A review of Olympia Provisions, By Roger Porter Like impatient readers who sneak a look at the last page of a novel, I have a tendency to scan the dessert selections on a menu before checking out anything else. It’s probably because I want to gage my appetitive capacity to decide if I’ll save room for a sweet, or simply wish to plan my dinner with the tastes lined up in a … [Read more...] about Review: Olympia Provisions – Westside
Restaurant Reviews for the Portland Metro Area
These are in-depth restaurant reviews for the Portland area which we have written over the years. You'll find every restaurant we have covered in this archive. You'll find them in alphabetical order. As restaurants close, we do our best to keep the list current.
Review: St. Jack
A Review of St. Jack Restaurant by Roger Porter Liberté, Egalité, Gastromie! The French Revolution has come to town, and the only guillotine in sight is a chef’s cleaver hacking at a pig. Within a month of each other two French bistros have opened in Portland—Little Bird downtown and St. Jack, in the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood, across the street from Vindaloo. Gabe … [Read more...] about Review: St. Jack
Review: Gilda’s Italian Restaurant
A review of Gilda's Italian Restaurant in Portland Oregon by Roger PorterYou hear all the time that one of the lamentable gaps in Portland’s culinary scene is the absence of great Chinese restaurants. Understandably there is little here to compare with the Chinese food palaces of San Francisco or Vancouver, B.C., but sadly we fall down in that department relative to … [Read more...] about Review: Gilda’s Italian Restaurant
Review: Ate-Oh-Ate Restaurant
Nostalgia can do odd things to people. It can turn strong men weepy, and make normally sensible folks act with puzzlingly sentimental yearnings. The word “nostalgia” literally means a sickness for home, and when Ben Dyer set out to re-create the food (no one ever accused it of being a “cuisine”) of his native Hawaii, that sickness caused him to do a curious thing: he opened a … [Read more...] about Review: Ate-Oh-Ate Restaurant
Review: Thistle Restaurant in McMinnville
A Review of Eric Bechard's Thistle Restaurant in McMinnville By Roger PorterI promised myself I wouldn’t allude in this review to Eric Bechard’s incident this spring involving a defiant defense of local animals, a stance provoked by a rival chef who, in his eyes, had heretically championed a Midwest over an Oregon pig. The great porcine passion probably put Bechard’s name … [Read more...] about Review: Thistle Restaurant in McMinnville