10 Ways to Eat Your Heart Out This Holiday Season

Buche de Noel at Pix Patisserie
Image: PIx Patisserie
Does your bûche de Noel come with a fleur de sel caramel option? Can you whip up a 9-course, all-vegan New Year’s dinner for your animal-loving friends? Are you game for roasting an actual Christmas goose? If so, you win the holiday season. If, like us, you are not game for such antics, here are 10 ways to celebrate the holidays in the most luxurious, only-in-Portland fashion.
Coquine
Goose Menu: 5–10 p.m. Wed–Sat, Dec 20–Dec 23, $85 per person. New Year's Eve: 10 p.m.–midnight Sun, Dec 31, $125 per person.
Coquine goes full-on goose in a special four-course menu leading up to Christmas. That includes things like stuffed gooseneck, Yorkshire pudding popovers with confit goose leg, and pan-roasted goose breast with confit potatoes, rosemary, and juniper. If that’s all a bit much for you, the Tabor spot also throws a late-night, seafood-centric New Year’s Eve party, complete with a champagne toast at the stroke of midnight.
Departure
Dinner: 4:30–9:30 p.m, Sun, Dec 31, $120-180 per person; after-party: 11 p.m.–2 a.m., $30 or $60 per person
Top Chef star Gregory Gourdet puts together three menus for the downtown rooftop restaurant’s send-off to 2017. The three New Year’s Eve menus all cap off with a variation of his signature dessert, chocolate ash cake, which we featured in our Best New Restaurants of 2017. After-party kicks off at 11 p.m., with tickets half-price for dinner guests.
Ox
5–10 p.m. Sun, Dec 31
The Argentine steakhouse goes American steakhouse for New Year’s. There will be wood-fired filet mignon and roasted fingerling potatoes in parsley-pesto butter. There will be Dungeness crab. And truffles. And grilled lobster sausage. You can even put two ounces of grilled foie gras on top for a small charge. Really—go wild.
Multnomah Whiskey Library
9 p.m.–midnight Sun, Dec 31, $100
MWL hosts an all-night cocktail party: a “welcome” cocktail, buffet, raffle ticket, and champagne are included. The Library raffles off a membership, among other prizes, with all proceeds donated to national nonprofit No Kid Hungry.
Pix / Bar Vivant
Tea service: 2–3:30 p.m. Sat–Mon, Dec–Jan 1, $34 per person. NYE Chocolate Buffet: 9 p.m.–midnight Sun, Dec 31, free with purchase of alcoholic beverage
Pix pairs Townshend’s Teas with a selection of sweet and savory bites (macarons, mini éclairs, salmon sandwiches, and chocolate chaud) for a daily holiday tea service. The pâtisserie also rolls out gluten-free bûches de Noels ($45 a log)– traditional, Sicilian and chocolate port fig–now through New Year’s Eve, when Bar Vivant indulges patrons in a free chocolate buffet (mousse, truffles, meringue, and more).
Ray
Latkes: 5:30 p.m.–close thru Dec 19. NYE: 5:30 p.m.–close Sun, Dec 31, $65 per person
Don’t want to wreck your kitchen with hot oil and potato peels? Get your fix with Ray’s potato latkes and Tunisian doughnuts (called yo-yos) through Hanukkah. The Israeli spot also rings in the New Year with a three-course dinner featuring a tahini Caesar salad, tuna with salted lemon and capers, and an olive oil semolina cake with broken rice pudding, cranberry syrup and kumquat.
Burrasca
Christmas Eve: 5–9 p.m. Sun, Dec 24. New Year’s Eve prix fixe: 5–9 p.m. Sun, Dec 31, $80 per person
The Tuscan comfort food spot is open on Christmas Eve, serving up a festive quail with polenta and salt cod in a “Renaissance stew,” in addition to the regular dinner menu. New Year’s Eve occasions a five-course prix fixe menu featuring hand-rolled pasta, tagliata steak, and layers of meringue for dessert.
Aviary
4–9 p.m. Sun, Dec 31, $75 with an optional wine pairing for $35
Chef Sarah Pliner–a three-time James Beard Award semifinalist—hosts a five-course NYE feast in her usual Francophile/pan-Asian way: chestnut soup with maple brown butter and salted duck egg, shrimp toast with lemon anchovy aioli, and seared scallops with nori beurre noisette.
Bar Muselet
6–10 p.m. Sun, Dec 31; multiple seatings and tasting menus from $125 per person
The pop-up wine bar toasts the New Year by pairing Filipino-inspired dishes with five vintage champagnes and five Oregon library wines in this bubbly-focused evening. Think kabocha squash and butter-poached prawns with a Blanc de Blancs Brut and flourless chocolate torte with a 2007 Pinot Noir.
Ava Gene's
10 a.m.–3 p.m. Mon, Jan 1
Your best bet for a NYE hangover cure? Carbs. This New Year's Day brunch stars bucatini carbonara with pancetta, egg, and scallions, and borlotti bean pane with a sunny side-up egg and hot sauce. Stumptown Coffee serves festive caffeinated drinks, with alcoholic ones coming from the bar.