Favorite
Bella’s makes the kind of cannoli Rocco and Clemenza would kill for: a blistered, shatter-crisp pastry cigar oozing house ricotta—sweet, creamy, tangy, and studded with chocolate chips. It’s just one of the Little Italy rarities Michelle Vernier brings to her Lents bakery. It’s not all sweets; thick slabs of focaccia, Italian grinders, and Peroni beer on the cheap make Bella’s Read more...
Favorite
Enoteca Nostrana looks nothing like its neighboring mother restaurant, Nostrana, nor the city’s formulaic, aseptic restaurant mode. Instead, it’s an expensive marvel of postmodern Italian design: Tetris tiles in shades of gray, squishy Champagne-cork-inspired bar stools, and pastel-hued Pixar-logo lamps. Sommelier Austin Morris Bridges stocks the 2,000-plus-bottle cellar—an impressive, well-aged library of Italian wines. But Enoteca isn’t just a boozy waiting Read more...
Favorite
This family-owned Italian restaurant features all the classics: arancini, linguine, rigatoni, pappardelle and more. Read more...
Favorite
Known for its wood-fired pizzas, this east side restaurant also offers pastas, salads and a classic weekend brunch. Bonus: they’ll make any pizza into a calzone. Read more...
Favorite
The best thing at Providore Fine foods on NE Sandy—even better than the mini oyster bar and overflowing produce stand—might be Arrosto, a tiny rotisserie chicken takeout window serving super-juicy, lemon-rosemary oil-rubbed chicken, KFC-style, in buckets. It comes with creamy, fat-basted Yukon golds and electric-orange Calabrian chile sauce for dipping. Read more...
Favorite
A former breakout food cart, brick-and-mortar Burrasca offers the same slow-simmered Italian comfort and Big Night charm as its previous incarnation. The always-smiling Calamai spoons out authentic nonna cooking with a short menu of strictly Tuscan plates. Burrasca’s greatest strengths are its pasta, best demonstrated by the tender ricotta gnudi, soaking up a pool of sage butter, and the velvety cuts Read more...
Favorite
Southeast Portland’s newest Italian crush is Renata, a vast, barrel-ceilinged space. You’ll find San Francisco swagger, with cool cocktails, confident wines, big flowers, blingy custom ovens, and front-of-house creds from the French Laundry. That grilled pork chop with blackberry mostarda? Yes. Four homemade breads in one basket? We’re impressed. There are kinks, but the staff seems committed to the long Read more...
Favorite
Nestled along the busy MAX tracks of SW Morrison, Mucca is home to authentic, sustainable Italian food dished out by honest-to-Dio Italians—think house-made charcuterie, fresh gnocchi and tagliatelle, slow-braised rabbit ragù, and tender Milanese di Vitello (Nicky Farms veal loin, pounded thin and breaded before being set atop a creamy garlic sage sauce). Try the five-course tasting menu, a steal at Read more...
Favorite
Imagine an Italian grandmother lovingly plumping meatballs, humming a tune from the old country. Now plant her in a dark cocktail bar. That’s Nonna, a new tavern from the crew at intimate kitchen DOC that mashes up New York–style Italian food (gravy, not tomato sauce) with Portland’s mixology scene. As with many local bars, the real focus at Nonna is Read more...
Favorite
Squeezed inside ChefStable’s mini restaurant row in the West End, this pasta joint from Lardo’s Rick Gencarelli falls into a category of its own. Lunchers line up for rotating pastas, from curvaceous strozzapreti to tubular rigatoni, salads, antipasti, and charmingly lowbrow cocktails. A recent dish of tiny agnolotti pillows, stuffed with ricotta and rich lamb sausage, speckled with mint, preserved lemon, Read more...
