Favorite
With tables in the foyer and front porch of a two story Nob Hill building, dining at the Waiting Room will have you feeling like you’ve been invited to Big Easy bash. Heavy on seafood options, the menu includes small plates like ginger barbecue shrimp, beet carpaccio, and steamed clams. Read more...
Favorite
Beaverton’s all day, southern-style breakfast restaurant doesn’t shy away from butter-slathered and fried classics like chicken and waffles, fried green tomato Benedict, and catfish, shrimp and grits. If post-meal naps feel inevitable, Sweet Jam’s full bar and live music on weekends should help keep you going. Read more...
Favorite
In 2015, Tapalaya chef Anh Luu added a Vietnamese spin to this New Orleans-inspired restaurant’s brunch menu, inspired by her childhood in New Orleans and her Vietnam War refugee parents. The Asian/Cajun flavors offer a fun, Mardi Gras bead-strewn alternative to another East Burnside Southern brunch favorite a few blocks away (without the two-hour wait). Don’t miss the eggs sardou Read more...
Favorite
Mae shoehorns a flavorful subset of Southern cooking rarely seen in Portland into a drafty old warehouse behind Old Salt—inspired by the garden-fresh dishes Maya Lovelace grew up devouring at her grandmother Mae’s North Carolina kitchen table and bolstered by produce grown just for the restaurant by Gresham’s Black Locust Farm. Open only three days a week (Monday Meat + Read more...
Favorite
The new brick-and-mortar home of plant-based eatery Homegrown Smokehouse continues its legacy of bafflingly convincing vegan Southern comfort food, with sweet, pulled pork–style soy curls; crispy fried faux-fish sandos; and hefty, juicy, slow smoked seitan burgers topped with creamy, dairy-free “macnocheese.” It’s the sliced “schmeats”—deftly seasoned soy curls, tempeh, and seitan, smoked in-house for hours over applewood chips—that we can’t stop coming Read more...
Favorite
Tucked away in the restaurant corner of Northeast 15th Ave and Prescott that houses Pok Pok Noi and Extracto Coffee, one of Portland’s best under-the-radar Southern restaurants is quietly deep-frying breakfast and brunch. The fried catfish, served with a “Nashville Hot,” option, is devilishly spicy, with a craggy cornmeal crust and flaky flesh. The buttermilk fried chicken is some of Read more...
Favorite
Situated in a petite Victorian house (formerly home to the Brazen Bean martini bar), Pope House serves down-home cooking, pulled-pork quesadilla in a bourbon-based barbecue sauce to a hot brown with thinly sliced turkey, bacon, cheddar, and Parmesan aioli on toasted jalapeño bread. But the main attractions, as the name implies, are the 40-plus brands of bourbon whiskey nestled behind the cozy corner bar. In Read more...
Favorite
Between the big-screen TV broadcasting the latest game—any game—and Southern funk banging from the speakers, you may wonder if you’ve wandered into a college sports bar. But it’s the kind of sports bar that has a Sunday jazz brunch, and an impressive selection of Northwest oysters—Kumamotos to Yaquina Bays—baked, fried, raw, and in elaborate shooters, ranging from a Cajun, chili-infused Read more...
Favorite
Two Vietnamese brothers who grew up in Texas open a Creole joint may sound like the start of a joke, but forsaking My Brother’s Crawfish because of its owners’ seemingly tenuous relationship to authentic N’awlins fare would be a mistake. The crawfish boiled in salty, spicy sauce and served with corn on the cob, potatoes, mushrooms, and andouille is the main attraction. Read more...
Favorite
Missouri native Adam Sappington is evangelical in matters of meat and a master of American vernacular cooking— somewhere between a nose-to-tail preacher and a Southern granny. That translates to three meals a day in a family-friendly neighborhood eatery perfumed with hickory smoke, grits, and barbecue essence. Catch the Sappington mode in Portland’s landmark fried chicken, the squeal-worthy “whole hog plate,” Read more...
