House of Louie

In the last couple of years, we've discovered the wonders of Dim Sum, which is a selection of Chinese small items such as dumplings, pot stickers, stir-fried baby bok choi, chinese asparagus, ginger chicken, sesame buns, etc wheeled around on carts through the restaurant. You are given a card, and each time you take something from the cart, they mark it on your card, and at the end you pay for whatever you took. On a whim the first time, we chose to go to House of Louie, which is in the extremely small and mostly non-chinese Chinatown in Northwest Portland. We've tried other places in Portland (and even one in San Francisco's Chinatown), but House of Louie continues to be our favorite.

The servers are usually really nice, service is good, and the restaurant is usually not so busy that you have to wait a long time to get in, though if you get there later rather than sooner, they definitely get much busier in the early afternoon than they are before noon.

Some of our favorite items are shown in the pictures below - the sesame buns with red bean paste in the middle (these are sweet), the rice dumplings with shrimp in them, and crispy shrimp balls - not pictured are the foil-wrapped ginger chicken and crab puffs, which pretty much round out the things we always want to get. We've had their baby bok choi and shu mai a few other things as well, and they have all been quite good. It's fun to just pick things that look interesting and try them out. We of course also have to get a jello parfait to finish things off.

I'm listing this as a moderately priced restaurant, with one caveat - since you're eating small amounts at a time, it's easy to lose track of how much you're eating, and since the dishes are small, it's easy to keep taking them, thinking you sure could eat one more plate - so this can be anywhere between a $10 and $20 lunch for one person, depending on just how long that goes on :)

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House of Louie
331 NW Davis St
Portland, OR 97209-3924
Phone: 503-228-9898


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a couple of wine recommendations

This isn't specifically about Portland food, but I guess we did consume the wine in Portland, so that counts, right? :)

We got a bottle of 2006 Domaine de L'Ameillaud Côtes du Rhône at New Seasons, which is 70% Grenache, 10% Syrah, and 20% Carignan. It's a cheap wine, I think it was on sale for $10/bottle, but it's a really nice sipping wine, and would also go well in or with red meat stews or soups.

Last night we went out to Chez Machin, and the waitress recommended a 2004 Château Thibaut-Ducasse Graves, which is 64% Merlot and 36% Cabernet Sauvignon. This is one of the better wines I've had in a long time. It has a really smooth flavor, and feels kind of velvety in your mouth. It tastes best after sitting in open air for a while, so if you get it, decant it first, or let it sit in your glass a while.

Cheers, all!