PDX2

Here’s the teaser:

Got breakfast from a food truck.  Found out gas stations lock up their drinks in Portland.  Missed an underground tour of the city. Visited the famed voodoo doughnuts.  Browsed crazy stores in the Hawthorne ranging from bikes, vintage clothes and custom bags.  Had great coffee.  Saw one of my best friends who I haven’t seen in forever.  Almost destroyed his TV.  Had a short 90 min wait for dinner.  Had some great drinks while waiting.  It wasn’t as worth the wait this time but the food was still quite good.  Almost punched a Seahawks fan.

So day two started off with sleeping in a bit but not too much.   We were still out and about by about 10 am.  We decided to get a quick bite to eat from the food carts on the way to our next destination.  I was going to watch the game later with one of my best friends, I wanted to do something that would not interfere with that.  The Underground tour of Portland we thought would be the perfect thing.  It started at 11, but we thought we would make it there in enough time.

For breakfast, I decided to go with a Burger from Brunch Box.  I liked what I had there, but I am not a big fan of their ordering system.  To be honest it was rather annoying.  Why can’t I just tell you what I want and you write it down on the stupid little card for me.  Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t see everything I wanted on the menu on the little laminated menu with checkmarks that you fill in using a dry erase marker.

I went with the Outlaw burger.  It wasn’t that hard of a choice because I did want the Texas toast, but I didn’t want something as extreme as a burger between two grilled cheese sandwiches.  The food was ready pretty quickly and it was a damn good burger.  It played to all of your desired senses, salt from the bacon, sweet from the barbecue sauce and the bread was nicely grilled.

I decided to stop by a gas station on the way to the walking tour for drinks and another odd thing happened.  For the first time ever, the drinks were locked away.  They were being safeguarded as if they were some high value asset.  After struggling trying to open the door to buy one for a bit, the cashier came over and opened it for us and we got a couple of vitamin waters.  Unfortunately this little detour meant that we would miss our tour.  

On to plan B, we would walk back to the hotel, grab the car and head over to Hawthorne to browse through the shops in the neighborhood.  But first we figured we may as well brave the line in Voodoo Doughnuts.  I wondered, before I made the trip if there would be more Seattle fans or San Francisco fans in Portland.  They don’t have their own NFL team and both teams are relatively good as of late.  I’d say, that it seemed to follow about a 80/20 split in favor of the seachicken fans, but there were still a few of the faithful out and about.  It kind of makes sense since Seattle is a two hour drive away where San Francisco is a two hour plane ride away.  

We waited in line for an about half an hour with some mutual banter between fans.  Nothing too aggressive everyone was pretty friendly.  Voodoo Doughnuts was one of the places that I was really looking forward to trying.  I’ve got to say the maple bacon doughnut was pretty epic.  I don’t know who came up with that genius combination of sweet and savory but it was great.  I was so excited that I took a bite before I even snapped a picture of it.

When you consider the extreme wait time, in my personal opinion Voodoo doughnuts is just a really good one time thing, or a once in every great while thing.  I definitely wouldn’t consider it at all if the weather was anything other than nice.

The first stop was a music store Crossroads Music.  This is a place for the true audiophile that is looking for something seriously hard to find.  Though finding it still may drive you a little nuts once you get inside the store.  I was getting extremely frustrated as I tried to find albums because it seemed like there was so many different sections for the same genre.  After visiting the website, I think this has something to do with the fact that they have several music dealers that operate on consignment.  I don’t really seek out stuff that is extremely hard to find so for me it was more frustrating than fun, but I guess I know where to go if I needed some really rare vinyl at a really good price.

I thought the weather in Portland would be quite cold but for the most part I was outside with nothing more than a light jacket.  This made the walk along Hawthorne very pleasant.  Next up we stopped at probably one of the biggest comic book stores I’ve ever been in.  Excalibur Comics has a great selection of comics, many of which I never even knew existed.  I’m kind of a dork but comics aren’t necessarily my thing so I just spent tons of time browsing through the very interesting selection of titles.  The section for my favorite superhero franchise, X-Men, and the many variations of the comic took up a good four feet of table space.

Coffe at Oui Presse

Next was a short coffee stop at Oui Presse, ok I admit I stopped simply because I wanted a cool design in my coffee.  The latte I ordered came out just as such.  The cafe is very bright and it seems like a very chill place to kill sometime especially if you needed to get some things done.  The latte I had there was pretty good, not fantastic, but all things considered it is worth a stop, especially since it gave us a chance to rest our legs a bit before heading back up the street.

After a quick look at some really pricey recumbent bikes, we wandered into Black Star Bags.  The place is really cool, it makes some really unique bags and has a ton of designs available as well the ability to make your own custom bag.  I definitely wanted to pick something up while I was there but unfortunately, I didn’t budget for a random bag purchase of a couple hundred dollars.  The staff there was pretty helpful though and they offer free shipping so I don’t feel like I missed out on anything at all.  I did some s searching on etsy, and they have the cheapest waterproof messenger bags and backpack available.

If I haven’t stressed the fact enough, Portland is extremely weird.  One of the craziest things was the fashion sense.  In true hipster form vantage clothing is all the rage.  We shopped around in one of the House of Vintage for a bit.  It seems as though the sensible option for Portlanders to wear these clothing options of decades past.  Though much of the stuff was very interesting, I am not much for things of old.  I saw a couple of things that peaked my interest a little, but just not anything that made me want to pull the trigger.  I felt more apathy than nostalgia.  That’s not to say that there might not have been some great finds in that store, I just love new stuff.

Random Steet Art

The next stop was Herb Shoppe.  I’m pretty sure you can find pretty much every herb you might need in this store.  As soon as you walk in the intensity of the dried herbs hits you and you can smell a near overwhelming amount of these dried herbs.  It is easy to tell that the herbs are sold pretty quickly based on how potent they smell.  It is probably one of the largest selections of dried herbs I’ve seen.

Then it was game time.  All throughout my time in Portland, my phone’s GPS wasn’t especially friendly, but I didn’t have that complicated of a route so it didn’t matter that much anyway.  I hadn’t seen Doug in a long time.  He was one of my best friends in the Navy and we were roommates for a couple of years.  It was cool to go over and see him and to be honest I kind of envy his huge back yard and deck.

I made that sandwich from the leftovers I had from Ox.  I also got Doug one of the maple  bacon doughnuts, because I figured even though he lives in suburban Portland, he’s the type that would probably never venture beyond like pretty much anywhere that sports, fast food, or a good steak is involved.  Anyway I won’t get started on the game because I am still a little angry over it as soon as the game was over I had to leave because I was so angry and I couldn’t bear to be around any Television.

Khai Luuk Khoei

We went for dinner at Pok Pok. The wait this time was much shorter only 90 minutes.  This time we would wait at Whiskey Soda Lounge.  While we waited I had the Mango Alexander to drink and ordered the Khai Luuk Khoei, deep fried boiled eggs, to snack on.  The eggs were cooked perfectly.  They had this nice creamy yolk.  I also loved the tangy tamarind sauce was perfect with it.  The crispy shallots added a little bit more crunchiness that I didn’t think the dish would need initially, but it definitely worked out well. The Mango Alexander is probably one of the best sweet drinks that I’ve had.  Imagine a mango dreamsicle.  That’s what this glass of awesomeness tastes like.  I will say the one big downside of this place is the way they printed the menu.  Combining the low lighting with a darker colored paper and relatively small print makes the menu pretty difficult to read (and I’ve had LASIK mind you).

It was well under the wait time when the table was ready.  I couldn’t pass up another Mango Alexander because that drink is great.  For dinner I wasn’t too hungry and they serve in small plate style.  I went with two small plates.  The Kaeng Hang Leh and the Muu Paa Kham Waan.  The Kaeng Hang Leh is a spicy pork belly stew that goes with rice.   I could have probably stopped with this dish alone.  The sauce was thick and it is an incredibly rich dish.  I enjoyed it a lot and the pork was incredibly tender.  I must admit it was an interesting take on curry, and I have never thought of the idea of the addition of tamarind to curry.

Muu Paa Kham Waan

The Muu Paa Kham Waan was a genius dish.  I’ve never heard of anything like it before.  It is a boar collar meat that is tender and sliced thin.  It is coated with this bright and slightly spicy yet acidic dressing.  Match that with the chilled mustard greens and you definitely have a winner.  The strategy of putting the greens under ice right before serving is a technique that I will be walking away with because it keeps the greens crisp and keeps them from getting wilted when met with the warm meat.  It’s something that I have to use the next time I make lettuce wraps.

We turned in early for the night in order to get up and see a lot of nature stuff the next morning, but all in all this would have been the perfect day, if Colin Kaepernick threw one more touchdown and one less interception.