Why I really visited Portland...

(July 6th, 2012) Portland, Day 2.  By now, some of you may be wondering why I went out of my way to visit Portland, accumulating all sorts of bills along the way.  Some of you may think that it was to pay homage to the land of the Brothertons, others might say that I just wanted to check out a new city for my next job search.  Well, patience my friends, the answer will become self-evident shortly.

My second day in Portland opened to a run through the botanical gardens/arboretum along the Wildwood trail.  Oh trees, how I miss thee!  The serenity that I found while cruising through redwood forests amongst other varieties, I felt a sense of relaxation that has eluded me this summer while running in sunny New Mexico.  Shade, new trails, easy hills (by my mountainous standards), gorgeous trees, quaint neighborhoods...this run almost had it all.

Once getting cleaned up, I headed out to Pok Pok.  Even though I arrived ten minutes before they opened, there were a good 20 people in line ahead of me.  Good sign.  In contrast to the Heathman from the night before, Pok Pok got it.  Every taste, every dish that I had, just played off each other so well.  It was a gastronomical symphony.  Yet superbly simple.  To drink, a lychee flavored drinking vinegar.  That's right, vinegar.  Imagine an old fashioned soda mixed with a vinegary tartness, and you're halfway there.  To eat, I enjoyed the Pok Pok special, half of a roasted game hen, with two sauces (one savory, one slightly sweet), sticky rice, and a papaya salad.  The sweet and savory flavors of the hen and sauces (not to mention the papaya salad), just melded perfectly with the drinking vinegar.  And the way the fizziness of the vinegar accentuated the spiciness of the food...No beer or cocktail could possibly have paired with this meal better.  The Pok Pok special definitely earned the right to it's name as Pok Pok's feature dish.

Lychee flavored drinking vinegar

The Pok Pok special.

I'm not done yet.  For dessert, a Vietnamese version of affogato.  Vietnamese coffee, with a ball of ice cream in the middle, complete with fried dough to dip.  Soft ice cream, crispy bread.  Bitter coffee, sweet ice cream.  The contrasts and the compliments were out in force with this dish.  Superb and highly recommended if you ever find yourself in Portland.  Most places I visit have so many restaurants that I don't feel like I'm able to visit one twice, but in Portland I feel obligated to revisit Pok Pok on my text trip to the city.  (And there're a lot of restaurants left on my list of places to visit in Portland!)

Vietnamese Affogato

As good as Pok Pok was, though, that's not why I went to Portland.  The primary motivator was a small store in a Northern suburb called The Meadow.  Ever since my sister gave me the manifesto "Salted" for Christmas a few years back, I've developed a small addiction to trying different varieties of salt.  The author of Salted, Mark Bitterman, just happens to have a boutique shop in Portland, featuring chocolates, wine, flowers, and, of course, salt.  Lot's of salt.  Say, over a hundred types of salt.  And I tried almost all of them.  You are reading correctly dear friends.  For the first time in months, my sodium craving was sated, albeit momentarily.  I spent approximately two hours in a store that couldn't have been any larger than 400 square feet.  You may think to yourself, how different can salt be?  Well, my friend, I can't do the descriptions justice, but the variety of salt can rival that of wine or beer.  From the deep sea salts with the unique mineral compositions, to the smoked salts and flavor infused varieties (vanilla, ghost chili extract, lavendar, etc.), to the naturally formed/mined oddities such as Prussian blue or the Djibouti cuties (naturally forming salt balls up to the size of a golf ball!).

Some of the salt at The Meadow

Salt blocks and wine

And chocolates, oh my!

I won't say how much money I spent there, but my cupboard is now well stocked with salt.  I keep finding myself making up new dishes purely for a good reason to try different types of salt.  I've already decided that I need to do a salt tasting, where a pinch of salt is presented with each dish that uses that specific type of salt.  Just need to find the time, somehow...

Stay tuned folks for more dining decadence and sight-seeing in Seattle!