Eating out

Portland, Sept. 14—

ONE REASON TO COME to Portland, even if you don't have a delightful family to visit, is to eat out. It is truly an eating town, with options ranging from food carts to fine restaurants. Take today, for example: after coffee two blocks from home at Cartola — necessitated by an inexplicable power outage on our block, resulting in no toaster, no espresso machine — we had lunch at Garden State, up on Mississippi Street, where a cart pod— formerly a parking lot — houses it and a number of other promising carts.
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A central dining area under a temporary canopy provides tables, chairs, and benches, where we comfortably munched on cod sandwiches: fried cod, a good-sized slice of potato, another of raw orange, chopped lettuce, capers, onion, a little bit of celery, all spilling generously out from a ciabatta-bread housing. Oh, and chick-pea fries — sticks of panisse, in effect — savory and delightful.

After a suitable interval it was dinner time, and, staying on our side of the Willamette, we headed for Laurelhurst Market, a seriously meaty restaurant on a corner parking lot-storefront on busy Burnside Street. Here seven of us were easily accommodated at a table in a good-sized industrial-looking dining room, full bar at one end of the room, open kitchen along one side. (And butcher shop at the restaurant's entry, just to get the juices flowing.)

We downed a couple of plates of Suppli Al Telefono: braised short rib and mozzarella risotto fritters with mizuna and olives. Then I had the steak of the day: hanger steak, grilled rare (and just thick enough to remain cool inside, perfectly cooked outside), with instead of french fries the more healthful steamed-arugula alternative. (I'd have preferred the greens without their liberal sprinkling of Reggiano.)

The steak sat on a bed of Romesco sauce, quite rich with marrow, I suspect, and made a filling meal. With it, a plate of padrona peppers, served with braised cherry tomatoes and a judiciously small number of mint-leaf tatters: an inspired dish.

Vin de pays de Mont-Caume, Jean-Pierre Gaussen, 2008