Sampling the foods of Portland

We're taking a little side trek from the Great Dinner Retrospective this week because we took a trip to Portland with Megan's brothers. Any trip to a town that amazing has also got to include some amazing meals. Unfortunately we didn't get to sample everything we wanted to, missing out on a fun restaurant we heard about that only serves variations on the grilled cheese sandwich and the Voodoo Doughnut shop, but still got to try a lot of amazing meals.

Living in Montana, there are a good number of fast food and chain restaurants we miss out on, so we wanted to hit some of those in addition to nice sit down places. Megan and I both share a love of Long John Silver's, although she's a fan of the chicken and I like the fish. We haven't had a chance to visit that particular chain for years, so we stopped in at one in Spokane and had some deep fried goodness.


When we finally arrived in Portland and got all settled into the hotel, it was time for a little dinner at Red Robin, which was right across the street from our room. Red Robin may not be too exciting for some, but it's another place we don't get access to very often. For anyone not familiar with this chain, it has the same general idea as Applebees or Chilis, but with a bigger emphasis on burgers and fries. Here's Matt and Jake enjoying some drinks.



After the extremely heavy fish and shrimp from lunch, I decided to go a little lighter than the standard burger fare and got a spinach wrap with whiskey BBQ chicken, which was exceedingly delicious, especially for a chain restaurant.


Megan went with the BLTA croissant. You can see in the picture below that they serve their meals with fries and melon slices, which is a fun twist on an old standard.


The next morning we headed over to a mall a few blocks from our hotel. All the shopping got me a little peckish, so I decided to try a sushi place in the food court (another staple of big malls we don't get to enjoy often). I went with a BBQ eel roll, which wasn't spectacular, but definitely a fun little snack before moving onto to something more substantial.


For our dinner that day we went to the Rogue brewery, which was picked specifically by Megan because of their great beers. We had the "need-a-mint" pizza (many apologies, but somehow we didn't get a picture of it!), which uses whole garlic cloves as a main topping. There is, of course, beer in the pizza crust. Megan and Jake also got the beer sampler, which consists of four beers from the 40+ menu options brewed right there. Some of the more interesting beers include one brewed with chamomile tea, one brewed with spicy chipotle, and one that tastes like dark chocolate.


On our last day we got brave and spent more time traveling the Max train and found another fun mall with an amazing food court. I went with sushi again, this time trying a Philadelphia roll, which uses smoked salmon and cream cheese.


Our lunch was just around the corner at the Rock Bottom Brewery, which was an unplanned stop at a place we randomly stumbled upon while wandering downtown. The "Titan Toothpick" appetizer immediately caught my eye, but I didn't realize until they arrived that "Titan Toothpick" wasn't just a cute name - it was a completely appropriate title! Matt is holding up his fork to show how big they are. I had the "Bourbonzola" burger, which uses a glaze of bourbon and Gorgonzola. The brewery gives four different options for any burger (beef, turkey, chicken, or veggie), and I decided to go with the veggie burger, which they make from scratch. I'm glad I went that route, as their take on a veggie burger was amazingly tasty and had just the right texture and consistency.


For our final dinner in Portland we went to Kell's Irish Pub. Megan and Matt enjoyed the restaurant immensely in our Seattle trip, so it was a place we really wanted to try again. Here we're enjoying a few drinks before our meals.


I tried the oyster shooters, which had oysters and cocktail sauce in shot glasses, and also got the Irish Double Decker, which has corned beef and turkey with a horseradish sauce.


Megan had the Ballycastle Sausage rolls, which were served over a bed of mashed potatoes. Talk about amazing pub fare!


On our way home we stopped in Spokane again, but this time wanted to go with a sit down mexican place. At the Azteca restaurant I picked the seafood chimichanga, which had just about every type of seafood you can imagine stuffed inside.


To make up for the missed pizza picture from the Rogue Brewery, we put together our own take on that delicious pie for dinner tonight. Usually we make our own crust and sauce, but today we decided to go with pre-made Boboli crust and sauce to make it a little simpler. To start off with, Megan put on slices of mozzarella and provolone, and fresh basil.

Next she layered on a few slices of pepperoni for color contrast and to get a little meat on a primarily vegetable based pizza.

On top of that went cherry tomatoes and garlic cloves, which were baked with butter and herbs prior to topping the pizza to ensure they wouldn't be to hard.

This is the beautiful sight that awaited us when the oven door opened and the scent of baked garlic and basil wafted out.

For a full meal we put together a side salad using some of the left over pepperoni and cherry tomatoes, as well as baked green beans and chili-lime pumpkin seeds I bought in Portland.

And that's all for our Portland meals! Check back next week for the next entry in our dinner retrospective.