Portland Restaurants

These days, Portland is to dining what Angelina Jolie is to the movies. Rising star chefs are flocking to this playground of sustainability and creativity: a major portion of Portland's hottest new restaurants change menus weekly—sometimes even daily—depending upon the ingredients they have delivered to their door that morning from local farms. A combination of fertile soils, temperate weather, nearby waters, and an urban growth boundary means that a bountiful harvest (of anything from lettuces to hazelnuts, mushrooms to salmon) is within any Portland chef's reach.

And these chefs are not shy about putting new twists on old favorites. Restaurants like LePigeon (yes, they serve pigeon), Beast, Rocket, Hoyt 23, Roux, Fife, and Paley's Place have all taken culinary risks to delight diners by presenting an exciting blend of menu offerings based on sustainable ingredients. Because there's such a nearly-fanatical willingness for chefs to explore their creative boundaries, one's palette hardly knows what to expect from restaurant to restaurant, season to season.

The other benefit of this culinary craze is that menus extend across nations and continents. First-time visitors to Portland always seem to be impressed by the diversity of its restaurants. Lovers of ethnic foods have their pick of Chinese, French, Indian, Peruvian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Middle Eastern, Tex-Mex, Thai, and Vietnamese specialties. Of course, Northwest cuisine is prevalent, taking advantage of the availability of fresh salmon, halibut, crab, oysters, and mussels due to the proximity of rivers and the Pacific Ocean.

Most of the city's trendier restaurants and reliable classics are concentrated in Nob Hill, the Pearl District, and downtown. But an incredible smattering of cuisines can be found on the east side of town as well, near Fremont, Hawthorne Boulevard, Sandy Boulevard, Alberta Street, and tucked away in myriad neighborhoods in between. True food enthusiasts will also be well rewarded by doing a little research to find some of the out-of-the-way places.

Hours, Prices & Dress

Compared to other major cities, Portland restaurants may not be open quite as late, and it's unusual to see many diners after 11 PM even on weekends; there are ahandful of restaurants and popular bars that do serve late if you happen to be out on the town.

One aspect to Portland's dining scene that many locals and out-of-towners find appealing is how reasonably priced top-notch restaurants are; well. Particularly welcome in Portland is happy hour, when both inventive cocktails as well as small plates of food can be a good value; you can easily put together a fine early dinner by grazing from the happy hour menu at one of the city's fine restaurants that also happens to have a popular bar scene.

Portland's come-as-you-are flair will either be refreshing or annoying to those who prefer (or abhor) how casually diners show up at even the higher-end establishments. Jeans are acceptable almost everywhere.

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