Year in Review

Karen Brooks’s Best Portland Dishes 2015

Portland Monthly’s food critic on the dishes that defined the year.

By Karen Brooks December 29, 2015

BEST DISHES 2015 Castagna’s “Corn, Clam, Pork”

Chef Justin Woodward reconsidered summer, Southern soul, and Asian juju in a blaze of corn porridge, clam juice, Thai-style fermented sausage, hot dashi, and toasted cornbread crumbs. Truly impressive. castagnarestaurant.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST DISHES 2015 Little Bird’s Fried Chicken Coq Au Vin

A pot of chicken, bacon, mushrooms, and wine was one of France’s most recognizable dishes … until it went on a roller coaster ride at Gabriel Rucker’s World and re-emerged as a bombastic installation of fried chicken, fluffy raclette potatoes with balsamic-red wine sauce and bacon-glazed, truffle-perfumed enoki mushrooms sunbathing on top. Somewhere Julia Child is laughing. littlebirdbistro.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST DISHES 2015 Holdfast’s sweetbreads

They came on like Michelin-star McNuggets on last spring’s tasting menu, full of salty crackle and creamy spectacle, backed by the umami high of black garlic paste and nippy herbs. holdfastdining.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST SANDWICHES 2015 Coquine’s Porchetta Sandwich

What makes it sing is the lean, luscious meat, the chopped cabbage slaw punctuated with crackly bits of pig skin, and the brilliant idea to hollow-out—and toast—a ciabatta roll, leaving only the best part behind, the crispy shell. Pure, porky excellence. coquinepdx.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST SANDWICHES 2015 Maurice’s Beet and Strawberry Sandwich

Golden beets cut like flower petals, tangy goat cheese, onion flowers, juicy strawberries, and really good spelt bread. Rarely does taste and beauty come together this well. mauricepdx.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST DESSERT 2015 NomadPDX’s “Egg Nest”

I loved everything about this dish: the crispy-earthy-wheaty “nest” made of shredded Greek kataifi pastry; the textural surprise of a firm-but-soft almond ice cream “egg,” and hiding inside, creamy-rich egg-yolk jam. PoMo’s Rising Star of the Year pulled off a rare triple threat: a dessert that’s inventive, delicious, and unforgettable. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST PLACE TO ARGUE OVER PDX’S FRIED CHICKEN SUPREMACY Muscadine

At this new, daytime Southern diner, the meat is ambrosial, dark-only and juicy as all get out. But the crust is what makes Northeast Portland’s Muscadine a formidable contender: there’s two layers, one of ultra crisp skin, another of craggy super-crunch, all loudly crackling upon engagement. For more, check out my January review. muscadinepdx.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

FOOD CRUSH 2015 Pinolo Gelato

With charm, a great palate, and the drive to make truly great gelato, lanky Pisa native Sandro Paolini came out of nowhere in July and gave us the chills. This is the real stuff: pure, concentrated and made daily in the back of his Division Street shop, one flavor better than the next, hazelnut to persimmon. Sicilian pistachio tastes like a journey to the center of the earth, nutty and salty to the core. The chocolate? Forgeddabout it. Lush, bitter, sweet, addictive. pinologelato.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST DRINKS 2015 Coffee mocktails at Either/Or

Ro Tam’s Sellwood coffee shop doubles as a creative think tank. This year’s brainstorm: intricate, flavor-saturated, alcohol-free coffee drinks crafted with a bartender’s care, double-shaken at Top Gun speed, the spilled into proper glassware. Say hello to the new coffee flips, coffee negronis, and coffee mint juleps. You won’t miss the booze. facebook.com/eitherorcafe. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST POP-UPS 2015 DaNet and Mae

Belarus native and iconic Portland chef Vitaly Paley continues to rediscover his “lost self” and the country he left behind once a month at DaNet, via zakuski drinking foods, recipes from ancient cookbooks, and vodka galore. It’s food as emotional journey—epic and surprising at every turn. With Mae, former Beast sous Maya Lovelace (pictured above with Lardo's Rick Gencarelli) gives her grandmother’s Appalachian cooking the Portland treatment: 10-course pop-ups, mostly in the back room of Old Salt restaurant. It’s a meal deep in creamy biscuits, passed platters, farm vegetables, and, of course, Mae’s hand-roasted coffee. imperialpdx.com/danet and maepdx.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST “ONLY IN PORTLAND” MOMENT Salt & Straw’s food-cart flavors

In June, Salt & Straw’s collaboration-loving Tyler Malek captured a taste of the Portland street in five ice cream cones. Most successful: Wolf & Bear’s Tahini and Cardamom, ribboned with homemade halvah candy. Most daring: Koi Fusion’s Kim Chee and Jasmine Rice, chunking funk and fervor and yes, bulgogi truffles, into jasmine-scented ice cream. Surely, a first. saltandstraw.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

HAPPY HOUR’S HAPPIEST MOMENT 2015 Xico’s totopos con chile deluxe

The Tom Hardy of nachos—crazy intense and irresistible. It’s a mountain of fresh chips from fresh tortillas stone ground in the kitchen’s volcanic grinder, each one saturated in spicy salsa. Emerging from each crack and crevice: crispy bits of chilorio (pork belly), beautiful whole red beans, cooling crema, crunchy radishes, and multi-dimensional toasted chile sauce. Best knocked back with something from Xico’s great mescal collection. xicopdx.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

BEST SALAD 2015 Departure’s Shaved Collard, Toasted Coconut Salad

The best collection of iron, complexity, and Asian excitement you’ve never heard of—courtesy of health nut and Asian fusionist Gregory Gourdet. The salad channels wellness, sunflower sprouts to dark green leaves, and Thailand, with intricate layers of nuts, Thai herbs, chiles, and kaffir lime. The dressing is its own bad self, throbbing with roasty notes, chile highs, coconut milk sweetness plus wild card like maple syrup. departureportland.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

FIVE REASONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT 2016

• Twenty-course feasts from Nodoguro, PoMo’s Restaurant of the Year 2015, are coming soon. These “supahardcore omakase” dinners, as they call them, will blend sushi art, Japanese composed dishes, and who knows what. I’m in. nodoguropdx.com

• Pizza Jerk, Tommy Habetz’s ode to Connecticut pies and the punk-rock ethos, has just opened on NE 42nd Avenue with some titanic ideas. It’s already a major industry hangout. pizzajerkpdx.com.

• I’m ready to dig into Renata’s dessert list now that former Sugar Cube pastry gal Kir Jensen is at the helm. Her flavors typically kill. renatapdx.com

• Opening soon: Hat Yai, a descendent of Langbaan (PoMo’s Restaurant of the Year 2014). Early sneak peaks reveal a curry house, a Southern Thai fried chicken joint, and the most intriguing restaurant on Portland’s horizon.

• Pine Street Market, Portland’s first food hall, curated by Feast overlord Mike Thelin. pinestreetpdx.com. Photo by Karen Brooks

Openings this year had two speeds: slow and crawl. Restaurant projects (the cheese-focused Chizu to the ham-lovin' Hamlet) became more niche than Amazon Prime subcategories. And by June, people wondered aloud whether Portland’s food scene was screeching to a halt. Not to worry (well, okay, there’s plenty to worry about): even on a slow year, the Washington Post’s food critic still felt no other place stacked up quite like the Rose City. (Check out our Best New Restaurants for essential Portland eating experiences). The city’s best food has always turned up in unexpected places, quirky pop-ups to obsessive sandwich shops, and Portland chefs are admirable risk-takers. 2015 was no exception.

These are the dishes I can’t wait to eat again.

Food and Drink, Restaurants, Castagna, Holdfast Dining, Gabriel Rucker, Coquine, Maurice, Danet, Salt & Straw, Biwa, Aviary, Xico, Departure, Nodoguro, Ox, Ken Forkish, Maya Lovelace

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