Food!

Just a few restaurant reviews as i think of them. PDX has some tasty places and I tend to forget...

Vindalho

Vindalho

Holy Crap is this place Good!

We went to this Indian/Mediterranian Place with our pals Peter and Krista. Peter swears it was written up as one of the best restaurants in the U.S. I dunno bout that..but if not...it should have been!

The cocktails did range from stellar to "what the heck is this?" All I gotta say is that i wholeheartedly recommend the ginger, lemongrass martini. Holy cow! Super yummy!

Check this out for dinner:

Starter: Roasted Pumpkin Samosas...YUM!

Main:

I had the Madras Lamb Curry! Lamb with coconut milk, chiles and curry leaves. Yum!

Nami had the Jhinga Prawns-mexican wild prawns in a chile, ginger and herb marmalade.

Peter had the Saag Paneer Masala. He kinda goofed and didnt realize it was the cheese and not chicken Masala. Still good...but not zactly what he was hoping for.

Krista had the curry salmon dish. Money.

You have got to go....YUM!

I give it 12 curry Samosas!

Cadillac Cafe

Yum!

Cadillac Cafe!

Okay..this place is STELLAR! Went for a little brunchie and yeah..there is a wait...but in this case..that means good food. Wait was roughly 35 mins and worth every second! They had supper yummy Pear Mimosas and tasty Bloody Marys. However, after we ordered, we saw that they had a listing of all of their breakfast martinis. Yeah..you heard right...breakfast martinis baby! THAT is on my list for next time!

My wife was more in the mood for lunch so she ordered a lovely smoked pork loin sandwich with beef curry soup! So fucking good! I got some concoction of salsa, sausage, avocado, sour cream potatoes...Super yum! Our friends got a traditional breakfast with eggs, tatos, french toast and eggs. Again...bueno!

All in all i cannot recommend this place enuf. If you want a great brunch...great cocktails and coffee and wonderful service...THIS is the place for you...I give it like 20 spatulas or something.

Mother's Bistro & Bar

Mother's Bistro


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Mothers!

Okay...just a quick review so that i dont forget about this place...It is huuge..but still fills up easily. Brunch = awesome..You should go.

Wait = yes

Worth it = yes

They serve stumptown coffee by french press at your table.

Brunch is primarily egg dishes..so watch it if you are not into eggs.

Overall..great atmosphere...great food...awesome server...and fucking great coffee. Go..now..seriously..


Toro Bravo!

Toro Bravo!


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Lake Oswego BoatHouse

Sweet Jesus just run away!!

This place was complete and utter horrorshow! Jesus tap-dancing Christ was it awful! The sad thing is that we went with a few friends, some of whom had gone when it was Blinn’s. But guess what...Blinn’s apparently was a lovely little restaurant. The Lake Oswego Boathouse was nothing short of abysmal. Here is the scoop.

Cocktails in the lounge...You had to fight to get a server to pay any attention to you. Please..please! We are just thirsty...we will gladly PAY you for cocktails...just acknowledge our presence..please!

THEN we went in for food. They apparently did NOT have a table or room to hold our gigantic group of seven. (yeah..seven)..But whatever. So we ordered and the menu actually seemed quite nice. The server told us that she is normally a kitchen person...but also does serving...so cut her some slack. No problem. Understood. Also understood that they prolly got slammed...it being the first really nice sunny day of the season. But....whatever.

So John orders a bottled beer because all of their kegs were empty. Whatever. Then that particular beer was skunky and bad. I mean..we are not snobs by a long shot...but when you have to return bottled beer back to the kitchen...well..that says something.

Salads....good

Soup = very good.

Main courses..ummm

They brought out 5 of the 7 main courses. She said the last two were late but on  their way...sorry...no prob. Then one of us realized that she got the wrong order entirely and sent it back. No problem. Then she brought her meal out and it was fine. Then she brought out meal number 6. John started eating the risotto and realized it was crunchy and raw. After checking with my wife..hers was crunch too! What the fuck man? John looked at his food further and realized it was the wrong order..Come ON! Ohhh..so sorry...will fix that...(come on peoples....oh but it gets worse.)

So then she comes back and says  the reason his meal was wrong was because she gave him mine and that was the issue. I told her that was funny because he and I ordered the same meal. Hmmm..funny that.

Then she brought our final meals...(She didn’t quite remember that I had not had a meal brought to me yet. I am getting hungry here lady!) In place of the bad risotto was some sort of mashed potato dish. Ummmm...okay...Now the meal that John and I ordered was a nut-crusted pan fried Alaskan Halibut that was also baked. Sounds tasty right? I am sure it would have been if any semblance of that meal from the menu showed up on our table. But noooo. What we finally get is some sort of fish...with crab meat stuffing (what the hell?) on a bed of mashed potatoes! I don’t know how many mashed potato fish and crab dishes YOU have had..but not the greatest combo.

Then..(oh yeah..we are not done yet)...John flags her as the crab meat was ice cold. What the fuck? So she takes it back and he gets a tepid crab fish potato dish...It was awful..just awful. So then missy comes back and says because of all the hassle, they were going to comp desserts. Oh, but only for the three people that had issues. (Did I say what the fuck?)

Finally she came back and was ready to take dessert orders but we all declined. John even said he wanted the check quickly because he had to go some place to go get dinner. (nice) She never did bring out the check..she had someone else do it. Chicken.

It was awful..simply awful...OH...a couple bonus items....my wife ordered a lemon drop and they said they didn’t have the ingredients for that. Uh..yeah..right...Bonus item number two..we saw our waitress try..try...to open a bottle of wine for the table behind us....She did something...lord knows what...and she dropped the bottle on the floor where it hit with a huge clunk! Then she proceeded to pick it up and open it for them. Class Act!

Anyway....if you were thinking of going here for a nice meal, I would suggest someplace with better food, service and atmosphere...like maybe..ooh..i dunno...KFC?

Masu Sushi

Masu

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Okay...so just a quick writeup because I am waaaay fucking behind on this bloggy thing. So here is the quick story:

Our friends Matthew T. and his lovely wife Laura and their crazed son Jack are moving. The result...Eric and Nami are sad. So Matt and Laura invited us to Masu Sushi for kind of a goodbye kinda thing..

Was it good? Hell yeah!

Was it pricey? Wellll..kinda.

It was tres chic and tres trendy...but way cool. Now if you like sushi, you know that really good sushi is not cheap (I mean...do you really wanna check out a place that gives you 2nd  rate raw fish? I don’t think so..)

So as a quick review..I would say go for it...right downtown by like Powells...it was tasty...and we are gonna see Matt and Laura a few more times...so we will learn to deal...but if you want some key fish...some key cocktails..and a fun trendy-ish atmosphere...check it.

I give it 8.5 wasabis.

Wildwood Cafe

Ooh..the Decor!

Q: So how dreamy is this place?

A: Waaaay fucking dreamy!

Apparently this place is way known for being the bees-knees in the cool town of McMinnville. Rose took us out there and we were way glad she did. Breakfast/brunch is going to require at least a short wait..so be prepared. But that only means that it is something worth waiting for right?

The walls are completely covered with old tin signs...the lamps are old metal coffee cans...and they have like a gazillion egg beaters hanging from the ceiling.Why? Why not? It looked pretty quaint. We dug it.

Brunch consisted of various potato and egg scrambles which were all very tasty! I only am bummed that i didnt get any pix of the lovely breakfast. But Nami, Rose and myself all thought it was the bees knees and would go back in a heartbeat.

I give it 12 eggbeaters.

eric@bigtoast.com