PORTLAND: DAY 3

Our third day in Portland was a casual day for us to just wander the city and check things out in the downtown area. We started off with breakfast at the edge of the Pearl district at a place called the Byways Cafe.

It's a pretty normal looking diner, but apparently, it's very popular with the locals on the weekends. Luckily, it was a Monday morning, so the restaurant was pretty empty when we arrived.

We grabbed a booth, looked over the menus and checked out the funny collectibles in the glass cases that lined the walls. Pretty soon our food arrived. Tom got the sunrise special: One egg, two strips of thick-cut bacon and three fluffy buttermilk pancakes served with pure maple syrup. (actually, he got blue corn pancakes instead of buttermilk, cause that's what they're known for). Here's a photo:

I must say the blue corn pancakes were pretty tasty. And the portion was huge. Pretty good for $8.75. Meanwhile, I got a much smaller breakfast, just a basic breakfast with two large farm fresh eggs served your way with home-fried red potatoes and toast and I got it with a chicken sausage.

The eggs were well cooked, the potatoes were tasty and for $8, it was a pretty good deal for breakfast.

After stuffing ourselves, we wandered about the city, made a second trip to Voodoo Donuts and finally headed home. It's really a cute town - I could imagine myself living there if I had to, and I would have plenty of places to eat. Now if only it didn't rain so much....

PORTLAND: DAY 2

Our second day in Portland was another rainy day. Luckily, it didn't rain as steadily as our previous day, and it did eventually let up. We started our day with a breakfast at Brail's a local favorite diner, run by a Korean family (funny that our favorite diner at home is also run by Koreans.)

This place has your pretty average breakfast foods, but some with a twist. For example, below my breakfast looks like a regular omlette, but it's actually filled with chicken teriyaki. And it was yummy (so were those hash browns, look how nice and golden they are). My friends ordered spicy pork omlettes (I don't remember what Tom got).

Breakfast also came with a biscuit on the side. Now normally, I love biscuits, but this one was just a bit too undercooked for my taste. Overall, I really liked this place. If I lived in Eugene, I'd totally be a regular.

After breakfast, we wandered around a park, and then my friend Jess insisted on taking me to Sweet Life - a dessert place in Eugene.

This place had cases full of pastries, and because it's Eugene, there were a lot of vegan, dairy free, egg free, flour free, etc etc type options.

I just got a slice of chocolate cake, which I shared with Tom.

It was fine. But more importantly, how can Eugene have a dessert bar, and there's still not one in the East Bay??

Afterwards, we headed back in to Portland and spent the afternoon walking around the Portland Zoo. After a few ours, we were finally hungry enough to head out to dinner and this time, we checked out the eastern part of Portland. At first I had wanted to visit a well regarded Thai restaurant, but when we went and figured out it was closed on Sunday, we headed to my backup restaurant called the Screen Door. Basically, they serve Southern cuisine using local, organic ingredients. Even though we showed up pretty early, the place was already packed when we arrived.

I really liked the setting, lots of light woods, and big windows. The menu itself is pretty small, but the portions are not. We started off with two appetizers. The first was okra:

Now, I'm not a huge fan of okra, (Tom ordered these) but doesn't frying make everything better? Plus, these had a born meal batter and came with a spicy mayo type sauce. They were pretty good.

More to my liking were the hushpuppies:

These were quite tasty, though kinda dense, and I knew I had a good amount of food coming, so I only had one. So for my dinner, I picked a meal composed of three sides. Here you see mac and cheese, coleslaw and a cauliflower gratin and it came with corn bread (hey, at least it was all vegetarian!)
Now, that mac and cheese was pretty amazing. Actually, I really enjoyed all my dishes. The only thing is that it was all so heavy. I barely made a dent in the mac and cheese before I was stuffed.

Meanwhile, Tom got Jess' fiancee both ordered brisket:

Tom said it was really good, since it just fell apart when he cut into it (just like good brisket is supposed to). At this point in the meal, we were all stuffed, but I just have to order dessert when I go to restaurants like this. So I got the peanut butter pie for us all to share:

As you can see, there's a chocolate cookie crust, peanut mousse stuff and unsweetened whipped cream. It was really rich and delicious. I just couldn't eat more than a few bites.

We really did have better meals on our second day in Oregon. I'm actually a big fan of the Swing Door and hope they open an outpost here in the East Bay.

PORTLAND DAY 1:

The beginning of our crazy month really started with our trip to Portland. (not that we had planned it that way) The trip was planned as a casual trip - neither of us had ever been to Oregon, and I wanted to visit my good friend, Jess, and meet her fiancee. And more importantly, tickets on Alaska Airlines were super cheap.

So we left on the first flight out from Oakland (aka the cheapest flight) and landed in Portland super early in the morning. Now, my friend Jess actually lives in Eugene, which is 2 hours from Portland, so she wasn't able to pick us up from the airport and since I knew we have a couple of hours to burn while we were waiting for her, I planned some places to visit while waiting to meet up with her.

It was raining when we arrived, so it was nice to duck into Pearl Bakery, a well known spot located in the Pearl District of Portland. The space is huge - probably a converted warehouse, like many things in the Pearl District, with 20 ft ceilings. Though most of the space was taken up by the production area, there was a small seating section in front, filled with locals. We were able to grab a table for two, and ordered a few pastries and coffee for breakfast. Here's the line of locals waiting to order:

Here are two of the things we ordered. Tom got the plain croissant, I got the apricot danish.

Then I got a chocolate croissant and Tom get a donut type pastry thingy.

Overall, the pastries were pretty good. The croissants were nice and flaky, though I like mine to be cooked darker, so they're even flakier and crunchy.

After our breakfast, we headed over to Powell's Books where we spent an hour hanging out and waiting for my friend to meet us. We she finally showed, we checked out some chocolate shops together and then visited the Portland Saturday Market - a mix of outdoor crafts and food booths. Though it was raining, there were still quite a few people out. Here's a row of food booths:

It took a while to decide on what to eat, and we all ended up ordering from the same Philly cheesesteak booth. (Maybe I was persuaded by their display food).

Here's my chicken cheesesteak with ketchup on top. It wasn't the best thing I've ever eaten. The chicken had been precooked, so the cheese was just added on and heated until the cheese melted. However, I was hungry, so I ate in anyway. (We later learned that the "good" food booths were in another section of the market.)

Allright, so of course, since we were in Portland (and we were close by) we made our first of two trips to Voodoo Donuts. Below is a combination of photos from the two trips that we made (I didn't want to write up two different posts). First, we start off with the line outside of the donut shop. And yes, it was raining at the time.

It took about half an hour to get through the line and up to the front counter, but we had fun being entertained by an aging Elvis, in full Elvis regalia, singing Heartbreak Hotel.

When you finally make it indoors, you find a tiny, cramped space. This photo is from our second visit, which was on a weekday afternoon, so there were a lot less people there:

You definitely feel the pressure to order fast, with everyone waiting behind you. I got Tom the maple bacon bar, while I got the No Name - a donut with chocolate, rice krispies, striped with peanut butter. Here's Tom's maple bacon bar:

He thought it was just ok. I think he thought the maple part was overly sweet. Meanwhile, I also had a lukewarm reaction to my No Name. I thought it'd be coming with cocoa krispies, not regular krispies and they were a little soggy, so it was just eh. (The Old Dirty Bastard, which I had a few days later was much much better, though).

And here's a photo of the half dozen donuts my friend, Jess, bought. Notice the pink one - it's bubblegum with a piece of bubble gum stuck to it.

After the donuts, we did the two hour drive to Eugene where my friend actually lives. There we were able to rest and play with her pets before eventually heading out for dinner.

We initially tried to go to a well known Southern restaurant, but it was packed and had a long wait. Instead we headed to a place called Beppe and Gianni's, a popular local Italian restaurant located in a converted Victorian house. This place was also filled with people, but we got a table within twenty minutes.

I would characterize this place as the average Italian American restaurant, except dressed up a little nicer. I apologize for the pictures in advance, the place was pretty dark, and I didn't want my flash going off. We started off with their famous appetizer of blue cheese with roasted garlic served with toast:

I thought the garlic was well roasted, and it wasn't too bad.

I then started with a Caesar salad, which was pretty average, and quite over dressed:

And for my entree I just got something simple - spaghetti with red sauce: The spaghetti ended up being pretty over cooked, so it was kinda mushy, and the sauce was fine. However, we were in Eugene, OR, I wasn't expecting spectacular food. And so our first bites were decent enough, just nothing stellar.