Portland's Top Pop-Up Restaurants of Summer 2017
The Double Gold at Late Shake
Image: Courtesy Late Shake
Late Shake
When the sun goes down, SE Division Street’s Dapper & Wise coffee shop swaps out the espresso machine for a Hamilton Beach mixer. D&W creative director Grahm Doughty and raging milkshake enthusiast Taylor London quietly started the summertime pop-up in 2015, blending up shakes like the Woodblock Mocha, with Woodbock chocolate and D&W’s own grinds, or the Honey Bee, with Bee Local honey, Jacobsen sea salt, and crunchy nibs of bee pollen. The real find: the Double Gold, a health food/junk food mash-up of ginger root, turmeric, apple, cayenne, and Fruity Pebbles cereal that works in total unexpected harmony. 3158 SE Division St, Fri and Sat 7–11 p.m. through Sept 31, Insta: @lateshake —BT
Ferne + Holly's fennel-crusted salmon bowl
Image: Benjamin Tepler
Ferne + Holly
Where do you go after helping shape Portland’s pork-fat-fueled brunch scene for a decade and opening an award-winning airport satellite branch? If you’re Country Cat’s Adam and Jackie Sappington, you turn to a trendy health food menu of toasts (think whole wheat buttermilk bread topped with Nutella, bananas, hazelnuts, and cocoa nibs), bowls, smoothies, and juices served to-go during the busy workweek out of their next-door event space, the Calico Room. They’re still working out kinks, with underseasoned rice and flimsy plastic utensils, but the crispy, $5 breakfast taco is already a hit, with lacy fried cheddar, ham, egg, and Mama Lil’s peppers. 7919 SE Stark St, Mon–Fri 9 a.m.–2 p.m. —BT
Chorizo choripan at Ox Box
Image: Kelly Clarke
Ox Box
At Ox’s parking-lot choripan pop-up, the signature Argentine-style hot dog is a mild house chorizo sausage grilled over oak, slathered in the house’s tame, olive-oily chimichurri, and tucked inside a fluffy roll. But the best thing on Ox Box’s brief menu is a grilled eggplant sandwich, roasted and silky with a hint of char, spiced with chorizo rub and dried oregano, and layered with melted provolone and chimichurri—a true sleeper hit. Choripan is street food; Ox Box ain’t that. It’s far too farm fresh and, at $11–14 a sandwich, spendy. Instead, this highbrow grill-out is an excellent excuse for a long, lazy lunch hour, perfumed with oak smoke and lubricated with bottles of Peruvian lager. 2225 NE MLK Jr. Blvd, lunch daily, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. through Sept 4 —KC
