Eat & Drink Fall 2016
Your Guide to Local Eating and Drinking
NE 42nd Is Portlandâs New Restaurant Row
The Cully Street Is a Dizzying Blend of Pizza, Southern, Bars, Sammies, and More
Crafty Wine Deals for All Hours
No Corkage Fee? No Markup? No Problem!
An Oregon Vacation Paradise, Reborn
The Suttle Lodge and Boathouse Is a Place to Build Memories
EatingâNow with Beer!
A Mini Tour of Local Brewpub Pairings
Food and Ink
Cooks Tell the Stories Behind Their Tattoos
Find Your Country Western Bar Bliss
From Waylon to Dierks to Dolly, Weâve Got a Saloon for Ya
Eat Here Now!
The Mercuryâs Favorite New Places to Grab a Bite
Fall Arts & Culture Guide
It’s Peak Art Season in Portland. Here’s Your Game Plan.
Food and Ink
Cooks Tell the Stories Behind Their Tattoos
Two Words from Caitlin Weierhauser, Nariko Ott, and Matt Monroe: Youâre Welcome!
Their New Comedy Showcase Doesn’t Need Your Thanks
PICA Puts Down Roots
At This Year’s Time-Based Art Festival, the Stakes Are Higher
August Wilson, Guns, and Fractured Fairy Tales
Here Are the Mercury’s Fall Theater Picks!
Martha Groverâs Messy Lives
The End of My Career Author Is the Voice of Portland Right Now
Big Big Wednesday Is âA Beautiful Objectâ
The Local Literary Journal Looks to the Future
Wordstockâs Challenge: Too Many Readers
2,500 People Were Expected at Last Year’s Festival. 8,500 Showed Up. Here’s How the Organizers Plan to Meet the Demand This Time Around.
Your Guide to the Symphonic Season
There’s a Lot More Than Pokémon in the Oregon Symphony’s 2016/17 Concerts
The Mercury Staffâs Wish List of Holiday Gifts!
We Want It. So Give It to Us!
ALTHOUGH INK isnât required to work in a restaurant, tattoos are a display of dedication and grit, both of which are necessary to survive a commercial kitchen.
The kitchen has long been a stage of bravado: the fire-and-knives boysâ club, where oneâs swagger is measured by the length of his cleaver. And while the ladies are certainly starting to reach the top of the longtime hyper-macho culture and change it from within, theyâre just as apt to display ink as a visible emblem of their brass.
Of course, not all chefs go for the butterfly-on-the-ankle of kitchen tattoos (the chefâs knife). Nor do many opt for chef Andy Rickerâs elaborate tribute to Thai cooking: a vibrant botanical gauntlet of rice, durian, tamarind, chiles, shallots; the herbs cilantro, culantro, and green onion; plus a mortar and pestle with the Thai characters that spell âPok Pok.â Most tattoos are somewhere in between, and hold personal meaning to the ones wearing them.
Levi Greenacres of Skeleton Key Tattoo on SE Hawthorne says he inks lots of people in the restaurant industry (full disclosure: heâs my artist as well). He says most line cooks heâs tattooed get some version of that aforementioned knife popularized by Anthony Bourdain, or some other kitchen implement. (If they get a work-related piece at allâmany donât.)
Greenacres himself wears three food-related tattoos: Andy Warholâs banana and a cluster of three cherries in his armpits, and an immaculate corndog Madonna in a âcorndog-shaped voidâ on the back of his leg. The corndog is one of particular significance to him: âWhen I first came to Seattle I had a bag of clothes, 20 dollars, a six-pack of cream soda, and a box of corn dogs.â
I asked Greenacres whatâs the coolest food tattoo heâs ever done (a tie between an artichoke and the beet from Jitterbug Perfume), and then I asked a few other restaurant folks in Portland about their own gastronomic ink.
Here are their stories.
Anh Luu
Tapalaya
Tattoo: Bowl of pho on hip/thigh
When I was a little girl, my family and I would go on our weekly Sunday outing of Asian market and getting pho at our favorite spot, Pho Hoa, in New Orleans. I believe itâs still open now. My mom would only make pho for special occasions because itâs an all-day affair. The bowl of pho tattoo reminds me of my roots and who I am and why I love to cook. Iâm currently planning on getting another food tattoo next year: a half sleeve on my right arm of a crawfish boil laying on a Portland newspaper.
Pablo Portilla
Mi Mero Mole
Tattoo: Cuban coffee pot on forearm
Growing up Cuban, it is tradition that once you are off breastmilk your parents start putting coffee in with your milk in your bottle. So every morning since I was a baby I remember that smell and taste [of] coffee. This one on my arm is the coffee pot that my grandmother gave me and itâs around 30 years old. I took it in with me when they did that tattoo to have it replicated on my arm.
Dinae Horne
Portobello
Tattoo: Stand mixer paddle attachment (she, her sous chef, and chef de cuisine got matching tattoos)
We wanted to get kitchen tattoos and had the kind of constant low-level conversation/argument that you might have in a kitchen over what they should be for several months. We didnât want knives or spoons. We liked how it looked like a shield or a crest. I didnât realize that so many people wouldnât recognize what it actually is.
Dave Tran
MĂ„urice, Pizza Jerk, and Fenrir
Tattoo: Coffee plant and espresso gear with quote
One is âSuspicimus Artisâ which is ârespect the craftâ in Latin. Itâs sandwiched between two espresso tamps. The second is a botanical (illustration) of Coffea arabica, specifically, typicaâone of the first varietals to be cultivated in Africa. Every single career move/connection I had made up to that point in my life had been through coffee, [from] the people Iâve met and learned from, to where I am now in Portland. Cutting my teeth and carving out a name in coffee taught me a lot about service and workflow that now bleeds into everything I do as a young professional. Without starting in coffee, I wouldnât be where I am now. So I never want to forget my roots.