(August 10th and 11th, 2013) Funny how moving, teaching, and being overloaded at work can cause this blog to go on hiatus so abruptly, but we already knew that to be the case from last year! There're still four more restaurants in Portland from my trip that I'd like to mention. First, I'll start with Pok Pok's sister restaurant, Sen Yai. As you may remember how much I love Pok Pok, Sen Yai did not fail to deliver a great meal.
After a morning of hiking up and down Multnomah Falls, the Suki Haeng, pictured above, hit the spot. "Like sukiyaki, minus the soup, and fried instead. A clever Thai derivation of a derivation of the classic Japanese hot pot dish." The sauce was very interesting...slightly sweet but spicey at the same time.
This dish was pretty interesting, it was water spinach, which came as these hollow-tubed greens that you see. Before being served, they were lit on fire, which gave the already nice green flavor of the water spinach a nice, smokey compliment.
Kim ordered the Tom Yan, lemongrass in a coconut broth. Overall, superb! Savory, coconuty, and the seafood blended in well.
The next day, after visiting the Rose Garden and the Chinese Gardens, Kim and I took a walking tour of the Pearl district. After a while, as we still had some time to kill before dinner, we stepped into the Streetcar Bistro and Taproom. While we did have something to eat, our main objective was to sample more of the area beers...
First up: Two Towns' Rhubarbarian (a cider), Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial on Nitro, Magic Hat #9's Pale Ale, and the Grapefruit Lager by 10 Barrel Swill. These were five of about fifty beers that they had on tap...
Round two, because one is never enough, Black Bear Stout, New Belgium's Feijoa, the Pin Up Porter, the Proletariat Red, and the Whistling Pig.
The consensus after we finished all ten of those, Kim's favorite was the Grapefruit Lager by 10 Barrel Swill. This was almost like a cider in nature (probably why Kim loved it so much). My thoughts: well, if this was in Albuquerque, I'd be there every time I needed to go out to a bar. Fantastic experience overall. My favorite from these was the Old Rasputin Russian Imperial on Nitro. Something about serving a porter/stout on nitro just makes it that much better!
As we stumbled out of Streetcar, we were fortunate that we only had a few block to go until we reached dinner: Yama Sushi and Sake Bar. This is how sushi should be. As a preview, the daily specials:
Judging from all of the photos below, I think we had most of them...note the "live" entries above...
First up, the salmon sampler. You always have choices at good sushi restaurants as to what cut of fish you'd like. This extremely fresh dish let us try three different varieties at once. King, Fatty, and Wild. All were fantastic as I love Salmon as much as a bear during spawning season...
Next, fried razor clams. Clams are good, razor clams are so incredibly better. They were seasoned just right and, before I knew it, Kim and I had devoured the entire plate. Too good to savor that is.
The tuna tower is one of their signature dishes. It was worth trying, but about the only thing here that I wouldn't recommend (it was good, don't get me wrong, but there was so much more to try!). It starts off all pretty like you see it above, but then, you get to pretend you're Stitch after building San Francisco - you destroy the tower, blend it all up, and eat however you can with chopsticks. If it looks big in the picture above, it's at least twice as large as you think it is. Very deceptively large and filling - a meal in and of itself (thus why I don't recommend it, unless you're very hungry!).
And now the exotic part of the menu. Kim loves sea urchin (uni). So, having it live was something that we couldn't pass up. For those of you that haven't had sea urchin, here's my impression from the very first time I ate some. Remember the first time you had a fresh oyster? How it was slimey and you just kinda slurped it down? Okay, good. Keep that thought. Sea urchin isn't slimey per se, but it's got an unexpectedly interesting texture that you kinda just suck down once you get it to your mouth. Good, but, just like oysters, it takes a bit of getting used to.
Okay, the sea urchin was clearly not adventurous enough, so next up was live abalone. I'm always surprised by how tough it is, but it was delicious nonetheless.
A bit of a respite. This was the White Tiger Roll, which was wrapped in soy instead of seaweed. By far, my favorite dish: soybean sheet, tamago, eel, avocado, masago, and soft shell crab with unagi sauce. In case you don't know, I love eel (unagi)!
Next, the Yama Roll - essentially fried lobster. This was exquisite...after all, they named it after the restaurant.
Last up, live scallop. Oh so good. Yama is how sushi should be. It makes me miss Yoda's in Albuquerque...
Our final culinary stop of the trip was Tasty n Alder. This has quickly become my favorite brunch place in Portland!
We sat right next to the kitchen, which let us take a few notes for how everything was made. It's endlessly fascinating for me to watch chefs at work...
To wet our appetites, we started off with a chocolate potato doughnut. This reminded me of something from Culpeper...I can't put my finger on what though, but, despite the appearance, it wasn't too sweet. Just enough to warm us up for our meals...
To share, we had the potatoes bravas. The sauce was tomatoes, sriracha, possibly molasses (it was a little sweet). The potatoes were deep fried, then tossed in the sauce and served with an egg over easy. So good, and the sauce made the dish.
My main course was the beast of a sandwich shown above...the Steakhouse Sandwich. It was big, messy, and delicious. Just the way a sandwich should be. No condiments were needed as the flavors of the sandwich went perfectly together with the shoestring onions on top.
Kim's main course was the Duck Duck Steak. A duck egg, and a steak cooked in duck fat. This managed to infuse the flavor of the duck into the steak. A very unique and neat taste that's surprisingly hard to reproduce at home. I must not be using enough duck fat!
Well, that's all that I have for the Portland edition of my blog for now. Next up, Pascal visits New Mexico!
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