Grocers seek to cash in on Portland's Asian population boom
Daryl Lau sank a large cleaver through a glistening side of crispy-skinned pork with rhythmic thunks as a diverse crowd of shoppers at Oriental Food Value gathered around a brightly lit case of roasted meats.
The complete guide to every Asian grocery store in the Portland area
You can find almost anything in the Portland area, if you know where to look.
With 45 (and counting) Asian grocery stores across the Portland metro area, finding ingredients for cooking nearly every cuisine on the continent has never been easier. We spent two days exploring — from Vancouver to Southeast Portland and Gresham to Hillsboro — to visit all 45 stores and discover what ingredients were stocked in their aisles. For each store, we've provided a basic outline of available goods, as well as a summary of the cuisine each is best for.
Perry is the cider lover's drink you've never heard of
Perry is cider's underrated, and undiscovered, cousin.
An alcoholic beverage made by fermenting pears, perry is often confused with pear cider, a distinctly different drink. While perry is made with 100 percent pears, pear cider is typically an apple cider sweetened with pear juice.
Meet Kiosko, Portland's proudly Latinx coffee shop
Angel Medina wants to be known as a "dude who roasts good coffee, not the Mexican dude who roasts coffee."
But in Portland, one of the country's leading third-wave coffee cities, home to the pioneering coffee company Stumptown, Medina and his girlfriend Lucy Alvarez's three-month-old coffee shop Kiosko stands out.
Will wildfires affect the taste of Oregon's wines?
Days after the Eagle Creek fire, a haze of choking smoke settled over Portland.
It turned the sun and moon an ominous blood orange and forced many to wear specially rated masks to combat the unhealthy air quality.
Yes reservations: Pok Pok grows into Northwest Portland (review)
For years, the only way to get a table at the original Pok Pok on Southeast Division was to get there early, or spend your evening sipping a tamarind whiskey sour at Whiskey Soda Lounge while waiting your turn. In April, Pok Pok opened its fifth Portland location with one big change: this one accepted reservations. The newest iteration, which took over Northwest Portland's former Bent Brick space with a menu of new appetizers and daily specials, feels like it should have always been Pok Pok.
Some of Portland's best and most beautiful pasta comes from a food cart
As much as he tried, Jesse Martinez couldn't stay away from pasta. The longtime Bar Mingo cook spent a year couch-surfing while his house was listed on Airbnb, squirreling away enough money to open a food cart where he planned to start by serving Italian food, then tangent off to whatever his heart desired. The only problem? At Gumba, which Martinez opened a year ago with best friend Robin Brassaw, the fresh pastas were such a hit, they couldn't take them off the menu.
Why Australian coffee gem Proud Mary built its first U.S. cafe in Portland
Have you heard about Australia's coffee culture? Among the subcontinent's other culinary movements, the cafe scene is red hot, firing off trends faster than we can keep up with them. Avocado toast? They created it. Starbucks' "new" coffee drink, the flat white? It comes from the land down under.
Sake City USA: How Portland became the Japanese rice wine capital of America
Twenty-five years ago, the only places to find sake in the United States were Japanese restaurants and Asian grocery stores.
"It was brutal," said Marcus Pakiser, vice president of the sake category at Young's Market. "You didn't really see these imports in America. I would go in to accounts to sell sake and they would say, 'We don't get any Asians here,' or, 'We don't do sushi.' "
What is Alabama-style barbecue and why is it suddenly everywhere?
Last year, Laurelhurst Market chef Ben Bettinger started serving a smoked-chicken sandwich topped with what he called an "Alabama white sauce" in the Northeast Portland steakhouse's parking lot. The only problem? Before launching the restaurant's pop-up and its spin-off restaurant, Big's Chicken, Bettinger had never heard of the style.
Big's Chicken smokes up the sandwich of the summer: Scouting Report
Big's Chicken, which began as a series of "Five-Napkin Chicken" events in Laurelhurst Market's parking lot, already looks like the spin-off hit of the summer. The restaurant, found inside the former Big Ass Sandwiches storefront and co-owned by Laurelhurst Market co-owners Ben Dyer, Jason Owens, David Kreifels and chef Ben Bettinger, smokes and grills whole chickens basted in Alabama White Gold barbecue sauce, boneless thighs for sandwiches, smokes and deep fries wings and plates up savory sides such as dirty rice, fried cauliflower and JoJos.
What is Cinco de Mayo? Portland-area Mexican chefs explain what the holiday means to them
The history behind Cinco de Mayo, which marks an unlikely Mexican victory over France, is, frankly, a little dry.
Scratch your soup dumpling itch at North Portland's XLB: Scouting Report
Xiaolongbao, the Shanghai-style soup dumplings that have reached cult status in recent years, are tricky to construct. Their thin, manifold skin has to be capable of containing not just a pork filling, but the slowly liquefying broth inside as well. They're a dumpling that's eluded many restaurants in town, and for a time, they eluded Jasper Shen. Now, after practicing his dumpling-folding technique with a pop-up at his former restaurant, Aviary, and making plenty of visits to venerable Seattle dumpling temple Din Tai Fung, he's steaming xiaolongbao to order at his two-month-old North Portland restaurant.
Why some of Portland's hottest restaurants are counting on counter service
The 30-minute line for a table at North Portland's recently opened XLB snaked around the entire waiting area on a chilly, but dry Tuesday night.
Some sipped squat glasses of wine or golden-hued pints of beer. Others sat patiently, faces illuminated by the fluorescent menu advertising steamed buns, pan-fried noodles and the restaurant's eponymous dumplings, xiaolongbao, while waiting for their turn to order dinner. Like many of the year's first restaurant openings in Portland -- including torteria Guero and best-of-Beijing spot Danwei Canting -- XLB only offers counter service.
99 delicious dishes for $10 and under: Portland Cheap Eats 2017
It’s not easy to eat on a budget in Portland anymore. This year for our annual Cheap Eats guide, we’ve put together a list of the 99 most delicious dishes under $10. Many of the restaurants featured here fall outside Portland city limits. Nearly half of them are small, independent, minority-owned businesses. All of them reflect the growing diversity of the Portland dining scene, if you know where to look. From Oregon City to North Portland, Gresham to Hillsboro, this is your guide to the 99 most delicious cheap eats in the Portland area.
From McDonald's to Lan Su Garden, Chinese tea culture can happen anywhere
Every morning when I was growing up, my grandfather would meet a group of friends at the same McDonald's in Chicago. They didn't need smartphones. Instead, there was an agreement that every morning around 8:30 a.m., this group of elderly Chinese men would be there, sitting in those swiveling chairs in those plastic booths, talking about the fish they'd caught (or hadn't caught) and their growing families, all the while sipping on Styrofoam cups of cream-soaked coffee.
The tipping point: Why some Portland restaurants are ditching gratuities
On a Wednesday evening at Park Kitchen, chef David Sapp rests a slice of hard-grilled pork terrine in a bowl of sushi rice and leek kimchi. Sapp, wearing a midnight-blue apron with tweezers emerging from the front pocket, looks out at the quiet dining room, then carries the finished plate to a table of guests himself.
That simple act of delivering a plate signals a major shift in the way we eat. Earlier this month, Park Kitchen joined the dozens of restaurants across the country that have ditched the traditional end to most diners' evenings: calculating the tip. To help streamline the change, the Northwest Portland restaurant cross-trained employees on a new hybrid service model, removing traditional "back-" and "front-of-house" roles.
Portland's 2016 Best Cheap Eats, from downtown to the burbs
It's easy to eat on a budget in the Portland area. You can find everything from fiery Chinese stews, excellent lunchtime Indian buffets, some of the city's best new pizza and more within a short distance of the city center. Everyone has his or her own definition for what's considered cheap eats. Ours range from $1 tacos to $20/person all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue. From Oregon City to North Portland, Gresham to Hillsboro, this is your guide to the Portland area's best cheap eats.