Posted by Ed Levine, July 25, 2008 at 8:45 AM
I'm writing this from a hotel room in San Francisco, where my wife and I are wrapping up a six-day working vacation that included stops in Portland, Oregon; Bolinas, California; and San Francisco. Yesterday you read about my visit to the awesome Apizza Scholls in Portland. In the coming days I'll be sharing the results of my nonstop food forays in Portland, which included stops at the extraordinary Portland Farmers Market; a fantastic brunch at a catering company's kitchen that opens its doors on Sunday for breakfast; a visit to a very fine sausage-maker in the shadows of my brother's alma mater, Reed College; an early morning visit to a rock-and-roll doughnut emporium; and what might have been the most exciting restaurant meal I have had in years.
I ate all this in 36 hours in Portland. My two days in San Francisco have been even more food-packed. Portland and San Francisco, we have a problem. When I am food-exploring in places I don't often get to or I'm visiting for the first time, I launch into a manic, headlong dash to gluttonous, life-shortening oblivion.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, June 26, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Last weekend I picked up some strawberries at my local farmers' market (McCarren Park in Brooklyn, New York), but they weren't nearly as beautiful as the ones Lelo picked on Sauvie Island outside of Portland, Oregon. Read more about her day of strawberry picking on her blog, Lelo in Nopo.
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Posted by Jen Maiser, June 23, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Sometimes, it takes being away from my hometown farmers market for a week or two to really appreciate the turn in season.
I spent last week in Portland and visited the PSU Farmers Market, one of my favorite markets in the country. The PSU market was full of piles of porcini mushrooms, rhubarb and berries. The market vibe in Portland is like no other—a combination of completely relaxed mixed with a serious foodie vibe. I browsed through the market eating a Sol Pops paleta: cucumber, chile and lime-flavored.
Returning to San Francisco this week, I noticed that our market had switched from spring into early summer. Gone are most signs of spring, replaced with an abundance of early summer fruit.
I was most excited to find figs at the market. The figs were available from Knoll Farms, a farm in Brentwood that is about 60 miles from the market.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, June 6, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Want doughnuts topped with bacon or frosted and dipped in Cap'n Crunch? Then make your way to Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon. Anthony Bourdain visits the famed doughnut shop to to try their unconventional "non-conformist doughnuts" ("I kind of wish I was drunk before eating this," he says about the chocolate and peanut butter doughnut), and learn about their failed doughnut flavors, including Jägermeister and NyQuil. Watch the video, after the jump.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, October 8, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Everyone knows you can torture your kids by substituting apple slices for fries in a Happy Meal, but what about the important part of the kid's meal: the toy?
Burgerville is an unusual burger chain found only in Oregon and Southwest Washington. They use sustainably raised beef and Northwest fruit. The fish and chips is made with fresh Alaskan halibut. You can put Rogue Creamery's awesome Smokey Blue cheese on your burger or salad.
Recently, my daughter, Iris, got the kid's meal at Burgerville (plain burger and fries), and the toy was a plastic cup, a small trowel, and a packet of zinnia seeds. Iris loved planting the zinnias on our balcony. The other seeds in the series are sunflowers, forget-me-nots, and baby snapdragons. Collect all four! Dirt not included. (The regional chain has since moved on to a bird-watching toy series now that growing season has come to an end.)
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Posted by Ed Levine, September 26, 2007 at 10:05 AM
I didn't need to read Eric Asimov's New York Times story on food and drink in Portland, Oregon, to know that Portland is fast becoming one of America's best food towns.
Eric's list of places was by no means definitive (nor was it supposed to be) but by aggregating the spots he mentioned with others that have appeared on Serious Eats and in other places (another NYT piece by Chrstine Muhlke) the last few years we can put together a pretty complete Serious Eats Food Lover's Guide to Portland.
Those familiar with the Portland food scene should by all means add their favorite places to the list. Remember, this is Serious Eats. We want to know where Portland's best bites are, from foie gras to frankfurters, from pizza to pigeon, from burgers to berries. A great local online source for food information and entertainment is Portland Food and Drink. The site has a great tag line: "Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You."
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 18, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Every year Food & Wine throws a huge party honoring the Best New Chefs its editors have just named in the magazine. This year the event was held at Aspen Meadows, part of the Aspen Institute. The setting was magical. Mountains sprouted out of every window you looked out of, with streams and rivers placed ever so perfectly between them. The event was held in a space with three levels. My favorite on the first level was April Bloomfield's pork cheeks. Bloomfield is the chef partner at the Spotted Pig in New York City. But I had a feeling I would find something even better higher up, so I huffed and puffed my way to the third floor (the altitude was killing me).
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 22, 2007 at 9:00 AM
Photographs by Adam Kuban
I didn't know when the entreaties and pleading began, though I had an idea. I also didn't know how, exactly, Serious Eats founding overlord Ed Levine was going to manage bringing back to life a pizza shipped cross-country on dry ice. (Serious pizza eaters know the crust is at its best for only a minute or two out of the oven.) I do know that about two months after joining the Serious Eats crew, I received the following email:
So... Ed is calling me begging for a pizza. If I send one, are you going to eat some, since you are now a part of Team Serious Eats?
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 2, 2007 at 3:57 PM
Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen's Nationwide Food Section Roundup for today is all Super Bowl Sunday, featuring Washington D.C., Indiana, Oregon and Wisconsin. The Oregon eats are pretty fancy!
Posted by Ed Levine, June 19, 2006 at 5:56 AM
Pableaux Johnson wrote rapturously about cherries and other fruit in the Hood River Valley in Oregon, and though I've never been there, his story had me thinking about a roadtrip.
The folks at Chefshop have been sending me many reminders about the fantastic cherries they will start shipping from Batch Family Farm in eastern Washington. I know you can get cherries at your local market starting right about now, but the Batch cherries are something special. I've had the Lapins, which are juicy and huge, with a deep cherry flavor. This year Chefshop is also selling BFF Sweetheart cherries, which are a new strain of sweet cherries first grown in British Columbia. These are picked right after the Lapins, in mid to late July.
These cherries are expensive (about 17 bucks a pound with shipping), but worth every penny.
Meg Hourihan wrote a lovely, lyrical post about successfully creating a dish without using a cookbook that any self-taught cook (like me) can relate to.
