Quick Bites PDX: Bunk Sandwich, pt.2; and Apizza Scholl's "Sicilian Sunday"

w's comment about Bunk Sandwich midway through lunch the other day: "It's very manly in here". She was referring I think to the overwhelmingly male clientele who happened to be working their way through meat meister Tommy Habetz's menu of fleshily fabulous sandos. She could just as easily been talking about the atmosphere. The hood was barely keeping up with the smoke off the grill adding to the olfactory assault, and right in front of us the guys on the line were chopping and slapping together the various offerings. My friend Joseph happened to wander in and grab a seat next to us at the counter...by far the best seat in the house....and he correctly observed that even though Bunk had only been open about three weeks (at that point) it had the feel of a place that had been around for years. Also the sandwiches with chips when they're put down in front of you don't look that big, but every time I'm done I am stuffed. Of course it also be the added and must have sides of incredible bacon and egg potato salad and the best red beans and rice in the city that I also consumed, but this is old school lunch the way it was...and now is!
I had to try the Meatball and Parm Hero (top pic), having heard raves. It was solid, nearly equal to the perfection that is the Garden State version. w, being one not to be intimidated by all the perceived testosterone, ordered the grilled eggplant and pepper sandwich (above). It was about as good as a vegetarian sandwich can get, although going veg at Bunk seems roughly akin to asking were the condoms are at your local Christian supply house. That's not what you should be tere for, right? In any event, more kudos to T.H. for nailing a concept and creating my new Monday addiction.

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A couple of Sunday's ago on a cold ass night, w and I were searching for sustenance after getting our holiday fix at a so-so performance of The Nutcracker by Oregon Ballet Theater. Now it had been snowing ever so slightly and the streets were mildly slick, so of course every person in Portland went into a panic and bars were closing all over town. Which is another reason east coast transplants laugh at us. We wanted a drink and a snack, and headed up to Higgins. Now I know a lot of people who are slavish devotees of Greg Higgins food, but I always seem to look at the menu and find it incredibly uninteresting (with an accompanying wine list that offers very little value). w and I grabbed a couple of seats in the bar, checked it out, and both of us were like "meh". So we beat it out of there, and continued the search. After driving by a couple of other places that were, of course, closed, we ended up in our 'hood at Apizza Scholl's, which has recently opened Sundays for their "Sicilian Sunday", where they offer meatball hero's and Sicilian-style pizzas with a thicker crust than their usual crisp crust version of pizza perfection. We had a half pesto-mozz/half meatball pizza (that's it in the lame cell phone pic) and it was rocking. The shocker is that this is the one day you can also order pizza to go. Of course you have to order in person, but for Apizza's "our way or the highway" mentality that is a seismic shift. Plus the Sunday thing, which runs from 4-8, is much mellower than the usual Tuedsay-Saturday mayhem.
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one year ago today @E.D.T.: going old school with a classic Sidecar Cocktail!