Kerns, Portland, OR, USA, January 2018: It’s a messy world, and I’m a prissy eater. An insufferable whiner about sticky fingers, a sauce-on-the-side and do-you-have-a-wet-nap wuss. I wish finger bowls were as commonplace as soda fountains, and I wish soda fountains were more common.
But as the Doomsday Clock ticks to two minutes to midnight, with stealth bombers on the way to the Pacific and random sirens ringing in Hawaii, it’s time to admit you can’t take your pristine digits with you. Nobody’s getting out of this clean, so you might as well go down clutching the messiest, sloppiest, unwieldiest pile of bread, sauce, and what-have-you. And right now, there’s no better place to do that than Kerns.
And no, I’m not just talking about Güero’s sprawling tortas, although their Jalisco-style ahogada (drowned) torta, so smothered in achiote sauce that you aren’t even allowed to take it to go, might still reign supreme as the sloppiest sandwich in Portland.
Maybe that wet pile of bread and meat was the doomsday prepper/foodie clarion call, maybe it’s blind luck and market factors more future-facing than I can fathom right now, but Kerns has, in the last few months, become the finger-licking-est neighborhood in all of Portland with the arrivals of Sammich, People’s Pig, and Stoopid Burger.
