Best Restaurants 2017

2017 was a wild, delicious year. These dining experiences defined the city’s scene. Plus: a new Portland-based magazine is packed with travel tales and tips by and for women of color, and Light a Fire, our annual celebration of local nonprofits, volunteers, and community nonprofits.

In this issue:

Arts & Culture

The Essentials

13 Portland Shows, Events, and Pure-Genius Things to Know This November

From Joe Biden to Ibeyi to Ta-Nehisi Coates, here’s what you can’t miss this month.

10/16/2017 By Rebecca Jacobson and Fiona McCann

Music

Tender Loving Empire Marks a Decade of Music

Take a spin through the catalog of the beloved Portland indie label and boutique.

10/16/2017 By Fiona McCann

Theater

A New Portland Show Searches for Utopia Onstage

Partly inspired by the Rajneeshees, innovative company Hand2Mouth presents a “mind experiment” for 2017.

10/16/2017 By Rebecca Jacobson

Eat & Drink

Best Restaurants 2017: Get Down with B.A.P.

Crown Brings Behemoth New York-Style Party Pies to Downtown’s Pizza Desert

And there was much rejoicing.

10/12/2017 By Kelly Clarke

Best Restaurants 2017

Portland’s Best New Restaurants of 2017

2017 was a wild, delicious year. These dining experiences defined the city's scene.

10/12/2017 Edited by Zach Dundas By Karen Brooks, Kelly Clarke, and Benjamin Tepler Photography by Stuart Mullenberg

Best Restaurants 2017: Eat Here Now

5 Portland Food Carts We Just Can't Quit

From crazy-creative scratch pastas to cult-worshipped pastrami, these are the year's standout carts.

10/12/2017 By Eat Beat Team

Dining Guide

These Are Portland’s Essential Sit-Down Restaurants Right Now

Hungry? Here are top picks from Portland Monthly editors.

10/12/2017 By Eat Beat Team

Pour

Orange Julius + Festive Nog = This Cocktail

Veteran bartender Eric Nelson shakes up one of his hair-of-the-dog favorites.

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

Recipes

Kachka's Glorious Cookbook Brings Home the Borsch (Yes, Borsch)

Portland chef Bonnie Morales shares Russian recipes from dumplings to infused vodka. Here's how to make her rich, meaty short rib borsch.

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

The Class of '07

So Many Great Portland Restaurants Opened in 2007. Are They Still Good?

These five spots would define the revolutionary decade that followed. But how do they hold up in 2017?

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler, Ramona DeNies, Kelly Clarke, Zach Dundas, and Karen Brooks

Best Restaurants 2017: Ready Your Forks

5 Portland Restaurants We Can't Wait for in 2018

From Russian dumplings to elevated home-style Filipino, get ready to eat.

10/12/2017 By Kelly Clarke

Best Restaurants 2017: One-Stop Shop

4 Reasons Providore Fine Foods Is Portland’s Best Grocery Feast

Shopping? Might as well slurp oysters and drink txakoli while you’re there.

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

Best Restaurants 2017: Destroy All Appetizers

A Throwback Chinese Restaurant Near PSU Has All the Dumplings

Duck House is old-school and alright.

10/12/2017 By Kelly Clarke

Best Restaurants 2017: Sweet Deal

Eat Dessert for Dinner at Departure

Gregory Gourdet’s pan-Asian sweet treats are what you didn’t know you were waiting for.

10/12/2017 By Kelly Clarke

Best Restaurants 2017: Chill Your Coffee

The Affogato Cubano at Fifty Licks Is One Sweet Buzz

Four shots of robust coffee meet homemade ice cream, deliciously.

10/12/2017 By Karen Brooks

Best Restaurants 2017: Step into the Light

Behold the Most Elegant—Dare We Say, Delicate—Ramen on Portland’s Scene

Kayo’s Ramen Bar isn’t out to overpower you. And that’s a good thing.

10/12/2017 By Zach Dundas

Best Restaurants 2017: Get Your Laab On

Portland Monthly’s Dish of the Year 2017: Spicy Thai Laabs at Paadee

Langbaan’s big-sister restaurant turns into an Isaan outpost twice a week.

10/12/2017 By Karen Brooks

Best Restaurants 2017: Get Coffee Geeked

Maybe All Portland Needed to Get a Great Coffee + Brunch Spot Was … Australians?

The Antipodeans have a strange knack for the stuff.

10/12/2017 By Kelly Clarke

Best Restaurants 2017: Three Degrees of Naoko

3 Ways a Japanese Chef Created an Only-in-Portland Gem

Here’s how Naoko Tamura’s downtown spot went from dorky to destination.

10/12/2017 By Karen Brooks

Best Restaurants 2017: Commune with Mother Russia

In Fantasy Version of Old Russia, Fancy Tea Serves You

Headwaters at the Heathman Hotel recreates imperial glamour every weekend.

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

Best Restaurants 2017: Attack the Stack

Stacked Ups the Sandwich Game (in an Already Sandwich-Obsessed City)

Oxtail French dips to fried shiitake-adorned wedge salads, this is lunch nirvana.

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

Best Restaurants 2017: Feel the Joy

Why We Need Güero's Delicious Tortas

Now more than ever.

10/12/2017 By Zach Dundas

Best Restaurants 2017: The Unrestaurants

3 Portland Pop-Ups That Shook Up Dining and Drinking in 2017

We visited the “outer rings of the vegetable planet,” among other strange places.

10/12/2017 By Karen Brooks and Benjamin Tepler

Best Restaurants 2017: Get Salty & Smoked

Bar Casa Vale Survived and Thrived in 2017

The sherry bar became Portland’s best place for smoky Spanish bites.

10/12/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

Best Restaurants 2017: Discover Nacho Theory

Portland Monthly’s 2017 Chefs of the Year: Tusk’s Sam Smith and Joshua McFadden

With Middle Eastern spices and farm-fresh rigor, Tusk’s co-owners make vegetables taste fresh again.

10/12/2017 By Karen Brooks

Best Restaurants 2017: Hang with Cho

Han Oak Is Portland Monthly’s 2017 Restaurant of the Year

With epic dumplings and endless format changes, Peter Cho remakes Korean cooking and captures a city’s spirit.

10/12/2017 By Karen Brooks

Editor's Note

From the Editor: In America’s Season of Crisis, Cities Stepped Up

Floods, flames, and friends.

10/16/2017 By Zach Dundas

Home & Real Estate

Design

Could This Cruddy Swatch of Concrete Become a Riverside Paradise?

Water Avenue Yards may never happen, but it would be glorious.

10/16/2017 By Emma Mannheimer

Terminal 1%

Welcome to the Portland Airport's Brand-New Elite Terminal

How does the other half fly? A custom scent greets PDX’s private planes and charter flights.

10/16/2017 By Katelyn Best

News & City Life

The Shakedown

Dennis Richardson Is Oregon’s Most Powerful Republican. What’s His Deal?

We size up the super-dad Secretary of State.

10/16/2017 By Marty Patail

Top Nonprofits

Meet Our 2017 Light a Fire Winners

Every year, we honor Portland’s most innovative community leaders and volunteers.

10/16/2017 Edited by Marty Patail

Light a Fire 2017: Extraordinary Volunteer

Portlander Alan Koch and Maggie the Dog Bring Furball Therapy to All

For Our House regulars, one’s ready to talk, one’s ready to snuggle.

10/16/2017 By Margaret Seiler

Light a Fire 2017: Best New Nonprofit

How One Nonprofit Tackles the Gender Gap in Portland Tech

With twice as many men as women working in local tech, PDXWIT aims to right the balance (cocktails in hand).

10/16/2017 By Kelly Clarke

Light a Fire 2017: Emerging Leader

The Oregon Jewish Museum’s April Slabosheski Teaches Living History

The 28-year-old has risen quickly at the nonprofit, which moved to a much larger space in the Pearl this year.

10/16/2017 By Rebecca Jacobson

Light a Fire 2017: Keeping Us Healthy

How an Oregon Clinic Provides Vital Health Care for Seasonal and Migrant Workers

After a child’s avoidable death, Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center came together in her name.

10/16/2017 By Katie Vaughan

Light a Fire 2017: Extraordinary Board Member

How One Portlander Helps People Plan for End-of-Life Care

Peggy Maguire wants you to have the hard conversations.

10/16/2017 By Katie Vaughan

Light a Fire 2017: Caring for the Planet

Ecotrust Puts Its Faith—and Funds—in Healthy Forests

The green nonprofit makes conservation profitable.

10/16/2017 By Ramona DeNies

Light a Fire 2017: Inspiring Creativity

With Airport Cinema, Hollywood Theatre Gives Oregon Filmmakers a Global Audience

Up next? The nonprofit is buying Movie Madness.

10/16/2017 By Margaret Seiler

Light a Fire 2017: Extraordinary Executive Director

Ed Blackburn Looks Back On 25 Years at Central City Concern

The retiring executive director has devoted his career to working with the homeless.

10/16/2017 By Marty Patail

Light a Fire 2017: Lifetime Achievement

How Antoinette Edwards Takes Care of Portland's At-Risk Youth

It's been over four decades, and she's not giving up.

10/16/2017 By Fiona McCann

Light a Fire 2017: Most with the Least

This Tiny Nonprofit Brings Environmental Ed to Kids across Portland

Students get dirty with Ecology in Classrooms & Outdoors.

10/16/2017 By Benjamin Tepler

Light a Fire 2017: Game-Changing Project

How a Portland-Wide Collaboration Helped Shelter Homeless Women

Pods from PSU’s Center for Public Interest Design might be tiny, but the idea’s big.

10/16/2017 By Marty Patail

Media

A Smart New Portland-Based Magazine Covers Travel for Women of Color

Backed by advertising giant Wieden & Kennedy, On She Goes already has a lot going on.

10/16/2017 By Rebecca Jacobson Illustrations by Lisk Feng

Chicken Feels

In Portland, Your Pet Chicken Can Get Reiki

Scratch at least one societal problem off the list, thank God.

10/16/2017 By Wyatt Stayner

Crystal Balling

Portland Psychics Predict the Upcoming Trail Blazers Season

A light green rose is reaching up to its gold sun (and other prophecies).

10/16/2017 By Marty Patail

History

100 Years Ago, the Bolsheviks Seized Russia. Portland’s Most Notorious Journalist Was There.

"Awful beyond words," John Reed once wrote of Portland.

10/16/2017 By Zach Dundas

Eternal Flame

Was 2017's Smoky Summer a Sign of a New, Climate-Changed Normal?

Here are some of the biggest wildfires that raged across the West.

10/16/2017 By Kayla Brock

Dispatch

When the Gorge Burned, Oregon Search & Rescue Volunteers Scrambled

A first responder recounts the dramatic all-night effort to save more than 100 hikers.

10/16/2017 By Christopher Van Tilburg

Light a Fire 2017: Rapid Reaction

How a Team of Strangers Took On Trump's Travel Ban to Help a Sick Baby

The four-month-old made it from Iran to OHSU for heart surgery.

10/16/2017 By Zach Dundas

Style & Shopping

Style

This Women's Workwear Line Says Yes to Pockets (and No to Plumber’s Crack)

Portland landscapers couldn’t find suitable pants to work in—so they designed their own.

10/16/2017 By Eden Dawn

Winning Finds

Gorgeous Raincoats to Slick Galoshes, the Best Local Stuff for Wet Weather

In the cold November rain.

10/16/2017 By Eden Dawn

Travel & Outdoors

Getaway

Discover Nevada’s True Gold: Wild Land Art and Family-Friendly Outdoor Adventures

Take a quick and easy sunny getaway to the outskirts of Vegas.

10/16/2017 By Zach Dundas