Juice for breakfast from Green Leaf Juicing Company
Aurelien: Welcome back everyone! In Anna-Lisa’s first post about our time in Portland, she promised a separate post on the food we ate during our short 2.5 day visit. We weren’t expecting it to take a month to post, but its finally done now. We both fell in love with Portland and would consider moving there simply for the food, especially since the prices were rather reasonable (compared to the SF Bay Area anyway)! The two of us are both vegetarians, hence our post about Portland vegetarian food! Anna-Lisa will lead us meal by meal through the wonderful places that our friends and hosts Amy and Milo took us to!
After landing in Portland, taking the metro (MAX light rail) and getting picked up at the station we went straight to dinner, starving from a long day of travel. At Bollywood Theater you order at the counter and pay ahead of time, a system I like because after the meal you don’t have to wait around to pay. We ordered a lot of food because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, but it was nice to try many different things and wow, their food was outstanding. They based it off Indian street food, so they have a lot of small dishes, each one flavorful and delicious. Our favorites were the butternut squash dish and the paneer tiki roll. The butternut squash was roasted to perfection, it was nutty, creamy and sweet. The paneer tiki roll (pictured below on the left) was a nan bread filled with marinated paneer and vegetables, big enough to be a meal.
This gorgeous photo is from their website.
Amazing ice-cream, enough said. No, I will say more. Their ice-cream is rich and creamy. I ended up getting the apple cider sorbet because I was full from dinner, but Aurelien got two (massive) scoops of ice-cream in a waffle cone. From the amount he ate you would of thought he hadn’t had a big dinner, but he always has room for ice-cream. His flavors were pear/blue cheese and toasted almond with caramelized walnuts, and those were the more normal flavors that they offered.
Aurelien: At first I really loved my flavor, but towards the end I bit directly into a big piece of blue cheese and remembered why I don’t like it at all. So sadly I didn’t completely finish my cone.
Happy ice-cream eater. Massive scoop at Salt and Straw
We love Vietnamese food, and LucLac really delivered. I’m hoping that Vietnam has vegetarian options like the USA does. I ordered the vegetarian pho and I was pleased that they had a vegetarian broth option listed on the menu, I imagine I won’t get that luxury in Vietnam. I find that Pho is a perfect dinner food, it’s light, filling and full of amazing flavors. Aurelien got his favorite Vietnamese dish, vegetarian vermicelli and crispy rolls. The atmosphere was fun, very hip, maybe a little too loud.
Vermicelli with spring rolls at Luc Lac, one of Aurelien’s top ten dishes
Another popular restaurant in Portland, we came here for brunch. Aurelien ordered the french toast and I got some eggs and potatoes. Amy ordered radicchio salad for the table which was different and delicious.
Aurelien: The french toast was delicious, but I must say this was probably my least favorite place we tried. Not because it wasn’t good, but because eggs seem to be part of almost every single menu item at brunch places. I don’t like the taste of eggs unless its well hidden, so my menu choices are rather limited. French toast is amazing, but its a bunch of sugar and carbs.
Photo credit Amy, thank you!
Portland Food Carts
It was really exciting to see all of the food carts. After living in Oakland we thought we knew the food cart scene, but it turns out the bay area has nothing on Portland. In CA they have food trucks, big trucks that move around, with only a few in each city on a certain day. In Portland they have small food carts, all lined up together. The area we went to had about two city blocks filled with food carts all the way around the blocks, so probably 50 or more. Depending on your mood that day you can get anything your heart desires, anything from grilled cheese sandwiches, Thai, Mexican, burgers, BBQ to crepes or peanut butter and jelly (gourmet) sandwiches.
I went for a wholesome bowl of brown rice, black beans with avocado, salsa, sour cream and a special sauce. I also had to try some dumplings from the Dump Truck (great name) which were filled with rice noodles and mushrooms and were excellent. Aurelien went for middle eastern, hummus/falafels and our friend/host Amy a legendary dish (for Portland)- Thai chicken from Nong. They didn’t have any place to sit down and eat (Portland, listen up, you should really put picnic tables near the carts) so we ended up eating on a curb nearby, but that was just fine!
We didn’t get pictures of this pizza place probably because we were too busy stuffing our faces with this amazing pizza, so thanks to Amy for this picture. The pizza pies were massive and insanely delicious. I love thin crusted pizza and they have a special technique for making the dough, their hard work pays out, definitely go eat there if you like pizza!
That concludes our brief tour of the Portland vegetarian food we enjoyed! We know we just touched the surface in terms of all the amazing places to eat in Portland and are looking forward to going back soon.
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