Friday, April 03, 2009

Quick Bites PDX: if you could see me now

Then these are a few of the things you might catch me stuffing my pie-hole with at various spots around Portland, with varying degrees of satisfaction....
Pork Belly Cubano at Bunk Sandwich. After reading the name of this sandwich do I even need to tell you how delicious it is? Tender, seasoned slices of pork belly with peppers and cheese. It is all too good, especially sided with their crazily satisfying bacon 'n egg potato salad. Also tried their apple-cabbage slaw. If you think you don't like cabbage salad, this one will slaw you!
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Garden State Food Cart's new Chicken Saltimbocca Sando. A couple of days ago Sellwood cart svengali Kevin Sandri told me he had a new chicken sandwich coming out. Yesterday he brought one over to the wine shack. Incredible, like an entire entrée between two bread slices. Moist organic chix breast, provolone, sage, prosciuotto. In other words, get your asses in line, pronto!
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A platter of expertly prepared nigiri and sushi rolls from the unassuming Hama Sushi out on NE Sandy Blvd. The two guys slicing and rolling behind the counter are putting out the best, freshest, most reasonably priced Japanese food in town. Lightly battered tempura calamari is the perfect start. Seaweed salad, perfectly chewy udon. They have it all. Oh, and that glorious hamachi at the top of the blog...Hama, baby!
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The Empanadas Caseras de Carne from Andina, a lightly flaky pastry stuffed with slow-cooked beef, raisins, and Botija olives. The perfect happy hour treat, especially good washed down with their Tortuga cocktail! BTW- don't even think about passing up their fabulous octopus skewer, which come with astonishingly good mashed potatoes.
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The Chicago Red Hot from Wayne's Chicago Red Hots out on NE MLK. I'd been reading about this Chicago themed dog joint where all things Windy City rule, especially a fine appreciation of my beloved Cubs. I tried to get my Wrigley mojo on with their Chicago Red Hot and an Old Style. The dog, much like my Cubs of late, disappointed. Even the nuclear green relish couldn't take my mind off of what I found to be a pretty pedestrian dog. A far cry from the lunchtime grilled happiness at Sheridan Fruit Co. The fries were decent, but again kind of "meh".
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The spherical pieces of meat flavored shredded cardboard that are the Swedish Meatballs (with potatoes, gravy, and lingonberry jam) at IKEA. They cost nothing, they taste like nothing. Lingonberry jam mixed with gravy.....they don't really do this in Scandinavia, do they??
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one year ago today @ E.D.T.: a day well spentover a pot of Beef Bolognese!

5 comments:

Knitguy said...

I can't agree more about Ikea. The "meatballs" were scary, the potatoes didn't taste like potatoes, the gravy was gross, but - I loved the lingonberry jam. That being said, I love lingonberry jam to begin with, when I lived in Vienna I ate it like people eat nutella.

bb said...

Hay, I love lingonberry jam too. I just don't like to use it sweeten up my gravy.

dp said...

Haha! Yes they do the gravy with something sweet all the time. The Danes normally use pickled beets or pickled red cabbage, but for special occasions they may bust out solbaer syltetoej (currant jam). It grew on me.

Did Hama Sushi get new owners? It's right next to the new Trader Joes, right? I think they're called Bluefin now. I ate there when they were called Hama and it was good. Haven't been in since they changed names.

Tony said...

I've been craving Bunk for a couple of weeks. That cubano will make me cave. The last great thing I had there was the pork belly reuben--amazing. IKEA=wrong...stay away

bb said...

dp...those crazy Danes. They probably wouldn't understand my love of ketchup on cottage cheese either! And Hama is still owned by he same people, and still on Sandy, NOT by the new TJ's. I'm not sure what's there, but Hama hasn't changed...thank god!

tony....succumbing to the pork belly is totally understandable. I heard about the reuben and it's awesomeness. He's doing such good work...love it!
Agree about IKEA, at least food wise. Love the other stuff in the store, though. Cheap, well designed consumer goods are (almost) never a bad thing.