Weddingbee Blog

We’re back from our little mini-moon in Portland, Oregon! And if I were to use one word to describe our trip, it would be ‘delicious’. There are just so many great places to eat in Portland. I knew that going in, but it is a whole other thing to know it because your belly is so stretched out with tasty tasty meals. This is going to be a not-so-little post about what we ate, and later I’ll do one about the rest of the trip.

Thursday:

I arrived at 2 PM or so (sans Mr CB, he joined me Friday night. Yes, this was the plan. Sock conference, remember?) and I was starving. I had seen Brunchbox on Food Network ages ago, and decided I needed to go, so that is the first place I went for food on this trip. I decided I just couldn’t face a burger with grilled cheese sandwiches instead of buns, so I had a BLT. Their Texas toast is delicious, and the bacon so crispy! Yum! That was my dinner too, it was so big.

Friday:

Breakfast – Scone and an iced tea from the Peets next to the hotel. Good, but nothing to write home about.

Lunch – Some knitters and I explored the food carts. I can rarely make the adult choice when faced with sweet and savoury options, so I had this for lunch:

Why yes, that is a fresh waffle filled with Nutella and organic raspberry jam (it’s called the ‘Black Forest’) from the FlavourSpot on 3rd and Ash.

I felt a little guilty about having that for lunch, so I got something tasty and vegan from Sonny Bowl after, but only had the room to eat half of it (and I ordered the half size!).

Dinner – I made some new BFFs at Sock Summit the night before, and bumped into them Friday around 5PM. They were going to Pok Pok, and asked if I wanted to go. I’d wanted to go since I saw it on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives 6 months ago! We went to Pok Pok Noi, as one of my new BFFs had a car.

Papaya Pok Pok! Delicious, but much much spicier than I expected. MUCH spicier. I ate all that cabbage on the side and a bowl of rice trying to cool my mouth down. Dessert really helped:

Mango coconut sticky rice. I also had a salted plum vodka collins. It was…salty. To be fair, the guy at the bar warned me that it would be salty—he said some people are surprised when they get theirs. It was good, I’m glad I ordered something more than my usual vodka & cran, but I don’t know that I’d order it again. I definitely wouldn’t order more than one in a night (because of the salty factor, not the alcohol factor).

Saturday:

Breakfast – Cinnamon Buns was with me now! We wanted to go somewhere for breakfast, so I turned to Google maps. A place called ‘The Original‘ showed up as near our hotel, and they served breakfast, so we headed off. And by ‘off’ I mean two blocks away. And now, I just have to show you the pictures.

Cinnamon Buns had the Mac & Cheese pancakes, and I had the creme brulee French toast. Have I ever told you that my favourite breakfast food is French toast (I was very close to being Miss French Toast at one point!)? How about the fact that creme brulee is my favourite dessert? What about the happy mac & cheese-induced comas we regularly put ourselves into? Yes, this was our dream breakfast place. I’m a little sad we didn’t get to go back so I could have the Fruit Loop pancakes. And the bacon waffles. We really wished they had a pancake sampler plate with one of each. I’m a little picky about what I eat for breakfast, and the burnt sugar taste that is so tasty at dessert time with creme brulee was on the edge of what I wanted for breakfast, but I still licked my plate clean. Cinnamon Buns, shock of shocks, couldn’t finish his pancakes! There was actual macaroni cooked into the pancakes, which made it as filling as 3 pancakes + a bowl of mac & cheese, so I guess I can’t fault him.

Lunch – Are you kidding? After that breakfast?!

Dinner – We spent dinner at H50 Bistro, with a gaggle of knitterly friends celebrating a birthday. Cinnamon Buns had way more fun than he thought he would (we don’t talk about knitting all the time!) and the food was, unsurprisingly, amazing.

Wild Mushroom fondue. Luckily, we ran out of crostini, so we finished it with the spoon they so nicely include on the plate.

On the top, my main course: TAGLIATELLE – Oregon spot prawns, lemon red chile, scallion, adelsheim vineyards pino gris butter. Only they were out of spot prawns, so the option on the menu was for a vegetarian dish with lots of mushrooms and veggies. On the bottom, Cinnamon Buns’ main course: OREGON KING SALMON – sweet potato ravioli, zucchini, cherry tomato, rosemary, sage, beurre fondue. The ravioli were to die for!

Hello, chevre cheesecake with strawberry rhubarb puree, granny smith, rhubarb confetti. The ‘confetti’ are little homemade gummies! It was amazing, and because it was chevre (goat) cheesecake, I didn’t get the unhappy belly that (cow) dairy products give me.

All the pictures of this dinner are blurry because of this:

Cinnamon Blood Orange Margarita. I could do with one as I’m writing this post up, actually.

Sunday:

Breakfast/Lunch – yeah, we had a late meal this morning. A late, delicious meal at Kenny & Zukes. Sadly, the latkes had run out just before we went to order, so we both had to pick fall-back choices. And the fallbacks? Scrumptious.

Mr CB looking very pleased with his pastrami hash.

My mushroom and caramelized onion Benedict. Both these plates were clean very soon after the photo, and as you can see, they smelled so good it took us a while to remember the camera!

Dinner – good Italian comfort food at Mama Mia Trattoria. I ate so much gnocchi I almost felt a little ill on the walk back to the hotel. And I only ate about half the plate that came. It was here that we had the ‘Portion sizes really are bigger in America, aren’t they?’ discussion (H50 excluded, but they were doing the fancy-restaurant-tiny-plates thing, which worked out to just the amount I wanted to eat).

Monday:

Breakfast - I had a pain au chocolate, and Mr CB had a muffin in the bakery attached to hour hotel’s restaurant. (Yes, we apparently decided to nosh our way through the brunch Bee generation!).

Lunch – Sushi and some General Tsao chicken from a food cart on Stark, right by Mother’s, a restaurant we didn’t get to. My sushi had salmon, avocado, and cream cheese, and the cream cheese added a great tang to it.

Dinner – Pizza from Pizzicato, an awesome little pizza joint that we noticed to be near our hotel. Turns out they’re all over Portland, but they started as a mom-and-pop pizza place in 1989. We had the ‘Rudy’ with caramelized onions, lamb sausage, mascarpone cheese, and green onions.

Tuesday:

Breakfast – the only meal we ate in our hotel restaurant! Pancakes and French toast, very nice. Is it time to burst yet?

Are you honeymooning stateside? What restaurant in the US are you most looking forward to dining at on your honeymoon?