Portland

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road trip to Cali

Friday, July 29th, 2011

on the beach

We’ve just begun to recover from our week-long road trip to Santa Cruz to visit my brother-in-law. We spent two days driving south, a few days there, then three days coming back. We hit an astounding number of brewpubs along the way. Here’s a (rather long) photo essay of some of the week’s eats and drinks.

HopworksHopworks Brewery

We left Mount Vernon bright and early, with our first stop at Hopworks in Portland. It was pouring down rain (my feet got soaked just going the short distance from the car to the door), but the brewpub was bright and cozy and the Women’s World Cup was just starting. We could happily have stayed there all day, but we dragged ourselves away at halftime.

Ancho chicken sandwich

steak sandwich

blue cheese salad

The sandwiches were excellent, especially the chicken ancho, and the salad had chunks of Rogue Creamery blue cheese almost too big to eat. Plus their beer is amazing – I had a pint of Evelyn’s Sunshine Imperial IPA, which was badly needed after our drive through the storm.

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Portland roundup (long)

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

view from the train

We got out of town last week and took the train down to Portland for a little vacation, just in time for a massive heat wave. Despite broken-down buses (one overheated and died on the Burnside Bridge – fun!), blisters, short tempers and heat exhaustion, we managed to have a great time and eat quite a lot of food. Also, it was an excellent weekend for sitting in the shade drinking beer, so we made sure to do plenty of that. We started at the Hedge House.

Hedge House

Hedge House

And we had to go to Pok Pok, of course. We have occasionally considered eating here every single night we spend in Portland. One of these trips…

Pok Pok

Pok Pok

Pok Pok

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a weekend in Portland: day three

Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Mount Hood from Mount Tabor

After our dinner at Sel Gris the night before, we didn’t really feel up to much on our last morning in Portland. I snagged coffee and a bagel from the guesthouse kitchen, then we staggered up the street to Haven for a little extra caffeine and sugar. Sitting in the sun with the Sunday funnies and a cup of hot chocolate was about the right speed.

path up mount tabor with a streetlamp

Afterwards, somewhat fortified, we boldly found what I believe to be one of the fastest (and maybe stupidest) routes up Mount Tabor, an extinct volcano that sits at the east end of the Hawthorne district and is covered with roads and paths of all sorts. We weren’t sure where the road started, so instead we found a trail and went straight up. It was a gorgeous day, and the view was fantastic, with both Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens out in the sun.

Hedge House beer list

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weekend in Portland: day two

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

Portland Japanese Garden

A full day of walking and eating in Portland! We started out with coffee at our most excellent guesthouse, then headed down the street to the highly recommended Detour Cafe. After our last visit to Portland, we figured any good breakfast place would be crammed full of people on a sunny Saturday morning, but there were plenty of free tables.

Detour Cafe

an awesome breakfast sandwich

The Detour’s a great place – sunny, colorful, and casual. Good coffee, of course (it is Portland, after all). Then menu isn’t huge, but it looked like they had some good stuff – we both got breakfast sandwiches, and were very happy with them. Mine had a fried egg, mixed salad greens, bacon and fresh tomato on foccaccia – my dream breakfast sandwich, really. It reminded me of one I had in Tofino, on Vancouver Island, and have remembered fondly ever since.

octopus tapa at Andina

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weekend in Portland: day one

Monday, February 18th, 2008

Pok Pok

We amused ourselves this weekend by taking the train down to Portland. It’s a great way to go: the train goes right along the coast, so the scenery is wonderful. You don’t have to deal with I-5 traffic, and Portland has a very good public transportation system and is very walkable. And the food scene there is just amazing. We spent three days and barely scratched the surface.

lunch on the train

The train has a bistro car, but we usually prefer to bring a lunch along. For this trip, J made sandwiches out of a baguette and some ham, with brie and fresh basil. We had leftovers of a truly splendid bottle of wine, a Sones petite syrah from the central coast of California, so we brought that along as well. The train was so full that it was a little awkward to eat – we felt like we should have brought enough for everyone. Ah, well.

Hedge House

Our first stop in Portland, after dropping off our bags at our guesthouse, was the Hedge House, one of the Old Lompoc Brewery pubs. We just got beer and salads, but it was just what we needed to wind down. More on the Hedge House later…

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