I’m using this map of Portland restaurants as a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey so to speak, for those moments when Sweets and I know we need to go out for food, but are too low blood sugared or simply too indecisive to pick a place to visit.

While not a complete map (oh heavens!) this is a good manageable mouthful for us to chew on.
Ah, now where to eat next…

View Larger Map

Sweets and I sat down at the outside table with our own bacon maple bars (yes, we’re not sharing). We were too overwhelmed by the choices and the highlighted doughnut case to pick anything more subtle, so the eponymous bacon bar won us over.

Just the simple act of sitting with this thing brought one person passing by to shake their head in disbelief.

It’s a fun doughnut, though rather a bit underwhelming for what it is. Yes, its just a maple bar with a piece of bacon slapped on it. If I were gonna go all out, I’d fill it with bacon studded cream and add bourbon too. But, that’s just my tendency to go over the top.

Next time I’m getting a Tang dusted one.

Voodoo Doughnut Website

Music won out on the Sunday night schedule battle. I was not prepared to turn down the temptation that is Patti Smith performing at a Special Olympics benefit after all. Is Portland amazing or what?

Oh yeah, and there was food…

Patti Smith with huckleberries, fry bread, corn chowder, and fresh blueberry soda.

It was a good weekend.

I say finally as our earlier trip to New Orleans has heightened my creole radar. Finally, as Acadia is only a few staggering steps from our house.

We feasted on shrimp, made googly eyes at a 3 inch thick pork chop, giggled over the phrase hushpuppy pudding, and mopped up amazingly rich and deep sauces whose perfume clung to my fingers into the night. We were overtaken by the fireworks show of flavors. Voyeuristic views of their online menus happily prepared me for the choices at hand, though the crescendo of tastes was almost startling.

Yet, amidst all this savory splendor, lay a salacious cocktail menu I was unprepared for, and promptly bowled over by. Infused is the word of Acadia’s summer. Hardly a cocktail is featured on their menu that isn’t composed of an infused liquor, the current highlight being black pepper infused vodka.

I am tempted to make their St Charles my newest accessory. Black pepper and rosemary infused vodka shaken with grapefruit juice and served with a powdered sugar rim. The alchemy of these flavors are stunning, with each component completely enmeshed in a harmonic chord. The powdered sugar rim is a startling texture on the lip, soft and blanket like, which is soon taken over by the low hum of the black pepper burn that runs through your mouth.

I’m finding myself plotting routes with Acadia’s cocktails as my destination, which fuels my need to make my own pepper infused vodka.

Such a lush life!

Fortunately for us, we have time with our favorite local, Lance, who also was our fixer for our culinary tour through Osaka this summer. Not only is Lance a regional expert in Japan, but Kaneohe on the windward side of Oahu is his hometown.

In addition to taking us to Pah Ke’s in Kaneohe, the best Chinese Restaurant I’ve ever experienced, he took the time to give us a tour of Honolulu’s Chinatown.

We started it off on the right foot with a stop at Ishimoto’s Poke Stand. The varieties of poke were quite astounding with a variety of raw seafoods tangled up in seaweed and spices. We sampled tako poke, and a spicy maguro poke, while also gazing on the eye catching the crab and mussel varieties.

Splendid Table produced a Honolulu focused podcast a couple of weeks ago that prepared me for the astounding variety of produce at Chinatown. However, the aquarium like variety of bright local fish available in the cases is still breath taking. Bright yellows, oranges, and blue decorated fish are all available whole next to a variety of leg sized pieces of gleaming maguro.

The whole journey through the fish mongers had me muttering under my breath about my need for an ice chest to pack fish home with us.

Chinatown has several collected market places that one must duck through a doorway to find. Here, multiple vendors collect indoors to show off their collections of shrimp, seafood, fresh meats, and produce. Our timing in Oahu doesn’t make a lot of fresh tropical local fruits available, though we did spy some rambutan and lychee.

I highly recommend a tour of Chinatown to any foodie who finds themselves in Oahu. If you don’t have a local friend, many culinary tours are available by perusing the Honolulu Weekly. Here’s two we found advertised this week:

• Cook’s Tour of Chinatown Get an insider’s guide in Asian cooking on a morning tour ($15; 8:30–10:30am) or dine out with “Taste of Chinatown Eateries” in the afternoon ($59; 11:30am–2:30pm). Learn about what to get and where to go. Comfortable shoes and elastic waistband recommended. Cash only. Reservations required. Corner of King and Smith streets. Every Sat. [email: eat_hawaii], 808-391-1550
• Culinary Walking Tour of Chinatown Get a history and geography lesson of Chinatown as you tour through some of the area’s restaurants, historic sites and shops. Begins at Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 42 N. King St.: Every Mon, 9:30am. $10. 808-533-3181

I imagine the benefits of an organized tour vs a self directed one, would be in having your produce questions answered. There are several varieties of fruits, vegetables and fish that one may not be familiar with. However, if you are a personality type that likes to jump in to a new experience, you’ll do fine on your own.

Aloha and happy eatings!

One Year Ago

Sweet Candy Sushi

This last week, my kitchen has been filled with rice crispie treats, and marshmallows galore! A truism that I forgot is that if making sushi is difficult- then the same goes for making fake sushi. I used rice crispie treats as the rice form, which was brushed with white chocolate to make it look more rice like. The toppings are a combination of fruit and marshmallow magic…

I ordered the maple creme brulee, which was described as “piped in a cup”. The waitress warned me kind of non-specifically that this wasn’t “normal” creme brulee.

I didn’t object, i like different flavors…

the Creme Brulee that was brought out was a wonderfully flavored mousse piped in a praline shell. No top shell of sugar! Now I understand the warning, though they could have been more specific about it.

It was good but didn’t strike me at all like a creme brulee. Maple Creme Mousse… was more like it. Tasted like eating pecan pie in a fluffy cloud of whipped cream.

Maybe the pastry chef was thinking that with the crispy sugar shell holding the mousse, it was almost like an upside down creme brulee?? I don’t think so.

Though the dessert flavors were wonderful, its title caused me to ruminate on it for quite sometime… hence this post

is mousse that out of fashion that it has to be called a Brulee?

Really, its an honor to be nominated- I’ll bake y’all a cake as soon as I get a chance! This pictured one is a Sweet Life cake made for the cover shot that displays cute little bits of Eugene. If you look closely, you can spot a tie dyed t-shirt on the bottom tier.

Now- on to the tasties: the Forkin’ Good category:

BEST ASIAN

• 1. Ring of Fire
• 2. Chao Pra Ya Thai Cuisine
• 3. Sweet Basil Thai Cuisine

BEST THAI

• 1. Sweet Basil Thai Cuisine
• 2. Tie: Chao Pra Ya Thai Cuisine & Ring of Fire
• 3. Ta Ra Rin Thai Cuisine

BEST BAKERY/SWEETS

• 1. Sweet Life Pâtisserie (lifetime achievement award too!)
• 2. Eugene City Bakery
• 3. Metropol Bakery
• I expect to see Hideaway Bakery giving numbers 2 and 3 a run for their money in next years placings.

BEST BAR FOOD

• 1. The Horsehead
• 2. Rennie’s Landing
• 3. Sam Bond’s Garage
• You can get crappy bar food anywhere in the world, except perhaps at Eugene’s Horsehead. Offering collard greens, cole slaw, catfish, cornbread and all the other staples of Southern cookin’, this joint rocks with lots of organic ingredients, a full line of hard liqs and pool tables. “It’s food you don’t usually find anywhere else,” bartender Tiffany Cortez says. “It fills your stomach up and helps maintain you throughout your day.” Or night, as the case may be.

BEST BBQ

• 1. Papa’s Soul Food Kitchen & Blues Joint
• 2. Hole in the Wall Barbecue
• 3. BBQ King

BEST BURRITOS

• 1. Burrito Boy
• 2. Burrito Amigos
• 3. Laughing Planet Café

BEST CAFÉ/COFFEEHOUSE

• 1. Allann Bros. Beanery
• 2. Full City Coffee Roasters
• 3. Espresso Roma
• Go to Allann Bros. 5th Avenue Beanery enough, and you’ll start to notice a few things. Like the regulars. There’s the bespectacled guy with his books, and the fellow with the long ponytail who’s been going there for at least a decade. (How do we know? ‘Cause we’ve been doing the same thing, of course.) You could make up stories for them, if you wanted — or you could just focus on yourself and your delicious coffee, quiche, bagel or sandwich. The Beanery has variety in spades, from the drinks to the clientele to the lunch options. There’s always a table, they don’t care if you sit for hours, they have wireless internet and you can almost always find the right section of whichever paper you like the best in the bin by the door.

BEST DOWNTOWN LUNCH

• 1. Café Zenon
• 2. The Broadway
• 3. Café Lucky Noodle
• A 25-year-old café in downtown Eugene! That’s called staying power. Credit the fine service that has always come in a white shirt and tie. Credit the exotic menu — Thai tiger’s tears salad, hirino souvlaki pork loin, izgara tavuk Turkish style chicken breast — with a fond nod to the old lunch favorite, Zenon chicken salad. Maybe most importantly, credit location, location, location and smart design. The café is freshly painted, a five-stool bar added and new lighting installed. The place is still noisy, but that might be calculated. Sit there in the middle of the traffic and chatter and enjoy the illusion that you’re in the center of a really big city.

BEST FOOD CART

• 1. Cart de Frisco
• 2. Alexander’s Great Falafel
• 3. One Bad Dawg
• Magically appearing at the plaza on Willamette and Broadway during lunch hour, Cart de Frisco is a godsend to the downtown hungry hordes. The vendor – known simply as the “Sandwich Man” – works from a cart no bigger than a small closet, dishing up three grilled chicken entrees: Frisco stick, Frisco sandwich and Frisco salad. All three feature a “special Frisco sauce” and friendly banter (which recently consisted of locating the whereabouts of the “Saw-playing Girl”). Saw Girl, if you’re reading this, call your parents. Or at least let the Sandwich Man know you’re OK. He worries.

BEST INTERNATIONAL/CONTINENTAL

• 1. Marché
• 2. Café Zenon
• 3. Tie: Adam’s Place & Café Lucky Noodle & Café Soriah

BEST MEXICAN/LATIN AMERICAN/CARIBBEAN

• 1. Red Agave
• 2. Chapala Mexican Restaurant
• 3. El Jarro Azul

BEST MEAL UNDER $7

• 1. Laughing Planet Café
• 2. Café Yumm!
• 3. Burrito Boy

BEST ITALIAN/GREEK/MIDDLE EASTERN

• 1. Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria
• 2. Poppi’s Anatolia
• 3. Café Soriah

BEST NEW RESTAURANT

• 1. The Vintage
• 2. El Vaquero
• 3. Papa’s Soul Food Kitchen & Blues Joint
• Cheese fondue with apples. Dark chocolate fondue with strawberries and Rice Krispies squares for dipping. Funky signature cocktails like the lava rocks, with coconut rum and Pop Rocks on the rim instead of sugar. Savory crepes. Sweet crepes. Delicious appetizers, pastas and salads. Pizza with a twist. Beautiful vine-draped outdoor courtyard. Friendly service. ‘Nuff said.

BEST PIZZA

• 1. Pizza Research Institute
• 2. Pegasus Pizza
• 3. Mezza Luna Pizzeria
• We’ll never forget our first PRI slice. We just didn’t know what we were in for. Spinach, feta, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts … It’s like the pizza wizards at PRI manage to make every ingredient — even the ones we’d never seen on pizza before, like peaches — somehow taste even better than usual. And where else is a slice of pizza a whole meal in itself? We made the mistake, that first trip, of ordering a slice of cheese to split with our dining companion. Just in case we were still hungry. We weren’t.

BEST SERVER

• 1. Quinn O’Dell, Ring of Fire
• 2. Dawn Merrill, LaVelle Wine Bar & Bistro
• 3. Rayney Meisel, The Vintage
• Serving at Ring of Fire was Quinn O’Dell’s first restaurant job, one he has held for seven years. He’d like to run his own establishment someday, and he definitely prefers customer interaction to whisking sauces and scrubbing pots. “It’s excellent!” O’Dell said, after learning he was a finalist for best server. So after getting this glorious recognition, O’Dell must think he’s hot stuff, right? Naw, he’s much too modest for that. “It’s more like a confidence thing, just getting really confident in finding out what people want,” he said. “You can always learn better ways to take care of people.

BEST SPECIAL OCCASION/FINE DINING

• 1. Café Soriah
• 2. Marché
• 3. Adam’s Place

BEST VEGETARIAN OPTIONS

• 1. Laughing Planet Café
• 2. Lotus Garden
• 3. Café Yumm

My high school / college / survived our twenties- friend Ryan Ositis was looking for crew members to serve on his BBQ team, the Baltic BBQ Boyz. A special event was demanding his entry, the first ever Kobe Beef America BBQ Cook-Off in Bend, Oregon, and he was in need of friends not afraid of getting their hands meaty.

Sure I typically eat vegetarian, and flirt with veganism- but only because of its MacGyver-like charm… this all in no way trumps the curiosity over Kobe Beef! Having recently been spotted in Japan, we wanted our own taste of this loch-ness-monster of meat.

What ensued was a fun weekend of motorcycle riding, catching up with friends, pregnant belly patting, and meat festing.

Made 4 briskets, wet smoked overnight. Ryan camped out with the smokers and babysat them all night long. The brisket was *excellent* juicy, beautiful smoke ring… 30 lbs of huge beef ribs were cooked the morning of, to be handed out to the crowd. We also received a last minute gift of three boston butts which we dry rubbed, pulled and dressed with a paprika based vinegar sauce…. deee lish.

Even though Ryan has won the Grand Champion title at this year’s Kansas City Barbeque Society Cookoff in Chehalis, and thought the brisket came out excellent, he didn’t place very well at this event. The scores were a bit dubious, esp after we heard that the judges received no direction or instruction. For example, the winner’s scores under “taste” ranged (1-10) from 2 to 9. So pretty inconsistent scoring from what we glimpsed, which makes learning from these events more difficult.

…but, we had a blast! Ryan’s attitude kept our weekend great- winning is not the goal, and really keeps the fact that he is a first year amateur in perspective with everything. We turned down several catering offers and pondered a couple marriage propsals, so all in all I think we did well

Really fun, but exhausting event.
Giving meat to hungry enthusiastic people is always a pleasure.

Ask for a special meal option. Sweets did the ticket arranging and put us both down for the kosher meal option. This was the first time trying airline kosher- it gets a thumbs up. Additionally, having a special meal means they bring your food to you first.

Our kosher meal consisted of baked chicken on rice with carrots and green beans, a cold wild rice raisin salad, two rolls- one wheat one white, and a brownie with a cup of tea.

Air Canada also offers the following meal choices:

• asian vegetarian
• baby
• bland/ulcer
• children



• diabetic
• fruit plate
• gluten free
• hindu
• low calorie
• low fat
• low cholesterol
• low sodium
• muslim
• non-lactose
• oriental
• strict vegetarian
• vegetarian lacto-ovo

Sweets and I are rested and ready to venture out when our host, Chris, comes back for lunch!

And btw- so much for escaping heat… Tokashima is 33C and 75% humidity!

Did I taste it, yeah but it wasn’t special. Mostly the flavors of canned food… mellowed out without alot of good high notes. Even the brownie was so-so.

• A: grape drink powder
• B: mixed fruit cocktail
• C: matches
• D: chicles
• E: non-dairy creamer
• F: instant coffee
• G: moist towelette
• H: larger napkin like paper
• I: sugar
• J: tiny tabasco
• K: neato heating pack
• L: crackers
• M: beef ravioli
• N: spoooooon
• O: salt
• P: brownie
• Q: cheese spread with bacon