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Southland Whiskey Kitchen: A Preview

October 11, 2012 by Dave Leave a Comment

This guest post is graciously provide by friend-of-the-blog Rick, of Beerdrinker.org and @m8ryx on Twitter – thanks Rick!

Southland Whiskey KitchenWhen Dave asks, it is imperative that you do the right thing. Especially when it’s “Hey, Rick, would you like to checkout this new restaurant that serves tasty BBQ and delicious grown-up beverages?” So, I did the right thing: show up to Southland for a preview of their tasty menu.

Southland Whiskey Kitchen (1422 NW 23rd) is a new project by the folks who brought the Casa del Matador (1438 NW 23rd) to Portland, located just a couple doors. Not that other (awesome but totally different) Matador. The first thing you notice is the decor. As you may have noticed at their Matador with the intricate ironwork, these guys are chronically attentive to detail, with a simple but elegant wood decor and some awesome light fixtures that I won’t endeavor to describe, as my effort will fall short so you should probably go check them out (but props to Hippo Hardware for providing the moody bulbs). The space has a large open air section facing NW 23rd, openings that were not there when it was the Clear Creek Distillery.

Southland interior

The menu is heavily Southern without many concessions, most of which live in the sides and salads, to vegetarians. Vegans need not apply, unless you’re just looking to quench your thirst. Everything I ate was pleasing. There were two standout items: the collard greens, and the spicy shrimp with grits. The biscuit was a thing of beauty, and went nicely slathered with honey butter and brisket.

Eric (my date) and I disagreed on the fried chicken. There was consensus that the meat (we both had thigh) was juicy and tender, but butted heads on the fry. It comes down to a matter of preference, I like mine a bit crispier and spiced, and Eric likes it the wrong way. Don’t tell anyone but the fried chicken may become available in ‘n waffles format with the advent of a brunch menu.

They were nice enough to bring us key lime pie for dessert but I was so stuffed on main course items I only shoveled a couple quick bites into my mouth on my way to tour the kitchen. Please remember folks, we’re professionals, excelling at planning, pacing, and execution.

Okay. Now on to the bar. The wonderful, wonderful bar. The bar is wide. With whiskey. The only place in town I can think of with a comparable list is the Brooklyn Park Pub (3400 SE Milwaukie). Southland specializes in American bourbons, ryes, and whiskeys. A rough count or their list shows about 120 American selections. They appear to be well curated, with a selection that reaches into the Canadian, Irish, and Scotch varieties as well.

Cocktails at SouthlandWe were served a variety of hard and soft mixed drinks throughout the evening. I was presented a Mint Julep just for walking in, YMMV. The julep was great. I was parched from the long drive to NW 23rd from the office, and the crushed ice worked wonders with the classic refresher. It had a sweetness, but over the top for me, unlike the Southern Punch. My date Eric loved them both, but I tend to shy away from beverages with “punch” in the description. For the kiddies and DDs (can’t think of anyone else) they have their scratch lemonade. They make it from lemon juice and sugar. Again, super-sweet, but I think that’s how it’s done in the South.

Meal service closed with an Old Fashioned. Ah, back to my kind of drink. This was the most avante-garde of the bunch, with a big ice cube and a suspended cherry (next to the ice, not in it). The effect was of a somewhat deconstructed Old Fashioned, which you could drink from different sides of the ice for slightly different effects.

Happily, we got to checkout the kitchen, which was pretty classy with its mesquite grill and big ‘ole black smoker. It smelled wonderful in the back with the local apple wood smoking the meats, but I can see why they do their best to vent out and up, since some customers may object to a smoky meaty sauna.

I’m expecting Southland to pack a pretty lively happy hour, which will run daily 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Portland Fruit Beer Fest 2012: A Preview

June 8, 2012 by Dave Leave a Comment

The second annual Portland Fruit Beer Fest (PFBF) returns to Burnside Brewing (NE Burnside & 7th) this Saturday and Sunday, June 9 and 10, 2012. Dave Knows contributor Mike Allen was invited to a recent media preview event, and filed the review below (he also took all the photos!). Enjoy the review, and find more from Mike at his blog Gangster of Food, and on Twitter @GangsterOfFood.

PFBF 2012 (Photo by Mike Allen)

Portland Fruit Beer Festival is up for its second iteration, and after lasts year’s unanticipated success they’ll be more prepared with 25 regular taps, 30 rotating four at a time, five times the staff, a stage, and more food than the inaugural year’s bash. Plus they’ll be closing 7th avenue to make more room for stumbling.

Among the offerings will be Burnside Brewing Company’s Red Light District, an imperial stout incorporating 44 pounds of chocolate and 400 pounds of strawberries. Four, with two zeros. I don’t know how much they brewed, but judging by the strawberry tang on the fore, mid, and after palate, it wasn’t a huge batch. It’s not sweet; at least the sugar doesn’t come through on the palate. No one could say what the final gravity was. The lack of sweetness is, at least in part, due to the massive dark cocoa bitterness and splintery tannins from the rum barrels it spent 5 weeks in. I would scarce have noticed the 10.2% alcohol, if this weren’t the first of six beers I was to taste.

Lompoc’s Bomb.com had a hard time standing up to the wall of cocoa coating my palate, even after a full glass of water. However, it had a slight though pleasant whiff of acetic acid, and a little funk in the mouth. By “funk in the mouth,” I mean the good kind, the kind that opens up your singing voice. The notes describe the fruit as cherry, which sounds right, but I wouldn’t think of it as cherry unless it had cherries on the label. Mostly, it’s pleasantly, subtly sour. It may actually be ass-kickingly sour, but it’s hard to tell after having had one’s ass kicked in the red light district.

Laurelwood will be bringing the truly punny Cascara Obscura to the fest. Cascara is the fruit from around the coffee bean, and it normally goes back on the ground, to fertilize the bushes. Fortunately, brewmaster Vasili Gletsos found a better use for it. The dark reddish ale’s toffee caramel nose was slight enough to engage even a confirmed philistine like me, and led to deeper pleasures. Toasted biscuits on the palate were enhanced by the tang of rose hips. Truly engaging without proselytizing.

Hopworks‘ What Up Apple-Weizen was a fermented blend of Cameo apples and Hefeweizen. Some marriages seem destined to win, and fail anyway.

PFBF 2012 previewWidmer returns with its Marionberry Hibiscus Gose, based on an authentic German Gose recipe. Gose is style of German sour with salt added which has struggled to exist in the 20th century. I remember Upright had one for a while, tasting attendees sniggered about some inside joke concerning the fate of that brew, but it was good. This Gose was also pretty good. The color is intense. The hibiscus makes the marionberry taste like a more sophisticated fruit than it really is, like a lingonberry, or an evergreen huckleberry. Otherwise it drinks light, the salt of the Gose style really adds to its thirst quenching qualities. A summer spectacular.

Upright’s entry into this mash-up is called the Levinator. It’s described as a barley based bock brewed with Bavarian weisse yeast. The pinot noir barrels that it did time in certainly lend it that elegant pinot vitality. The war of tart and bitter is something to think about. It is absolutely viscous with Oregon black currants. Fortunately, Oregon black currants are delicious.

The festival costs $20 to get in (free for non-drinkers, and open to all ages – sorry though, no pets!). This buys a glass and 12 tickets: each ticket buys four ounces of beer. The festival starts Saturday at 11:00 a.m. but, if you feel like spending a little extra, you can get in at 10 a.m. on Saturday for $25, same deal. There will be some special, limited quantity brews to try during that first hour including at least a keg of hard cider that will likely run out before the crowd rushes in. For more details, read Dave’s post about the fest here at Dave Know Portland, and visit PortlandFruitBeerFest.com.

Book Review: Brewed Awakening

December 13, 2011 by Dave Leave a Comment

Beer writer Joshua M. Bernstein‘s new book, Brewed Awakening: Behind the Beers and Brewers Leading the World’s Craft Brewing Revolution, which I received a copy to review, is a lively journal of contemporary craft brewing.

Each section of the book encapsulates a different theme, with explanatory sections, and a few spotlighted breweries, brewers, or beers. Illustrations and photographs spice up the presentation, which mimics a journal, featuring subsections “taped” in (sometimes on ersatz scraps of lined paper), and with snapshots attached with “paper clips.” At the end of each section and subsection a list of beers is provided that illustrates the topic just reviewed. When you sit down with this book, have a notepad and pencil nearby so you can make a list of the beers that pique your curiosity.

Beers covered include extreme beers, sessions, gose, ancient ales, barrel-aged brews, seasonal ales, and more. Topics such as gypsy brewing, collaborator brewing, nano brewing, and beer-pairing dinners, are also covered. History, ancient and contemporary, is touched on. Domestic breweries get the bulk of the mentions, with plenty of Oregon beers and brewers represented, but several international breweries are also spotlighted.

I enjoyed the book. Though encyclopedic, it’s not an encyclopedia. I read it cover to cover, gleaning (and reinforcing) knowledge along the way. I took copious notes on beers to look out for (seriously, have a notepad and pencil nearby!).

Portland Seafood Company: A Preview

November 18, 2011 by Dave 4 Comments

Portland Seafood RestaurantPortland Seafood Company (9722 SE Washington) opened its doors a just few days ago in the old Newport Seafood Grill location at Mall 205. Dave Knows contributor Mike Allen was invited to a recent media preview event at the restaurant, and filed the review below (he also took all the photos!). Enjoy the review, and find more from Mike at his blog Gangster of Food, and on Twitter @GangsterOfFood.

Update 1/24/2012: A second Portland Seafood Company location has opened at 9585 SW Washington Square Rd IC, Portland, OR 97223.

Portland Seafood Company menu, with condiments (photo by Mike Allen)

Mall 205 is as reminiscent of the Oregon coast as 82nd Avenue is evocative of Paris’s Avenue des Champs Elysées. Still, an Arc de Triomphe couldn’t hurt the place. And while it would be an unwarranted hyperbole to describe The Portland Seafood Company as a Triumph, it certainly spruces the joint up a bit. After all, who hasn’t spent a trying Saturday attempting to whittle down their overly-ambitious “Honey do” list and, after a third run to Home Depot in a futile quest to procure exactly the right widget to repair the appliance/fixture/structure, thought, “You know what would be nice? A grip of oyster shooters, a bucket of fried clams and a Ninkasi, that’s what.” Precious few I’d imagine.

Oyster shooter at Portland Seafood Company (photo by Mike Allen)The atmosphere is a bit disjointed: faux granite and “distressed” wood surfaces under Edison bulbs and above tarnished steel bar stools, but comfy nonetheless. The service is professional, as friendly and unobtrusive as you might find at a place that serves monkfish and white asparagus and truffles, the bartender exceptionally friendly and engaged. The chef hit his mark, but we failed to dispatch the cornucopian repast.

We feasted on margarita shooters, Bloody Mary shooters, crab cocktails, oysters casino, oysters on the half shell, steamed clams, clam chowder, fried clams, crab boil, fried cod, po’ boy sliders, fried halibut, butter and garlic prawns and a whole fried rockfish served with a riot of Latin-inspired garnitures and tortillas. There was Tabasco, Old Bay and Heinz malt vinegar at the table. While I would describe nothing as a failure, the fried foods apparently hold “favorite son” status in the kitchen of Chef Brian Poor. The clams for example are East Coast Quahogs tenderized in much the same manner as a cube steak, dusted in semolina and fried. The menu claims “funyuns” as a side. Don’t be fooled like me, they just don’t want to sound too fancy by sayin’ frites á l’oignion. The fried Cod and Halibut, served as “Fish and Chips” are, truly, some of the best I’ve ever
had, even if the chips were frozen. The regular tartar sauce is perfectly tart. I cannot, however, find much nice to say about this bacon tartar sauce. The items that miss only do so in ways that snobby professional cooks and assorted gastronomic malingerers would notice anyway. Most of the fish is Pacific Northwest and considered sustainably harvested. The prices are quite reasonable; value driven is the phrase I believe they used.

Basket of seafood at Portland Seafood Company (Photo by Mike Allen)

I imagine the CEO of Restaurants Unlimited has a very short (nonexistent?) list of pipes needing unblocking, lighting to be wired, or retaining walls to be erected by him personally, which is all the more credit to his vision: a person with work to do cannot afford to burden their viscerals with the beef attack of Red Robin. On my next Home Depot run (or zombie stroll through the consumerist purgatory of Target) I think I’ll skip the Burgerville drive through and go to where the company is, at the very least, lubricated.

Foster Burger Adds Poutine to the Menu, We Review It

September 28, 2011 by Dave Leave a Comment

Foster Burger PoutineHeather and I made a special trip to Foster Burger (5339 SE Foster) last weekend to check out the new menu (pdf). Normally a restaurant’s launch of a new menu wouldn’t dictate our weekend plans, but this was different. Foster Burger now offers six kinds of poutine!

Heather filed the review this afternoon:

You know what makes a poutine even better? When you don’t have to share it. Among the half dozen selections on Foster Poutine’s new menu (pdf), I was happy to just get the original, no frills poutine with fries, curds and gravy.

Dave got the Arleta Poutine, Foster Burger’s take on the traditional poutine Galvaude with roasted chicken and peas. I’m sort of not into peas. But Dave will pretty much put peas on anything. ANYTHING. So he was in pea poutine heaven. We each had our own plate and I ate every last bite.

Read the rest at Portland Poutine!

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