A Fine Slice of Portland

Pizza and Beer take me back to my boyhood days of listening to the soundtrack for “The Sound of Music” with my Mom. You know, “These are a few of my Favorite Things” and so on. By the way, John Coltrane does a really nice version of this song as well (sans the cute Rodgers and Hammerstein lyrics of course).

The subject of pizza and grading a good pizza is a tricky task. Let me just say that I once ate pizza for about 300 days in a row (or dang close). I used to work at the majestic Pizza Oasis in the late 90s while I was busy locating the inner Chief. I’m hoping to get there soon so that I can take you all down a trip through my memory lane. The reason that I’m mentioning my work in the industry is that there is one big thing to consider when discussing pizza. Grabbing a slice and ordering a pie can be two COMPLETELY different experiences. Ordering a pizza with your favorite ingredients and getting it fresh out of the oven are two big factors with regards to achieving optimum taste from your ‘za. There are some places which can master a pie but can’t master a slice and vice versa.

There has been a recent renaissance in Portland with regards to awesome, whole pizza pies. Since there are so many great places popping up, I would rather delay on discussing whole pies until a later date. With that in mind, I feel that I have had plenty of different slices around this town and have identified my favorite slice. The obvious beauty of grabbing a slice is that you don’t have to agree on toppings with anyone and you can grab one whenever you have the hankering.

Today, we discuss Bella Faccia on 2934 NE Alberta St. The name is Italian for “Beautiful Face”. This wonderful little nook has been on my radar for about the past 4-5 years and I still rank it at the top of my list.

A few bullet points of interest:

* It is a relatively thin slice of pie yet it is firm but not crackery.

* They make 18” pies and make their slices out of those.

* The only to go or dine-in whole pies that they make are 12” and 18” ones. I can only conclude is that they really pay strong attention to their crust and achieving the desired output.

* Due to the emergence of the Alberta neighborhood, I think they get a pretty solid traffic flow which means that their pies are always pretty fresh and not sitting around for awhile. Note: I remember I grabbed some slices from an unnamed place in my neighborhood and their slices had been out for some time. Anyway, my jaw was sore for 3 days from chewing the old crust of two slices. I felt entitled to that crust but paid the ultimate price (well, the second ultimate price; I do have a pulse and all).

* They have indoor seating with a comfortable ambience as well as a decent-sized outdoor area in the back.

* The staff is solid and not pretentious even though they seem to have an indie flair. I’m cool with that; being young and hip is all about the indie vibe these days in Portland. I used to be young and hip and a hippie-rocker guy during my pizza days and I was dang fashionable.

* This seems to be a polarizing slice. People either love it or they are not into it. The knock that I hear is that the pepperoni is greasy. We’ve all seen unnamed friends dab their pizza with napkins to decrease the grease factor. This seems like a logical gameplan for such instances.

As you can see from my scintillating photos, I mixed it up on a recent Friday evening. I had to get a pepperoni slice as I’m a big fan of the pig. In addition to pork, I’m also very fond of Greece and the magical combination of flavors that they have cultivated over many centuries. I forgot the name of the Greek slice and it’s not present on their online menu; I think it was tri-something. Regardless, it was an olive oil based pie with spinach, tomato, feta and garlic. As you can see from the picture, these slices were executed to dang near perfection. I like my pizza to be cooked that 1-2 extra minutes. To wet my whistle, I opted to have a pale ale which came from the Hazed and Infused Brewery. The beer was pretty dang good; after all it was Friday night, the sun was out and I was about to kick off the weekend on a positive note.

In summary, there are many places to grab a slice in Portland. No matter whom the vendor, a slice always seems to do the trick and satisfy the urge. If you are up for a little road trip and a potential pizza windfall in your life, you may want to check out Bella Faccia on Alberta. In addition to a great sliceria, this area makes for a great stroll as it has a lot of great bars, shops and the trademark Portland vibe. I believe that they have last Thursday every month which is the evil twin to First Thursday in the Pearl. I would definitely say that the Mississippi and Alberta neighborhoods have far surpassed the Belmont and Hawthorne districts with regards to having a cool, unique identity.

There are some good pictures at Bella Faccia’s website that I’m not going to hotlink. I would encourage you to check it out if you are interested.

Until next time…

http://www.bellafacciapizzeria.com/

http://www.yelp.com/biz/bella-faccia-pizzeria-portland

All Out Blitz

I debated referencing the Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop in my post title but that's not very “punk rock”. Nor is it probably fair to put "Blitz in the Ladd" in such esteemed company as Punk Rock's Elite. Don't get me wrong, I watched the movie, 'Rock and Roll High School', and that wasn't the essence of cool either but you got to cut the Ramones some slack. For those who are scratching their heads about the song, Blitzkrieg Bop, it's the Ramones tune that starts out "Aye Oh, Let's Go...", that was featured in the comedy classic, National Lampoons Family Vacation. Think Rusty and Audrey in the back of the Family Truckster with their headphones on. Ah, the days of summer road trips in the family station wagon. Don't even try to tell me that today’s minivans have the same panache as station wagons. Station wagons were tanks without the rotating cannon. Only in America can the everyman own some guns and a wood paneled tank. Hmmm, I seem to recall a James Garner and C Thomas Howell movie with a similar plotline except there was an actual tank involved.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088224/



Anyway, this little write-up is to recap on my recent visit to a sports bar in SE Portland in Ladd's addition called "Blitz in the Ladd". The Ladd's area is inner SE Portland near the Hawthorne/Division area. It was a Saturday afternoon and the troops were restless. The gang had a few, collective objectives:

- Find a decent place to watch an NBA Playoff Game without subjecting the non-sportsfan friends to the torture of 3 hours of basketball. In other words, find a place where a TV wasn't the sole diversion.

- Find a bar in the SE that doesn't terribly suck. I love SE Portland and it's great in so many ways. However, the bar options always seem limited.

Pretty meager requirements for that warm fuzzy feeling that accompanies good times with good friends on Memorial Day Weekend. No "rain camping" for this kid.

Initial impressions upon walking in the front door:

1. This place is pretty big and spacious.

2. There is a giant bar and they serve liquor (if that is your thing). I like the option.

3. There’s a lot of natural light if you are there prior to nightfall. I like light. To be fair in assessing this establishment, I think my review needs to be broken into two summaries: Blitz as a dining establishment and as a bar.

Let’s start with the positive. The Blitz is a pretty dang good bar.


Upside (Bar):

1. They have the following games: foosball, pool, two long shuffleboard tables (free), ping-pong tables and steel point darts.



Note: If you want to play ping pong, you better bring your A game. There are some hardcore pongers in the house that appear to spend all day there.

2. They have many nice big screen HD TVs. This would be a great place to watch a Blazer game.

3. The clientele seemed closer to my age which is nice. I feel a little out of sorts hanging with 21 year olds at the bar.

4. It seemed like a neighborhood bar. People were actually friendly and social; can be hard to find in Portland at times.

5. I think that they have about 10+ beers on tap.

6. They have at least 10 nice, new leather couches for relaxing.

7. Overall, I think they did a really nice job of filling a large space to make it feel comfortable and cozy.

8. They have a big garage door that they will open when the weather is nice. I like that touch as well.

9. We were able to hop on the shuffleboard without waiting more than a few minutes. Pretty remarkable for 8pm on a Saturday night (and the bar was pretty well populated).

10. They had really good service.



Downside (Dining Establishment):

1. The food was either bad or bland.

2. We got some fries and onion rings as appetizers and they were fine but the portions were pretty ridiculous. I would equate the amount of fries similar to a Biggie Fry from Wendys same with the Onion Ring portion size.

3. After a couple more hours, we ordered some main courses.

a. I ordered a fresh made pizza with pepperoni and jalapenos. It’s hard to make a pizza with these ingredients bland but they did it.

b. My friend got a Margareta pizza and same thing. It was so bland, she ate 2 small slices and called it quits.

c. My other two buddies got burgers based on our server’s recommendation. The burgers looked weak and got poor reviews from my friends. I’ll actually quote one of them for your reference, “The burger was horrible. Low part of the night. How can you mess up a burger?”

4. I noticed on the menu that they had asparagus on the menu for like $2 or $3 bucks. I saw someone ordered it and it looked good. I think it’s impossible to mess up asparagus so I will probably seek that out next time; if I’m in need of nourishment. How can they mess that up?

In summary, a great bar to hit up with your friends. Especially if you want to watch some sports and even if you don’t want to watch sports. I would grab something to eat before you get there. I love bar food and am pretty forgiving because I expect less from a bar kitchen. I think they should probably fire their kitchen manager or order their food from a different supplier. For a space that big, they have the opportunity to sell a lot of food; I can’t believe that they haven’t noticed how poor their food product is. If this place comes up with one signature dish, they could really make some bank.

I believe they also have a Blitz in the Pearl in NW Portland. I have not visited that site nor do I know anything about that place as a bar or dining establishment. The Blitz in the Ladd is hands-down the best sports bar in SE Portland (far better than Grand Central, Claudias, Bucket Brigade, etc).

Upon finishing my review, I decided to read some of the reviews on Yelp. There are a lot of negative comments regarding the poor service and other factors. I would like to make the disclaimer that I have only visited Blitz one time but all 4 of us had a grand time. Outside of the food, they nailed it and I’m looking forward to returning in the near future. I hope that my next visits are as satisfying as my first visit. All and all, it’s a safe place to test drive at least once if you are looking for a sports bar in the inner SE.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/blitz-ladd-portland

Note: This was my second review and preceded my blog. As a result, I only have two pictures that don’t really capture much. Future pics will be far more telling than these inclusions.

Whiskey Soda Lounge- A Restaurant Review

Sounds like a bar, right? Well, it is technically but I would imagine that 99% of the folks here are coming for the food (or their nearby sister restaurant: Pok Pok). What kind of food are we talking about? I guess I would classify it as gourmet Thai street food. The proprietor of this establishment has been in the spotlight for the last few years with his restaurant, Pok Pok, which is just across the street. Pok Pok is a little different in that it’s not a traditional sit down restaurant but more like an open air street food vendor with a covered shelter for diners to be protected from the elements (from what I have visually gathered by driving by it frequently). I have never been to Pok Pok due to the massive crowds that are always present. My recent visit to the WSL allowed me to sample the signature dishes from Pok Pok while enjoying no waiting period and a sunny Friday evening in Portland. Normally, I prefer to eat inside but we ate outside as the weather was too nice; especially after 16 straight days of rain.

Let’s proceed with the dining and drinking experience. Since we were at a place called, “Whiskey Soda Lounge”, it was only natural that I started with a house specialty cocktail. I ordered the Tamarind Whiskey Sour which contained: tamarind, lime juice, palm sugar and bourbon on the rocks. It was yummy and significantly sour; the presentation was nice as you can see for yourself.

Upon successfully finishing my first cocktail, I opted to switch over to Singha beer which proved well timed with the heat from the food that we ordered. Let me just start out by saying that I really enjoy typical thai food and I eat it once a week or so. This dining experience was completely different from my usual Thai food experience. I would classify each of the following dishes as appetizers, tapas or whatever you want to call them. The descriptions are taken from the menu.

1. Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings: Fresh natural chicken wings marinated in fish sauce, garlic and sugar, deep fried, tossed in caramelized Phu Quoc fish sauce and garlic and served with Vietnamese table salad. Our daytime grill cook Ich Truong’s recipe from his home in Vietnam.

Review: A Portland cabbie recently hyped these wings as the best in town. He even went so far as to brush off my favorite wing joint. To be fair, these wings and the other aforementioned, buffalo-style wings are prepared completely different. They looked really hot but weren’t that bad. My friend mentioned that he thought they tasted a little gamey. I think I have to agree. I thought the preparation was very good but the quality of the chicken itself could have been better. There wasn’t any sauce on the actual wings; it was more like the chicken had the “perfect skin”. In other words, the exterior of the wings were dry. I would be interested to try these wings again in the future to see if the chicken quality was a fluke. Perhaps a Saturday visit would be best to let them go through the week’s back inventory with Friday’s heavy traffic.

They looked divine and were tasty (just not transcendent).

Note: I'd like to take this moment to give shout outs to two of my favorite dogs: Ike and Chewy. Both of their names appear in this posting.

2. Miang Kham: Chiles, ginger, peanuts, dried shrimp, lime, shallot and coconut with betel leaf wrappers and ginger sauce.

Review: My favorite of the dishes that we ordered. Leaf tacos (that’s what I call them dangit!); who would have thunk it. The leaves tasted great. The texture combination was fantastic. The leaf was soft, the peanuts and dried shrimp crunchy, chiles were hot and everything worked wonderfully together. On the surface, I would have thought this would have been my least favorite dish in contrast to the “touted” wings and various beef dishes. I guess you just never know. We ordered a second instance of these leaf tacos.

3. Neua Sawan: Deep fried marinated dried beef with lime leaves. Served with a spicy sauce.

Review: This was pretty good. It tasted like warm, thick, soft beef

jerky. A lot of flavor with a significant sodium kick that I imagine came from some type of soy marinade. The dipping sauce was tasty; it was spicy chile oil. I enjoyed this in round 1 and we went for a follow-up 2^nd order which was a bit over the top for me. The waitress asked us if we wanted to order any rice out of the gates and I thought it was a foolish question. In retrospect, it would have been nice to have some blander food to cleanse the pallet during the course of our pseudo-appetizer meal. I was also thinking that some pickled ginger would have been welcome to refresh the old taste buds.

4. Jin Tup Roht Dii: Slow grilled beef seasoned with a little bit of salt and MSG, pounded with a sledge hammer and served with naam phril kha, a chile-galangal dipping sauce.

Review: This sounds great on paper. However, I thought it was chewy, tough 5 day old brisket that had been slightly warmed up. As I said before, I was shocked that I enjoyed the leaf shrimp tacos the most. I think that this dish was probably executed to perfection and just didn’t jive with my taste buds.

Summary: For the dining experience as a whole, it was fun and I would do it again. They had a great, attentive staff that took excellent care of us. They were professional, focused and paid great attention to detail. That being said, two of us chalked up a $90 tab (pre-gratuity) in about 80 minutes. I think I can safely say that I enjoyed the experience more than the food (based on the overall value). It was fun to have something out of the ordinary but I’m not sure how anxious I would be to hit the WSL up again in the near future. I’m still interested to hit Pok Pok up at some point this summer; I understand that have some great ribs.

A few additional notes: This was a rather ambitious dining experience for my 2nd posting. One of the appealing factors of this blog was forcing myself to get out and try some places that have been on my "to do" list. I consider myself a foodie but also an everyman. I think you’ll find that my future dining experiences are a bit more standard with regard to the type of fare. Please disregard any minor formatting issues; I did my best to resolve them.

A few related links:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/whiskey-soda-lounge-portland

http://pokpokpdx.com

http://www.whiskeysodalounge.com/

My Favorite Gyro (but not really a Gyro)

Depending on your pronunciation of "gyro", you may have caught onto my "oh so clever" reference to a a Peter O'Toole film that bored the heck out of me when I was a kid. Yup, it was one of the films that the parents wanted to see at the movie theater and I suffered through every minute of it. Boy, did I suffer. You know when they pair Larry Appleton (Balki's roommate from Perfect Strangers) with the magnificent Peter O'Toole, hilarity should ensue but it didn't (at least not for 9 year old Matt). I still have a gut hunch that I would hate that film today but you just don't know until you revisit things at a later time. If this is somewhat ringing a bell and you want to suffer a horrific flashback, you can read the film summary here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084370/

Moving onto the reason why I started this post. This thread is dedicated to an incredible "Gyro-like" sandwich that I had last week in downtown Portland. It was a Doner Kebab wrap aka "The German Gyro but better". The phrase "The German Gyro but better" is posted all over their menu. To make it even better, the name of the place is "doner kebab". That's like a gyro joint called GYRO or a pizza place called PIZZA. Regardless, when you are the only one in town, I guess you have the flexibility to be straight forward.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/doner-kebab-portland

Doner Kebab (it's 5th and SW Washington); next to the old greek cusina. They are open Monday through late Saturday Night.

Recapping my dining experience...

I got the spicy doner wrap and it blew my mind/confirmed my faith in a higher power. I ordered the spicy rendition as I dig spicy/hot food. The spicy kick was not overwhelming but very noticeable. It was actually perfect for my taste. I gotta say that the sandwich/wrap was in the top 3 sandwiches of the past 365 days for myself.

A few other things of relevant note:

• I ordered it with extra meat (why not? It was only an additional $2) and instead of putting the meat on the sandwich, they brought out a small bowl of meat shavings with a side of their spicy, yogurt sauce. This gesture really allowed me to appreciate the taste of their magical meat with the utmost clarity without having to weigh in the wrap, lettuce, feta, etc.
• I'm not generally a big sauce guy as I hate mayo and the like. I gotta say that the yogurt sauce was great. The sauce was the vehicle for the heat, as in spiciness.
• The fries were a bit odd. They weren't bad but they didn't knock my socks off. Bottom line is the place is called DONER KEBAB and not UNIQUE FRIES. I would get the fries in a heartbeat though.
• I think next time, I may skip the fries and go for their Mediterranean salad as I absolutely adore the horiatiki genre of salad.
• The restaurant is run by authentic Germans. Can you beat that? They were extremely nice to talk to and the service was great. It's rare that I can say that when discussing Portland restaurants. Don't be surprised if you hear the clientele talking in German; kinda cool.
• The interior decor is definitely not traditional Portland but I like it's uniqueness.
• If I worked downtown, I would eat at this place at least once a week.
• The biggest shocker of my experience was that the doner kebab meat was turkey. I would have thought that it was lamb or beef. On a side note, Doner Kebab can be any kind of meat; this establishment happens to serve their doner kebabs from the turkey realm.
• They are open until 4am I believe on Friday and Saturday night for the post-bar rush.
• Oh yeah, my favorite gyros of all time are from the Latin Quarter in Paris. With that being said, this isn't a gyro and this is Portland.
  
• I think my doner kebab wrap, extra meat, fry and dr. pepper came out to $12.00 (sans tip). A very fair deal for the quality of food, excellent service, clean environment and overall dining experience.
  

You heard it here first, I'm raving over a turkey sandwich wrap with yogurt sauce. I never, in a million years, thought that I would be saying such a thing. This place gets a 10 out of 10. It's such a no-brainer that I figured I would use this awesome dining establishment as my first food review for my new blog.

Stay Classy Doner Kebab,
Chief