Oasis Cafe

There are two exceptionally good pizza places we have found in Portland, one of them being Oasis Cafe on SE Hawthorne Blvd. They have a wonderful range from all meat to vegetarian pizzas, stuffed pizzas, delicious dough, fresh ingredients, tasty sauces... You'll love every bite of their pizzas. They also have sandwiches, salads and a good selection of tasty beers and sodas to enjoy with your pizza. The atmosphere is pretty low key, several booths with a few tables in the middle, old pictures of Portland on the walls, and a couple of pinball machines in the corner. Prices are a little high for pizza (compared to Pizza Hut or Papa Murphy's), but the pizza is way better, and we usually get a $20-$25 pizza and have food for both of us for dinner and for lunch the next day, so it's relatively cheap for a meal. If I remember, they also have free delivery in the SE Portland Area, and they just added the ability to order online and have it delivered.

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Oasis Cafe
3701 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214
Phone: 503-231-0901

Ohana Hawaiian Cafe

So, I've never had Hawaiian food much prior to the last year or so, but if all Hawaiian food is like the food at Ohana Hawaiian Cafe, I think I could put up with all the sun and hot weather in exchange for the eating. We've been a few times now, and each time the food has been exceptional. The atmosphere is very friendly and the decor is simple and bright. My very favorite, the Kahlua Pig, is sensational, and their macaroni salad is wonderful as well. Last night we went, and the owner's wife had just made a chocolate tart with a shortbread crust with cacao nibs in the crust, and we were debating between that and their coconut custard with pineapple sauce and toasted coconut for dessert. We ended up getting the chocolate tart, and he brought us a coconut custard as well on the house because he wanted us to try it. Both of them were fantastic. The portions are very generous (I got a large Kahlua Pig for $10, and ate half and left half for my lunch today), and the service has always been quick and friendly. I highly recommend it.

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Ohana Hawaiian Cafe
6320 NE Sandy Blvd
Portland, OR 97213
Phone 503-335-5800
http://www.ohanahawaiiancafe.com/


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things we make at home

Saturday we were feeling in a cooking mood again, so we headed over to Pastaworks to get the ingredients. We did something similar to what we've done before, but I wanted to highlight a few things particularly.



This time we got the garlic and gorgonzola filled raviolis, which were really good (hopefully soon we're going to try making our own ground lamb, mint and chevre raviolis, we'll let you know). For an appetizer, we got this Delice de Bourgogne cheese, which is a triple cream, and a lovely baguette from Ken's Artisan Bakery (which they sell at Pastaworks).



We also had a really yummy pepperoni from Pastaworks, which we sliced up, and some garlic-stuffed green olives.



The cheese turned out to be one of the best things I've tasted in a long time (I'm a cheese nut), it was so rich and creamy and had such a nice, buttery flavor.

We got this bottle of 2004 Chateau Miraval Côtes de Provence, which is 80% Syrah and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. It's really tasty, not too sweet, not too dry, quite smooth, and not a bad price either (I think it was right around $20).





We made the butter-shallot sauce again for the ravioli, but this time we added sage to it, which added a really nice flavor. We should add a bit more next time though, as the shallot flavor is still rather overpowering in the whole mix of things.





We also made roasted asparagus again (yeah, I know, but it's soooo good), but this time we wrapped it with PastaWorks' house made pancetta instead of prosciutto, but we both decided it was better with the prosciutto. Also, this time we couldn't find the thin asparagus spears, so we had to use the normal, thick ones, and if you have to use those for roasting, I would recommend cutting off about the bottom 1/3 of the asparagus, as it tends to get fairly tough and stringy, but the tops of them were very nice and soft.





To finish off, we had an Organic Milk Chocolate bar from Moonstruck Chocolatier, a local Portland chocolatier.





So, there you have it. Hope you've enjoyed this little tour around our kitchen :) Cheers!

Khun Pic's Bahn Thai

First of all, I want to preface this post with a bit of a Eulogy for our old favorite Thai place in Portland, The Bangkok Kitchen. We hadn't found anywhere in Portland that we liked nearly as well, and there are gobs of Thai restaurants in Portland (mostly with horrible names like Beau Thai or Appethaizing). About 6 months ago, they closed and were replaced by another not-very-good "pan-asian" place, and we were devastated. We started trying new places all over in search of another favorite Thai place, but to no avail. There were a few that were good, but nothing really matched The Bangkok Kitchen, especially their Tom Ka soup and their Pad Thai.

So, we met these lovely people named Michael and Dara, who love food as much as we do, and they told us about this wonderful Thai place on SE Belmont ST. At first we thought they meant the Bangkok Kitchen (as it was on Belmont as well), and we were sad and told them it had closed. But they said, no, it was alive and well, and that we should all go sometime because the food was incredible. So, last night we finally made it there, and I have to say, it was one of the best dining experiences we've had, period.

The restaurant is in an old house on Belmont that has a garden in front and a gate which leads into the garden. It's very unassuming from the outside, and it looks like it could be a bed and breakfast or something like that. The garden area is beautiful (my picture isn't that good, I'll try to get a better one). It's directly across the street from The Tao of Tea, which we've been going to for years and years, but we never knew it was a restaurant. The house has been entirely redone on the inside, and it is decorated beautifully with rich colors and patterns and it feels very home-like. The seating area is in what would have been the entry and front room of the house, and there are beautiful smells wafting out of the swinging door to the kitchen every time it opens.

The restaurant is owned and run by a man and his wife, he's American and she's Thai. She cooks and he's the server. Due to the fact that it is just the two of them running the restaurant, you can expect to wait quite a while for your food, but believe me, if you don't have a time constraint, the wait is well worth it. The owners are both incredibly nice, and they will get to know you if you come in regularly (our friends Michael and Dara go fairly frequently, and have gone off and on since they opened, and were on familiar terms with both of them). We got to the restaurant at about 7.15pm and we left at about 11.30pm. For about the last hour that we were there, we were just talking with the owners, who had both come out of the kitchen, as there was only one other couple left there besides the four of us. She gave us a piece of cake she had bought that day, and we just sat and talked. It really felt like we had just come over to their house for dinner, which was wonderful.

Now, more about the food. She shops every day for the food for the restaurant, and so she buys everything fresh and locally. When she's shopping, she said if she can't find good green beans for instance, she just won't buy them, and the curry won't have green beans that day. This to say, they are very concerned with the quality of their food, and it shows. Everything we tried was very flavorful, and the flavors were very complimentary and well-balanced. We started with salad rolls, which have mint and apple in them, and come with a home-made spicy peanut sauce that is absolutely delicious. After that came the Tom Ka soup with tofu and vegetables, which we liked even better than Bangkok Kitchen's (which is saying a lot). In terms of main courses, we tried their Pad Thai with chicken, Drunken Noodles with chicken and Green Curry with prawns and vegetables, and all three were delicious. We were excited about the Pad Thai, as that had been one of our main disappointments with other Thai restaurants in town. Many of them serve a very ketchupy Pad Thai, but this was more dry noodles and still very flavorful, just how we like it. We got it with chicken this time, but will have to try it with tofu and vegetables next time, as that is our favorite way to have it. The drunken noodles were something we had never tried before, and I'm glad we did. The green curry was rich and flavorful and the prawns were cooked perfectly.

Anyway, we left extremely satisfied and hoping to make this place a regular stop in our going out to eat. It's a bit more expensive than your average Thai place, more in the $10-$15 range per entree, but the food and the overall experience are amazing. Definitely give it a try if you're ever in Portland and you enjoy Thai food.

edit:
I forgot to mention that we found out in the course of conversation with the owners of the place, that she is the daughter of the lady who originally owned The Bangkok Kitchen :) Small world...

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From the sidewalk, through the garden:


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Khun Pic's Bahn Thai
3429 SE Belmont ST
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 235-1610


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Prosciutto Ravioli with Butter and Shallot Sauce and Roasted Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus

So, to follow the post about PastaWorks, here is something we made both using items from PastaWorks, and following an idea we got from a deli item we saw at PastaWorks - our dinner from Tuesday night.

We made prosciutto ravioli from PastaWorks with a butter and shallot sauce, and served it with roasted, prosciutto wrapped asparagus spears (this was the idea we got from PastaWorks), and a rustic baguette from New Seasons with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. We actually got the prosciutto, asparagus and shallots at New Seasons as well, another market which I'm sure will end up in a post here at some point.

The ravioli of course were pre-made, the sauce I believe was just melted butter and shallots, cooked until clear in the butter.

The asparagus spears were just wrapped in a couple pieces of prosciutto, salted and peppered, and roasted in the oven.

Anyway, the asparagus spears were pure genius, one of the best things I've tasted in a while. The ravioli was delicious as well, and the sauce complemented them really nicely. It was a delicious meal.

I believe Trina is going to post the exact recipe on her blog, so keep an eye out for it.

Here are some pictures

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The asparagus spears prior to cooking:


Ravioli boiling:


The asparagus spears after cooking:


Bread fixins:


Bread ready to eat:


A finished plate of ravioli and asparagus spears:

PastaWorks

Local, organic, community and sustainable have kind of become buzzwords in the Portland food arena, but there aren't that many markets especially (there are more restaurants) that are really committed to those things above and beyond their image and their profits. Pastaworks is one place that actually does seem to be.

They are a small family-owned European style market located on SE Hawthorne Blvd (they actually have two locations, but I'm most familiar with this one). They have an enormous Italian, Spanish, French and Northwest U.S. wine selection, one of the largest in the country. They also have a very impressive cheese section with imported cheeses from Italy, France, The Netherlands, as well as local northwest cheeses.

They also, as you might imagine, make their own pasta, which they sell in their own stores, as well as a few other places in town. It is always fresh and really tasty, ranging from plain pastas (fettuccine, linguine, etc), to raviolis, tortellinis, and they will sell you sheets of pasta as well, which you can then make into whatever you would like. We've made lasagna and ravioli with their pasta sheets in the past, and it has always turned out very well.

They offer fresh produce from a variety of local family farms, including all kinds of greens, root vegetables, mushrooms, asparagus, etc. The produce always looks wonderful and smells and tastes just as good.

The meat counter features a wide range of meat cuts and sausages from local northwest farms, as well as salamis and cured meats (such as prosciutto ham) both local and imported. They also have fresh dairy products and eggs available, also sourced from local northwest farms.

They carry an assortment of different grocery items, imported pastas, olive oils and vinegars (and good ones, too - it's amazing how much difference there can be in olive oils and vinegars), beers, sodas, candies, crackers, and other snacks.

They have a small deli area as well, which sells some prepared foods, hot and cold sandwiches, salads, etc. The other day they had roasted prosciutto wrapped asparagus spears. Yum.

Above and beyond the quality of the items they sell, the atmosphere here is wonderful. After we had moved back from Lithuania, this place always made us smile, as it reminded us so much of small markets we had seen in Europe. The meat counter feels like a real meat counter (everything isn't pre-wrapped in plastic and styrofoam), everything is presented very nicely in the whole store, and the whole experience, from looks to smells to tastes is very aesthetically pleasing. It's just always nice to walk in there and look around.

Located just between Powell's Books and Powell's Home and Garden store on Hawthorne Blvd (actually has a door that opens into the Home and Garden store), so you can go, get a good book, sit and have some coffee and read at the Fresh Pot in Powell's, then hop next door to get food for lunch or dinner, or start off by getting the perfect cookbook at the Home and Garden store, then pop next-door to get the goods to make something from it.

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The front of the store:


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PastaWorks
3735 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland Oregon 97214
503-232-1010
http://www.pastaworks.com/


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Phở Hung

Portland has a wide range of ethnic food choices, and one that has been gaining popularity lately is Vietnamese.

Some restaurants have popped up in more trendy areas of town, but one of our favorites is this one, that has been around for quite a while. There are now two locations in southeast Portland, but the one we usually frequent is on about 47th and Powell, just across from Creston Park and right next to Firestone. The building is pretty unassuming looking, and the decor is a bit... eccentric. The food, however, is fantastic, and the owner is really friendly and always cheery, asking emphatically, "what would you like for your wonderful dinners?"

Vietnamese cuisine is, of course, well known for phở, beef noodle soup. Phở Hung has three categories of beef noodle soup choices, ranging from "beginner" to "usual" to "adventurous". The beginner and usual choices feature mostly well-done beef brisket, well-done flank, eye of round steak or meatballs, where some of the usual and the adventurous options introduce fat brisket, soft tendon or tripe. They have a good selection of non-soup entrees as well, from lemongrass chicken with vegetables and noodles to rice with grilled pork, pork skin and shrimp to egg noodles with shrimp, pork, fish balls and chicken leg to teriyaki chicken, vegetables and rice. A number of vegetarian options are available as well. Their egg rolls and salad rolls are delicious, and their hot tea is fantastic as well. Drinks range from sodas to iced espresso with condensed milk to iced tea lemonade to pickled prune drink. They also have a decent selection of bubble teas.

While I haven't ventured into the "adventurous" soup choices yet (though I do want to try one at some point), everything we have tried here has been very flavorful, well prepared, meats well cooked but not overcooked, and everything prepared in a timely manner.

Soup prices are (if my memory serves me) about $6 for a small and $7 for a large. The large soup is gigantic, and most people could probably split it between two people. Entrees range from $7-$9 and appetizers are $3-$5.

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Phở Hung
4717 SE Powell Blvd
Portland, OR 97206-3142
Phone: (503) 775-3170


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Chez Machin

I thought I would start off and make my first post about one of our standard places in Portland. This is a little crêperie/bistro on SE Hawthorne street. We went for the first time a few months ago, and since then it has become a favorite and we are essentially regulars.

They have a delicious selection of both savory and sweet crepes, with daily specials on both (that is, crepes which aren't on the regular menu, but are offered just that day). Their Boeuf Stroganoff crepe is amazing, and they had a peach and mango with chocolate drizzled on top sweet crepe this week that was delicious. They have a number of wonderful bistro dishes as well, ranging from Boeuf Bourguignon to Cassoulet to Seared Tuna Fillet and Moules et Bouquet Provençal. Their french onion soup is to die for (and vegetarian - how they make it so wonderful without beef broth we can't figure out), and they usually have one other soup as well, such as a mushroom bread soup or potato cheese soup. They have a few grilled sandwiches and salads for a nice lunch, and they have a daily ravioli special and a quiche as well.

They have a good wine and beer selection, including a Chateau Bouissel Fronton which is a really nice red wine, and Chimay ale, a really nice Belgian ale.

They also serve coffee (including espresso drinks), tea and hot cocoa. They serve Nossa Familia coffee, which is roasted in Oregon using beans from their family farm in Brazil.

The food portions are quite healthy, and prices are pretty moderate for the quality and amount of food. I would expect to spend around $15-$20 per person for dinner and a drink, or somewhere between $8-15 for lunch. Sweet crepes range from $3-$6.

The atmosphere is fantastic - cozy, warm and friendly - and the decor is very (at least by my American estimation) French Bistro. The main evening waitress who is usually there when we go is wonderful and cheery and always makes us feel at home, which is characteristic of all the employees we've met there - it is just a very comfortable place to be.

Everything we've tried here has been absolutely delicious, and I would recommend going several times and trying things that you've never had before. I think you're highly unlikely to be disappointed. We've never had a bad experience here. Reservations are almost never needed, as they usually are not full, but if you're going to go on Valentine's Day or another such popular dinner night, I would recommend making reservations ahead of time.

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The front of the restaurant:


Nutella Custard with Raspberry Jam and Chocolate Sauce:


The back enclosed patio area of the restaurant, open year round, with a giant weird Gus Van Sant painting on the wall. (don't we all look happy? It was Dave's mom's first time there)


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Chez Machin
3553 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 736-9381


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Welcome!

I'm going to start off by saying please excuse me for going with function over form for right now on the blog layout. I promise I'll make it pretty in the near future, but for now, I don't have the time and I'd rather get a post or two up and running, so here we go! Hang on to your seats!