Dave Knows Portland

Portland Poutine Turns One!

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Quietly last week (because I forgot) Heather and my first collaboration, Portland Poutine, reached a milestone – the one year anniversary of its launch!

In the past year, for our dear readers, Heather and I (often accompanied by friends) have eaten and reviewed poutines from over a dozen restaurants, mostly in Portland, but also in Los Angeles and Seattle. We’ve also made and shared our homemade poutine recipes, traditional and “healthy”. Through diligent googling we’ve found and featured poutine related music and games. We were the very first guests on Cascadia.fm‘s Savor Portland, and Portland Poutine was featured in The Oregonian and The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Canada!

There are a few more poutines in Portland we haven’t tried yet, and we intend to re-review others (and get better photographs in some cases) – so stay tuned, thanks for reading, and consider contributing your own reviews to Portland Poutine!

My Beef With Burgerville

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HamburgerI want to make it clear I’m not just being contradictory. In fact, I’m a fan of some aspects of the Burgerville business:

That being said, I’m not a fan of Burgerville’s food, or their marketing. In much the same way I’m not a fan of McDonalds’ or Burger King’s. But what’s that you say? Burgerville means Fresh, Local, Sustainable?

I think it’s generally a good idea to be wary of marketing. Burgerville’s, in particular seems carefully crafted for local sensibilities, as you would expect – which makes me even more wary.

Fresh, Local, Sustainable is their marketing mantra (but the cynic in me suspects it will change eventually to whatever buzz words become part of the next popular marketing trend). Let’s look at each of these marketing claims:

Fresh: This claim is disingenuous. Some ingredients are frozen (e.g. potatoes), some are fresh (e.g. tomatoes, lettuce), some are more or less processed than others. True of Burgerville, true of McDonalds. If you’re looking for fresh, a fast food restaurant is generally not the best place to go.

Local: Most restaurants, including national chains, obtain a large proportion of their ingredients locally; it’s cheaper! The bigger ones have the clout to contract local processors to produce ingredients to their specifications. I learned this on a tour of a McDonalds restaurant when I was eight, as they showed us the locally baked hamburger buns. This is not a novel concept invented by Burgerville.

Sustainable: Bullshit. Fast food restaurant businesses are not sustainable. Perhaps some of Burgerville’s business practices are baby steps toward sustainability, they have compost bins in the stores for example, but a spade is spade. You can put all the sustainable lipstick in the world on Burgerville and it’s still a fast food restaurant you probably drove to in a gasoline fueled car where virtually every piece of food, drink, or condiment is wrapped in paper or plastic.

But perhaps my biggest beef with Burgerville is with the food. A connotation of fresh, local, sustainable, is healthfulness. But hamburgers, fries, sodas, and milkshakes (fresh, local, sustainable or not) are far from the healthiest food choices you can make; Burgerville’s Tillamook Cheeseburger has 130 more calories and 13 more grams of fat than McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese for crying out loud.

Local, Fresh, Sustainable doesn’t make it better for you; fast food is fast food.

New York Times Explores Portland Happy Hours

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New York Times For some reason, the New York Times is writing about happy hour food specials in Portland: Bar + Food | Portland’s Happiest Hours.

Are food specials at happy hour a special phenomena? I wouldn’t think so, but according the T Magazine article other towns — notably Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Charleston, S.C. — also serve cheap eats in the late afternoon, Portland has been doing it since the last recession. Huh.

Accanto, Clark Lewis, Wildwood, Olympic Provisions, and Nostrana are the formidable Portland restaurants that garner accolades for their fine happy hour food specials in the article.

If they were to have asked me, I would also have suggested:

Lincoln – for their $4 crispy fritter of the day, $5 greens and shaved fennel with almonds, and of course the $7 poutine, featuring fries, lamb gravy and cheese curds!

Papa Haydn (east) – $5 pork rillette, country pate, and their delicious poutine with hand-cut kennebeck fries, pulled chicken, thyme gravy and cheese curds!

(Don’t worry, the New York Times will come round to appreciating poutine eventually . . .)

Oregon Boquerones

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On a recent trip to Astoria, Heather and I had dinner at Bridgewater Bistro, a great restaurant in a beautiful setting on the water, in the shadow of the iconic Astoria-Megler Bridge.

One menu option was a pleasant surprise:

Anchovy Boquerones 7 *
– an Astoria version of a classic spanish tapa –
local fish lightly cured in vinegar, oil, garlic and herbs; served with cucumber relish and crostini

After the glorious poutine, of course, boquerones are my favorite snack, but like poutine it is a rare occurrence that you’ll find them on a Portland menu. The local boquerones served up at Bridgewater Bistro were delicious, and to my palate indistinguishable from the imported ones I’d tried before.

BoqueronesIf you’ve never tried boquerones en vinagre, but are familiar with the fishiness of sardines or canned anchovies, you’re in for a surprise. The fish flavor is far less intense in a boquerone. The taste of the tiny fish filets has more in common with ceviche, I should think, than the anchovies most avoid on pizzas or a caesar salad. A fresh vinegar tartness prevails, the texture of the fish flesh is almost like fresh. Slap a couple on top of a piece of toast, or eat them from the end of a toothpick. They’re good. Especially with a cold crisp beer.

Two years ago my roommate and I hosted a Spanish themed dinner party. We made toasts with mushrooms and alioli, Spanish potato salad, and of course a paella. It was while researching these recipes that I first came across a description of boquerones. I was intrigued. I like sardines, and I use anchovies, the oily and extraordinarily fishy kind, in recipes whenever it makes sense. But I figured it’d be too difficult to find the ingredients to prepare my own boquerones. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon Spanish boquerones at New Seasons. I bought some and served them up at the party. They were a delicious hit.

And now, as evidenced by the menu entry at the Bridgewater Bistro, we have a local option. Recently the Daily Astoria ran a pair of articles about the nascent domestic boquerones.

Astoria Pacific Seafoods‘ anchovies are available in Astoria at both the Bridgewater Bistro and Fulio’s Pastaria. In Portland they can be found on the menu at Clarklewis and at Whole Foods.

Photo courtesy of Kent Wang at Wikimedia Commons.