Notes from the road and from the table — what was worth the trip, what was worth the plate, and what wasn't.
👁 — visits to this page
Tacos Fita is a food truck in a cart pod on SE Woodstock Blvd in Portland, Oregon, and the carne asada taco there is the best in the region — five out of five. The pickled red onions on top make it, and the habanero sauce is no joke.
Pizza Roma is a slice-and-pie counter on SE Woodstock Blvd in Portland, Oregon, with a full bar, video poker and a back room lined with pinball machines. Three out of five for the pizza itself — fine, nothing more — but the room around it is doing a lot of the work.
Most people never learn the actual mechanics of eating a bowl of pho — what the little cup of onion and vinegar is for, or how to build the bite. Five out of five at Pho Hung on 82nd in Portland, Oregon, and here's the method.
PDX's new main terminal actually won a real World's Most Beautiful Airport award — a nine-acre wood ceiling built from timber sourced within 300 miles.
A Friday-night run to the Jack in the Box on NE 117th in Vancouver, Washington — decent fast food, three out of five, the honest kind of meal you eat because you're busy rather than because you're excited about it. The Sourdough Jack earns its keep. The two tacos might be the cheapest food on the planet, and nobody at the company will actually call them beef tacos.
I went back to Chuckie Pies in Lake Oswego for the pizza I had been bookmarking since July, and came away talking about the rigatoni Bolognese instead. Ten-inch Neapolitan pies out of a wood oven, a seriously Italian wine list with a Barbaresco on it, and the best Bolognese I have had since the south of France.
A free Double Char that showed up in the app for my birthday, a surfboard bolted to a brick wall two thousand miles from the nearest one, and the honest case — onion rings and spicy ranch included — for why Habit edges out my beloved In-N-Out, strictly at the fast-food level.
Saburo's Sushi House in Portland's Sellwood neighborhood is a once-or-twice-a-year drive across the river, and the Seared Salmon is the reason. Five stars, huge portions, prices that aren't terrible for what shows up on the plate.
Philly Bilmos is a cheesesteak shop in Vancouver, Washington, and the sandwich that got five stars here wasn't the cheesesteak — it was the Italian sub, dressed at the table with its own oil, vinegar and parmesan. The best one I've had.
Broken Rice is a Vietnamese cart off 82nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon, serving grilled pork over com tam — broken rice — with a fish sauce that's milder than expected and genuinely good. Five stars, indoor seating if it's raining, worth the drive despite the block it's on.
The New York strip was okay at best, the ribeye was dry and thin — ironic, for the cut that's supposed to be the fatty one — and both landed on the table only a little warmer than the room. Everyone who worked there was kind about it. Three stars: glad I went, and next time I'll ask them to hurry.
The lamb and beef gyro at Anoush Deli in Vancouver, Washington might be the meatiest one I've had in this part of town. Three stars: I wouldn't drive across the city for it, but it's a generous, genuinely good gyro from a place that's part halal deli and part Eastern European grocery.
The Black and Bleu Burger at the Uptown Barrel Room on Main Street in Vancouver, Washington is eighteen dollars and the best burger I have had in a long time — a blackened Angus patty under melting bleu cheese and bacon. Five stars, which on this site means worth crossing a city for, and I would.
The quesabirria at Muchas Gracias Mexican Food on NE 76th in Vancouver, Washington is genuinely good, and the consomé that comes with it is thinner than it ought to be. Three stars: glad I went, and I wouldn't cross town for it — plus a sun turned red by wildfire smoke on the way home.
The new O-M-Cheese Burger at the Applebee's on Mill Plain in Vancouver, Washington, earns its name — melted into a skillet of queso, it's one of the best cheeseburgers I've had in a while. The room around it has had a harder time; the old bar that used to be the neighborhood's actual water hole isn't, quite, anymore.
Five stars for Wendy Bohon, LMT, a massage therapist working out of a converted house in Vancouver, Washington, that smells like essential oils.
A French bakery on Mill Plain with a line out the door, a mezzanine, and a bottle of house sauce said to hold twenty-four ingredients. I ordered the salmon Benedict, which was very good, and spent the rest of the meal quietly wishing I had ordered the ham one.
A national chain in an East Vancouver strip is precisely what a travel notebook is supposed to skip. Except this one started at a corner in Seattle, there is a photograph of that corner hanging in the lobby, and the MadLove is one of the best burgers I have eaten anywhere.
The morning after a padlocked gate on SE Woodstock, driving back down the same street to collect my car, I looked up and found a church that had been named for the occasion.
The kitchen here is doing something genuinely uncommon — 100% grass-fed and finished beef, a menu built to be taken apart and rebuilt. Then some time after nine they padlocked the back gate with my car still behind it, and that is why this entry has one star instead of four.
A New York Steamer ordered "fully involved," a hot sauce bar named after the founders' own father, and the case for why a sandwich chain's branding can be this good and its app can still be this bad.
A tray, a bowl of hot water underneath to keep it warm, and a whipped egg-yolk foam dusted with cocoa — Vietnam's answer to tiramisu in a cup, plus a whole rotating board of specialty drinks worth its own second visit.
A grilled panini of prosciutto and brie on the boulangerie's own baguette, eaten at a sidewalk table in downtown Lake Oswego — worth traveling across the city for, and I did.
Third stop of the day, twenty minutes after lunch — and a case for why "adventurous" isn't automatically the same thing as "better," at least where ice cream is concerned.
A steak yaya roll and a fried fish taco to close out a Sunday food crawl at a Vancouver institution I've been driving twenty-five minutes to for years — and a case for why the happy hour burger, with a little-known sauce most people never ask about, might be the better order.
A hand-sized dome of almond cake and mirror glaze, a few doors down from lunch — the kind of pastry that looks too good to cut into and tastes better than it looks.
Three slices of pork in a Hokkaido miso broth, in a strip-mall shop behind a Japanese grocery in Beaverton — and the best bowl of ramen I have eaten on this coast.
A first entry, and a plain statement of what this notebook is for — roads, tables, and the honest verdict on both.
A brand-new location on SE 3rd Way, a Double-Double taken apart and rebuilt with pickle brine and pepper juice, and an argument for why nothing else in fast food beats In-N-Out on the ratio that actually matters.
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