Food History

The 25 Restaurants That Made Portland

Portland was not a food city in the year 2000. Over the past quarter century, these restaurants changed that.

11/14/2025 Edited by Matthew Trueherz By Portland Monthly Staff Illustrations by Max-O-Matic

CHANGE AGENTS

In 2002, Two Crazy Kids Basically Invented the Modern Portland Restaurant

Michael Hebb and Naomi Pomeroy redefined the city’s old-world restaurant order.

08/15/2016 By Karen Brooks

Best Restaurants 2012

Best of the Rest

Still hungry? We've culled the 35 local restaurants that should remain in any food lover's regular rotation.

10/16/2012 Edited by Rachel Ritchie and Karen Brooks

BREAKING FOOD NEWS

Bunk Truck

Portland’s sandwich kings take it to the streets

07/16/2012 By Benjamin Tepler

Food News

Beast’s Naomi Pomeroy Battles the Iron Chef

Plus: she’s in the running for a cooking show of her own.

09/02/2010 By Karen Brooks

Lightner

Castagna’s Lightner Makes Food and Wine List

The 29-year-old prodigy is named to the nation’s most elite list of up-and-comers.

04/06/2010 By Eat Beat Team

Portland Plated

Bold World Cuisine

Matt Lightner brings modern European cuisine home to Castagna.

01/19/2010 By Mike Thelin

the end. the beginning.

Goodbye Lovely Hula Hands

Hello Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty

12/07/2009 By Kaitlyn Evans

Best of the City

Best Restaurants 2009

Signs of the Times

10/09/2009 By Mike Thelin and Eva Hagberg

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Rose City Rock

15 local bands that shook up Stumptown and blew our minds

05/19/2009 By John Chandler

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Inn Style

For food-weary Portlanders, this downtown culinary refuge offers good company, warmth and sustenance.

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

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Dinner by Numbers

Is the staff at the Pearl’s newest restaurant confident in what they have to offer, or are they covering up for a perceived lack?

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

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Chintz Charming

After relocating to the northern end of the ever-expanding N Mississippi Ave in December, the new Lovely Hula Hands still offers similar atmospheric enchantment.

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

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Tenure Track

Chef Dustin Clark has assumed control of the burners at Wildwood.

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

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Long Way Home

Oft-displaced artistic powerhouse Disjecta settles into more permanent digs on the edge of working-class Kenton.

05/19/2009 By Martha Calhoon

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Smooth Operator

A $4 million restaurant debuts on a lonely stretch of the South Waterfront. But is the food as opulent as the décor?

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

Philanthropists

The $150,000 Question

When Oregonian Pete Seda met Saudi Soliman al Buthe in 1997, the two Muslims became fast friends. Over coffee, they founded the only U.S. chapter of al Haramain, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest Islamic charities.

05/19/2009 By Ted Katauskas

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Taste Test

One of Portland’s most eclectic oenophiles opens up a tiny, unpretentious East Side wine bar that passes with flying colors.

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

INTRODUCING ...

Lucier

Lucier has been open for only a few weeks. Yet the dining room is full, mostly with groups of men and women in business suits sipping champagne and feasting on structurally arranged food.

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis

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Down on the Bay

Sustainable seafood, thrice-filtered water and Monica Lewinsky sightings keep the Pearl’s Bay 13 packed like a sardine can.

05/19/2009 By Camas Davis