have a Canadian passport and we can skip the whole going inside part of crossing the border.

Anyway once we crossed into Washington we headed for the first Taco Bell so I could try the new Taco Bell breakfast. Because I am gross.

steak a.m. crunchwrap

taco bell breakfast burrito

cinnabon delights

I went a little crazy and ordered a Steak A.M. Crunchwrap, a Bacon Breakfast Burrito, and a small pack of Cinnabon Delights. The Crunchwrap was actually really good. It actually had great flavour and surprisingly wasn’t greasy! I would prefer to eat a Crunchwrap now than a McDonalds breakfast sandwich if I had to have fast food breakfast. The burrito was meh and the Cinnabon Delights were good but I don’t feel the need to ever have them again. Scott had a Bacon A.M. Crunchwrap and enjoyed it, but mine was better if you like the regular Taco Bell kinds of flavours.

Taco Bell Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

from 4t-trail.org/

The Taco Bell feast filled us up for the rest of the drive to Portland. After dumping our bags at the hotel we walked over to the base of the Portland Aerial Tram to start the 4T trail. I had found out about this hike before our trip and thought that it sounded like a fun way to see a bit of the city. The premise is that you take a tram, trail, train and trolley in this big loop around Portland.

portland

The tram part was cool, we could see lots of the city. It was a very quick trip, maybe 5 minutes tops.

The next part was the trail. The first bit of the hike was fun, we were chatting, joking around and enjoying nature. It was only once we reached the first signpost that I realized that this was actually going to be a long uphill climb thing and I hate going up hills!!! It was 4.1 miles, with 900 feet of elevation change. Barf.

I thought the hike was going to take like 30 minutes, but it was more like 3.5 hours. I suppose the views from the top were nice but my heart was beating 180 bpm so I wasn’t feeling great.

Anyway we eventually made it to where the trail meets the train, near the zoo. We hopped on to the train and went back to the downtown core. After all that exercise we decided we should head towards the Pearl District for dinner and ice cream.

I think I’ll save the descriptions of our food for another post. But anyway after dinner we took the trolley back to our hotel to complete the 4T Trail. I slept pretty well that night!!