If you don’t already check in occasionally with The Food Dude’s Portland Food & Drink, I suppose it’s never too late (but don’t blame us…he’s been on our sidebar for as long as I can remember). I’ve been reading his stuff for quite awhile, and have really come to trust his opinions. His annual reader survey of everything from “If I won the lottery, the first place I’d eat,” to “I’m embarrassed to admit I eat here” came out last week, and though a lot of it was about what I expected, there were a few surprises—the biggest of which was the amount of negative comments about Little Bird, Gabriel Rucker’s new downtown French bistro.
As you’ll see when you get around to reading this upcoming week’s paper, I’ve had nothing but good experiences at Little Bird. Ditto the Oregonian‘s David Sarasohn, as well as Portland Monthly‘s Karen Brooks. The Food Dude wasn’t so impressed. He called it unmemorable, and gave it his vote for the “I Thought This Restaurant Would Be Great — But I Didn’t Like It!” category. It seems a lot of his readers are with him—he claims that Little Bird was “mentioned in almost every negative category.”
Obviously taste is subjective, but I can’t imagine the experiences I’ve had so far getting that kind of overwhelmingly negative attention. It makes me wonder if Rucker and his team are experiencing some growing pains. I can imagine that maintaining consistency is a lot more difficult when you move from a 4-5 hour window to full lunch/dinner/late-night service, and from that tiny Le Pigeon dining room to the more expansive space that Little Bird occupies.
I also can’t help but wonder if people are expecting the kind of decadence they’ve come to expect at Le Pigeon instead of taking Little bird on its own terms. Regardless, I think its reputation is going to be interesting to watch over the next few months. I’ll be curious to hear what other people think.
(By the way, I want a pat on the back for making it through my entire column without a single ornithological pun or Portlandia joke.)
Nice to know that Flash and PDF restaurant websites are universally disliked.
Having 3-4 dollar tacos shouldn’t qualify you as a money-saving restaurant. I really like Por Que Non but I always seem to spend quite a bit there, and it’s not due to over-eating.
I wish local restaurants would all have a simple html menu on their site. I spend half my time on my phone looking up bars and places to eat.
eh, I’ve had a couple of awful experiences at Le Pigeon itself, both in its early months and more recently. Little Bird’s not bad, it’s just not perfect. Just ’cause it’s been all good for you, it doesn’t mean that every diner’s received the same level of service and quality food. Mistakes happen, even in the best places.
Ugh. I HATE LePigeon. All of the food we ordered (there were 8 of us) was inedible and, in fact, one person’s food never came to the table at all. It wasn’t finished until the rest of us were done so she asked them to forget it. Most of what we ordered was disgustingly over-salted and that’s coming from a person who likes to eat just plain salt. Also, the service was inexcusable. They didn’t even offer to take off the entree that never came – we had to send the check back and demand it. Horrible, horrible, horrible. There’s so many good restaurants in PDX. Don’t waste your time.
Yeah, Le Pigeon’s food is sometimes the best in Portland and other times so-so, but the service is ALWAYS bad. We once ordered a bottle of wine, a good portion of which the waiter spilled on my girlfriend. No offer to comp the bottle (which, considering the 400 percent markup on wine, would be rather painless) or even discount it, which would have been fair considering we didn’t get to drink the entire bottle.
We sat at the bar in front of the kitchen and listened to Rucker complain about every group of customers, us included, in between frequent trips to the … “bathroom”.