Southpark

I spent my day off rambling around downtown with my mom today! She suggested that we go to the restaurant "with the big brass fish sticking out of the building." Why not? So we found Southpark seafood grill (which, coincidentally, is on SW Salmon St. downtown) and settled ourselves at a lovely patio table with a striped umbrella.

Since I read about cold soups and gazpacho in the Oregonian Food Day last week, I have been thinking I should set about trying some! Crazy random happenstance: Southpark had a delicious Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho on their menu. Here you see my mom modeling it:




Otherwise, I had an Oregon bay shrimp and avocado pita wrap. The balance of the two turned out really well, actually. The wrap was creamy, and the soup was tangy. Good stuff!

Bagdad Pub: take II

Hawthorne is one of my favorite places in Portland thus far, so I tend to go there often. The Bagdad is such a great place, too. I love the open seating area, which is perfect for people watching, and catching an evening breeze.

Walnut pomegranate dip was the deciding factor on tonight's menu. Three Faces of Eve comes with fresh-grilled flatbread, the aforementioned dip, feta-yogurt dip, and hummus, along with olives and pickled veggies. The feta-yogurt was absolutely scrumptious.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture - I only had my phone camera on me!

Bridgeport Ale House

"Ha ha, what were we thinking?"

My friend Michelle and I get bored sometimes, and dress up and go pretend we are trendy Portlanders instead of transplant retail clerks. We really are trendy Portlanders.

I am really impressed (so far) with the microbreweries that populate this fair city. Thus, whenever I am presented with the "oppourtunity," I try to patronize them. In the non-school marm definition of the word.

Hawthorne St. is a difficult place to navigate when you're both hungry and indecisive. Eventually hunger wins and you point and click and end up insanely happy. Luckily, I pointed and clicked on Bridgeport. They are the lovely masterminds of such things as Cafe Negro, Hop Czar, and Blue Heron.

I want to lay out a disclaimer for the photo below: yes, there were only two of us. No, we're not actually alcoholics. It's the indecisive thing again.




Bridgeport offers this sample of all their house ales as one menu item, which is really a cool thing. However, the cups are not, like, shot glasses. So bring more people, or you'll end up wasting a lot of it, which is a sad thing. Our sampling came with Cafe Negro, Hop Czar, Stumptown Tart, Blue Heron, and a few others.

They also have an amazing hummus platter. The olives are to die for.

Aybla - Food Cart

My friend introduced me to this food cart, in the downtown section of PDX food carts. Aybla is a Greek/Mediterranean food cart, and they serve gyros and falafel and other scrumptious delights.



I am now a lamb fiend. Yes, me, the girl who was vegetarian for six years, now cannot stop eating delicious baby animals. Sigh.











You would understand, though, if you tasted the Super Lamb Gyros from Aybla. It's a little pricey, for a single wrap ($7 or so), but that sucker is HUGE, and they aren't stingy with their lamb. It comes in a space blanket, with pita bread, cilantro, and tomatoes, smothered in sauce.

There are several Aybla food carts: SW 5th and Oak (my previous frequent stop), SW 9th and Alder, and SE 43rd and Belmont (my new frequent stop).