Portland is fortunate enough to have more than a dozen restaurants to score incredible ramen. Some of these spots are even helmed by skilled ramen chefs straight from Japan, where ramen is venerated as an art. But in Japan, ramen isn’t all high craft and honorifics; it’s also a basic subsistence food enjoyed by all […]
Eat and Drink
Posted inFood and Drink
Welcome to the Mercury’s Fall Eat & Drink Guide!
Maybe you feel differently, but when fall comes along, I’m ready to go bonkers on some food. The air turns crisp, the leaves start to fall, and I need to get some fat on these bones, stat. After all, winter waits for no one—and neither does Portland’s world-class food scene, which shows no sign of […]
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The Disappearing Food Cart
Cheap Lunches are a Portland Food Cart Staple, But Is Rampant Development Signaling the Death of the Pod?
Deepak Saxena says that when he opened his DesiPDX cart at Northeast 15th and Alberta in 2015, he knew the corner—with a Bamboo Sushi and a Barista not far away—was ripe for redevelopment. So it didn’t come as a surprise when he was told the land was for sale—although learning he had just six weeks […]
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Deepak Kaul’s Bhuna, and His Unlikely Path into the Restaurant World
Deepak Kaul wasn’t supposed to go into the restaurant industry. And, as a middle-class Indian American, he definitely wasn’t supposed to go into the Indian restaurant industry. “Cooking as a profession was never an option,” Kaul says. “That’s how Indians roll. We don’t do that. Not middle-class Indians.” His family, he says, had other plans […]
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Brilliant: Bright Colors and Brighter Flavors at Casa Zoraya
After an ill-fated pizza spot appeared and disappeared next to the Eagle on North Lombard, if you’d have asked me what could survive in that largely residential no-man’s-land between I-5 and MLK Boulevard, I would not have said, “$24 ceviche and $14 pisco sours.” If a recent Saturday night at Casa Zoraya is any indicator, […]
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Super Deluxe Is Portland’s Answer to In-N-Out
If you doubt that I’ve always been passionate about food, please ask my mother to tell you about the times (yes, more than once) that I threw a temper tantrum over being denied Chicken McNuggets. To this day, I love me some nugs, and have molded my fit-pitching ability into the more reasoned written format […]
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Dreaming of Dumplings
Great New Choices for Your Dumpling Fix
There’s a reason the word “dumpling” is a term of endearment—we love them. A version of them exists in nearly every culture—from gyoza to pierogi to ravioli. The act of wrapping dough around a filling and applying heat turns ingredients into a universal thing humans would very much like to eat… except when those dumplings […]
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Blackheart’s Punk Brunch: Three Eggs and the Truth
Here’s some O. Henry-level classic irony for you: I love breakfast, but I’m not a morning person. I know, I know—it’s a tragedy. I’m not asking for your pity, though. Two months ago, you bet I’d want you to cry for me. But now, Blackheart exists: a punk rock bar where it’s always brunch. “Brunch” […]
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Canard Brings Out the Kid In You
The hardest part of being a kid, at least for me, was not being able to do what I wanted when I wanted to. Now, as an adult, if I do just that, it’s viewed as childish. You just can’t win. Unless you’re at Canard, where doing what you want is the damn point, and […]
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Raising the Salad Bar
Searching for a Reasonably Priced Salad Should Not Be This Hard
In the lull between discussable TV shows, there are two topics of conversation between 9 am and noon in my office: 1) What a bad President we have, and 2) What we are doing for lunch? Both are depressing. The nearby co-op’s salad bar is tiny and wildly inconsistent, often just half a dozen ingredients […]
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A Tour of Portland’s Pickle-Sphere
I love pickles for several reasons: Firstly, the way they taste, and the way acid hits your tongue with cold electricity and fires up your salivary glands. Some people dislike this sensation, but I think it rules. Secondly, the science behind the culinary art of pickling is wild. Cucumbers—which typically decay within a few days—are […]
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Welcome to the Neighborhood, Cafés!
Four New Coffee Joints Worth Settling Into
The first half of this year saw a raft of new cafés open all across town. Like any good citizen consumer, I decided to try a few of them. It’s very strange, bouncing from café to café—as dumb as it always sounded in my long-ago stint as a Starbucks employee, the café is truly unlike […]