So for those of you who don’t want to read through all that
I did in Portland, here is the tl;dr version.
I flew to Southwest to Portland, somehow got free Wi-Fi. Talked to the quickest rudest rental car
agent ever and then navigated the most confusing streets of my life on the way
to the hotel. Got some pho from a food
truck and spilled it pretty much everywhere.
Got +1 Tranquility points courtesy of the Japanese Garden. Saw a dude pissing on the street in broad
daylight. Did some light window shopping
where I scored some chopsticks. Had an
amazingly cheap beer at a really great 80’s arcade. Went to my first clothing store/art gallery
combo with live DJ. Waited two and a
half hours for dinner. Got pretty tipsy
at a few bars while waiting for dinner.
Found out it was actually worth the wait. Had a waitress from a neighborhood nearby
where I live now.
I’m not a huge fan of flying. The exception to that rule is when I have to
fly Virgin America. I especially hate
flying Southwest Airlines. I much rather
have assigned seating rather than go through the craziness of fighting over a
seat once you’ve boarded. It’s the worst
airline to travel on if you’re flying with someone. Solo it is pretty great though admittedly. Still I settled into the fly pretty
easily. We scored the last two seats together
on the plane and I sat back and listened to some music while reading a
book. Those Bose® QuietComfort® 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones
have saved the lives of countless children.
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| View of Portland from Hotel Room |
We got off the plane pretty quickly. PDX is the biggest oddly emptiest airport
I’ve ever been in. It seemed slightly
somber for a Saturday afternoon. It was
a quick walk to pick up the bags before making our way to the rental car
counter. I booked the car in advance
through hotwire. It was a Toyota
Corolla, so nothing fancy but it would surely get the job done. I came across the rudest rental car agent
I’ve ever dealt with. What he lacked in
tact he made up in efficiency however. I
was able to ignore his sly comment about how he couldn’t find my reservation
because it was for ten (Flight landed at noon mind you). What stuck with me is the fact that I would
need to bring a receipt back for refueling from within 5 miles of the
airport. This outrageous request made me
almost not want to rent from them at all.
In retrospect, the closet gas station to PDX is oddly two miles away as
I would later find out.
You don’t really need a car at all in Portland, with the
exception of the trails that I wanted to go on and such I could have gotten
along just fine without a car. I would
go as far as to say that Portland is not only bike friendly, but car
hostile. When you finally figure out
which lane you are supposed to be in, it makes navigating the downtown areas
much more complex when you have to consider that you may not be able to turn in
the direction that you want to turn because of a bus only lane. It wasn’t too tough though I am exaggerating
a bit but you really have to pay attention.
As I moved to check in to the Hilton when I tried to park valet, I found out that I was staying at the
other tower. This meant I had to make a
huge circle back around in order to park.
I would end up doing self-parking at the other tower. This made for a great annoyance for the rest
of my stay as the other tower was easy to find by walking, I am easily confused
when it comes to direction and use Google maps almost exclusively when I’m
driving. This meant that I would make
that same huge circle whenever I went back to the hotel. I wish Hilton would save the executive tower
onto Google maps to make it easier to find.
That aside, we were checked in after a bit of a delay, I can’t complain much as we were checking
into the hotel a bit early, and there was a bit of a line. Still, I ended up in a room that was on a
pretty high floor with a decent view of the city of Portland. The room was spacious enough and the TV
selection at the hotel was large enough that you wouldn’t have room to complain
about it. The internet speed was just
fast enough to not annoy you. I had no
problem streaming a few YouTube videos here and there, but you aren’t exactly
getting HD quality there.
The main advantage is the location. It’s pretty central in downtown and it isn’t
too far from the food trucks on Alder street.
Food trucks are pretty huge in Portland.
The food at the ones I stopped at were of pretty good quality too making
it relatively cheap in order to score a good bite to eat. Many of them also have very unique bites to
eat and there is a great deal of variety as well there.
For my first trip out to the food carts, I was looking for a
cart called Mai Pho. I kind of
underestimated the number of Vietnamese carts that would be in the area and I ended
up eating at some random other cart that I cannot name now. I ended up getting the pho and a Bahn
mi. I took everything back to the hotel
to eat. The problem was that the noodles
and beef were packaged separately from the noodles. Me being not so bright at the moment decided
to try to dump the noodles and everything into the pho. Since they were stuck together a bit
everything came out in a big thud that resulted in me getting pho splashed everywhere. At least the food was tasty.
The weather was to me at least, surprisingly warm. Around fifty, which is for me having left the
frozen tundra of Chicago, was hoodie weather.
Still I felt it chilly enough to make a stop at Java
Man for a latte on my way over to the Chinese Garden. It was all you could ask for in a small
coffee shop, a very well made coffee that came to our table very quickly. They also sell bubble tea there which would
have been very tempting absent the cold weather. Still, though this was certainly not my
favorite coffee stop along the trip, at least they made that vanilla latte
without so much sugar that I was unable to taste the coffee which is often a
complaint of mine. It was actually a
very well balanced drink.
Continuing our walk, there was a bit of shock when we saw a
guy pissing on the street in broad daylight.
This wasn’t your normal pissing in the street that is done somewhat
discreetly up against a wall or something, this dude was just standing out in
broad daylight pissing into an open patch of grass. I seriously thought he was emptying a bottle
out or something until I walked past him.
Who pisses on the street like that in broad daylight, there was a child
coming from the opposite direction for goodness sakes.
Initially, I did not think that I would enjoy Lan Su Chinese Garden at all because
from the outside, the garden seems very small, almost too small for me to
justify the entrance fee of nearly ten bucks.
I was very wrong though. Even
with all the people walking around snapping pictures, self-included. The garden is very peaceful and tranquil. I got a chance to take a lot of good pictures
inside of the garden it was very serene and calming. I even had a really cool “look, a squirrel”
moment.
Here are some photos from Inside:
While we were in Chinatown, we decided to browse through a
couple of the shops over there. It
seemed a little counterproductive considering we were headed to San Francisco,
which has a much larger Chinatown, but I did end up snagging some chopsticks in
the end. There isn’t much room for so
much Chinese themed items in my household, or to carry back in my luggage for
that matter.
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| Voodoo Doughnuts |
We figured by this time the line would have died down
outside of Voodoo Doughnuts, but that place always has a super long line. Anyway I made a stop for more coffee at Café Vita
which is just across a pedestrian only street.
This little open window made some great coffee, but they win with the
varieties of milk that they offer. I
actually got an espresso there that was pretty good.
The trek continued as we made our way to Ground Kontrol. Think 90’s arcade with beer. Astonishingly cheap beer at that. I may be insulated from good prices on a beer
from livening in the suburbs of Chicago, but when I ordered drinks, and the
total came out to $8, I thought for sure the price was for one of the drinks,
not both. $3 for Deschutes is a hell of
a deal. Not to mention that evidently
Portlanders have that whole crowding around the bar thing worked out and they
just get in line to order a drink.
Who can argue with how great of a place this is? It’s one of my favorites of my short stay in
Portland simply because of bringing back so many childhood memories. They are straightforward and don’t cheat you
either as all of the games are very reasonably priced most at a quarter a
round, and they use actual quarters as opposed to tokens. Therefore, you aren’t locked in if you feel
like cutting short your play time by a few minutes.
Next stop as we were walking was Compound. It seemed like a pretty interesting clothing
store and I wanted to head in and browse around a bit. The store had a lot of unique items, and I
thought it was pretty cool that they had a live DJ as well. Then we walked upstairs and found out that
there was an art gallery up there. It
was a crazy surprise but probably the only art gallery clothing store combo
that I will ever visit that also happens to have a live DJ. The clothing was s a bit pricey for my taste,
so I didn’t make a purchase, but it is a good place to browse for some unique
items.
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| Mole Tots at Bunk Bar |
We went back to the hotel, before going out for dinner. I knew that I wanted to have dinner at Ox, just after reading about the place online and
looking at the menu. When we got there
and found out that there was a two and a half hour wait for a table, I almost
didn’t want to stay. Not to mention that
their bar next door was beyond packed for standing room even. This only kind of confirmed that this place
was too good to pass up so I ended up agreeing to the wait, it’s not like I had
somewhere to be in the morning and it just left us more time to drink, though
now we would explore the neighborhood bars.
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| Mulligan and Cat's Meow at Secret Society |
Our first stop was right across the street, in total
opposition to the seemingly upscale bar we just checked out, Billy Ray’s Neighborhood
Dive, was just that a dive bar. The
problem I had with it is that after paying $3 a beer at ground control, I felt
a little ripped to be paying $6 for a well vodka tonic at a dive bar where the
smell of urine assaults your nostrils.
It’s not that I’m too good for urine smells, and lime slices that have
been cut so long ago that they are starting to turn brown around the edges, it’s
just relative to all the places nearby, their drink prices in particular should
have been a lot cheaper if that’s what they are offering.
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| La Yapa at Ox |
Out of there and into Bunk Bar though. I’m of two minds about this place, because I
got suckered into buying a really bad drink here. It just had a too good of a name that I read
it without reading the ingredients, I kind of just briefly looked at them. The name Typhoon Shandy was just too
interesting. IN hindsight a combination of
Tequila, Lime, Grapefruit and Beer had no possibility of working. On the other hand the place had a great atmosphere
and the food was pretty good as well. While
we were there we decided to sample the mole tots, which turned out to be a
great decision since they were probably the best tots that I ever had. In hindsight the miscalculation was
completely my fault, because there were other great drinks on the menu along
with a good beer selection.
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| Bread ad soup at Ox |
The next stop in the wait was The Secret Society. They had some sort of live performance going
on in one of the rooms up there, but we enjoyed a couple of drinks in the
lounge area. Having not quite enough time
to enjoy one of the very elaborate absinthe drinks, we snacked on the spiced
almonds, which were a steal at only $3.
The perfect pre-dinner snack to accompany our drinks. The drinks by the way were phenomenal and
coincided with the whole Victorian era theme that they had going on.
We finally made it into Ox.
We got the text message and hurried over to be seated. What I love about this place is despite the
fact that it is an Argentinian themed steakhouse, it is vegetarian friendly and
the aroma of the place isn’t dominated by that of cooked beef. At the suggestion of our server, I decided to
go with the La Yapa to drink, and let me tell you it was probably one of the
best drinks I’ve had in quite sometime.
It is a well-balanced drink that catered to my love of whiskey, while
being sweet and approachable. You also
have a nice bit of lemon to finish off your palate.
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| Duck Rillette Croquetas at Ox |
First thing was a complimentary squash soup. From there I knew this was bound to be an
incredible meal. It was a rich and
creamy soup that wasn’t too heavy that it would weigh you down from the
impending meal. Combine that with the
bread that they serve with a bit of a chimichuri sauce and it was
fantastic. I’ve made soups out of squash
before and it still boggles my mind how they achieved a texture that smooth.
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| Mushrooms at Ox |
For an appetizer I went with the croquetas of duck rillettes. I felt a bit of trepidation about passing
over the recommended Clam Chowder, but being that I was going to be in San Francisco
soon and eating clam chowder out of a sourdough bread bowl, I decided to go for
something different. I must say I couldn’t
have made a better choice. It was the
perfect balance of texture, perfectly tender meat that is so smooth that it
melts in your mouth and a nice crisp exterior.
It was also well complemented by the celery root and pomegranate. I swear that I could also live in the lemon aioli.
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| Potatoes with Horseradish at Ox |
For the entrée, I couldn’t pass up on my favorite cut of
steak, my beloved ribeye. The steak was
so tender and juicy and from a value standpoint it was one of the best I have
ever tasted. It was cooked to a perfect
medium rare with just the right amount of carmelization. Absolutely sublime. As a side dish I went with the mushrooms and
the potatoes. The potatoes were the
perfect counterpoint to the steak because they had a tasty horseradish aioli. I still have a vivid and fond memory of
taking a bit of steak and dragging it through the aioli to get the perfect bite
of steak and potatoes. Rich beef,
alongside crisp potatoes and a bit of spice from the aioli.
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| The Main Event, Perfect Midrare Ribeye |
At the suggestion of probably one of the best waitresses
ever, I packed the remaining portion of food to go. I was about to toss the bread until she
suggested that the bread was the perfect size to make a steak sandwich with my
leftover steak. I didn’t plan it that
way, but she was right as it did make for great leftovers.
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| Dessert at Ox |
I couldn’t come to a place this great and not try the
dessert though. Even though I was much
too full, we had to go ahead and share the torte. The honey chamomile ice cream was the perfect
knockout punch. Along with that crisp
honeycomb candy that was a great topping for the soft rich and buttery
cake. On all levels, Ox didn’t just meet
my expectations but blew them out of the water.
I still can’t believe a bill for two people was only $160 with tip, I
expected it to be so much more.
