My mom and sister and I just returned from a short, fun-filled trip to Portland, Oregon. We took the train down which was very relaxing and, surprisingly, doesn’t take much longer or cost much more than it would to drive. Our hotel, the funky Inn at Northrup Station, was located within walking distance of all of the best neighborhoods. We walked all over town and did plenty of shopping. We also visited the Classical Chinese Garden which was beautiful. Mostly, though, we spent our time dining out in some of Portland’s great restaurants. Portland is known for being a really good food city and it certainly lived up to its reputation during this trip. Here are the highlights:

Andina - Andina is a wildly popular Peruvian restaurant located in Portland’s very hip Pearl District. It consistently gets rave reviews from critics and diners alike. The menu features traditional and modern Peruvian dishes and has a long list of tapas-style plates which you can order in small, medium or large sizes. We chose a bunch of small plates to share including marinated mussels topped with tomato-corn salsa, grilled asparagus, an amazingly tender grilled octopus skewer and a Peruvian specialty: causa with smoked trout. A causa is a cake made of lime-flavored potatoes with some sort of filling. It was a pretty stunning dish, featuring alternating layers of lavender potatoes and pink smoked fish topped with pale green avocado slices and black sesame seeds. With our meal, we were also given homemade quinoa rolls with three dipping sauces. To drink, I stuck with a traditional Peruvian pisco sour which was as delightful as the rest of the meal.

Kornblatt’s - When we first arrived in town, we were hungry and just needed a quick lunch near our hotel so we went to Kornblatt’s. Kornblatt’s is a New York style deli known for its Reuben sandwiches. I ordered the bagel & smoked fish combo which is a large toasted bagel, one half piled high with smoked whitefish salad and the other with cream cheese and hand-sliced Nova lox (flown in from New York.) The whitefish salad was really yummy, especially topped with capers and red onion. The lox was good as well. I wasn’t expecting much from Kornblatt’s since it was just a quick stopover meal but our lunch ended up being really tasty. I ate way more than I thought I would and was barely hungry in time for dinner that night. Kornblatt’s is on 23rd Avenue NW, another trendy Portland neighborhood.

Mother’s Bistro - Mother’s Bistro is located in downtown Portland. The focus at Mother’s is comfort food. Not the greasy kind, but the “everything prepared from scratch using quality ingredients” kind instead. We went to Mother’s for breakfast on our last day in town. At Mother’s, you are given a choice not only of what coffee you want to drink but also the method with which you want your coffee brewed (”French press vs. drip?”) I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a restaurant before. And I’m from Seattle, the coffee capitol! We ordered coffee from Guatemala in a French press. For my breakfast, I had migas which is basically a corn tortilla, pepper and egg scramble topped with salsa and sour cream. It was served with really great home fries. My sister had a tasty mushroom omelet and my mom had the wonderfully tart and sweet blueberry pancakes.

Park Kitchen - We went to Park Kitchen for dinner our last night in town. It is located just at the edge of the Pearl District. With its intimate yet casual setting and inventive menu, which changes monthly and features lots of local ingredients, Park Kitchen is my favorite type of restaurant. Again, we ordered a bunch of small plates to share. We had the chickpea fries with squash ketchup, rapini fondue with hazelnuts and bread crumbs, salt cod fritters, roasted beets with almond tahini and a salad of shrimp, roasted cauliflower and arugula. We finished the meal with a cheese plate which consisted of 3 raw milk cheeses, including one of my favorites, Mt. Townsend Creamery’s Seastack. The cheeses were served with incredibly light and flaky house-made crackers. Park Kitchen’s cocktail menu equals their dinner menu in originality. I had the Widow’s Kiss: Calvados brandy, Benedictine, Chartreuse and Angostura Bitters. My sister had a pear brandy sidecar and my mom had the Bakers vs. Makers Manhattan sampler. It was an extremely wonderful meal. I highly recommend Park Kitchen.

Pok Pok Whiskey Soda Lounge - Before any vacation, I usually do a little bit of online research to find out what restaurants people are buzzing about in the city that I’m visiting. After reading reviews of Portland’s restaurants, there was one Thai restaurant that I knew I had to try: Pok Pok Whiskey Soda Lounge. Located just south of the funky Hawthorne District, Pok Pok consists of an outdoor takeout shack with a few seats and a tiny downstairs dining room. The food has been described as Thai food unlike any you’ve had before. The focus here is on authentic street foods, primarily of Northern Thailand. For our lunch, we ordered Yam Samun Phrai, which is an herbal salad featuring unusual ingredients such as betel leaf and sawtooth. We also had Yam Makheua Yao, a smoky grilled eggplant salad. It was incredible, the eggplant was lightly smoky in flavor and airy in texture, like little pillows. Finally, we had the Khao Soi Kai which is a mild yellow curry soup made with house-pressed coconut milk and topped with fried yellow noodles, pickled mustard greens and spicy chili paste. Delicious! Our drinks were just as exciting as the food. My sister ordered a bloody mary with Thai flavors, my mom had an apple gin rickey flavored with something called apple “drinking vinegar” and I had the salted plum vodka collins, also made with a drinking vinegar. I had never heard of drinking vinegars before, but apparently they are a big hit in Japan. They were delicious in our cocktails. Our waiter showed us the bottles and told us to look for them near the sake in Asian markets since, like sake, they are a fermented product. I looked for them in Uwajimaya on my way home from the train station, but they only had two kinds, apple and peach, and I have a feeling they are diluted with water since they were located near the bottled juices and teas rather than with the sake. Oh well. I guess this means that I’ll have to go back to Portland soon for my salty plum drink fix.

Everything that we ate in Portland was wonderful. It is rare to not strike out at least once when dining out in a new city so we were very, very happy. And, the best part? It was all totally inexpensive. If you add in one night of dessert and drinks at Papa Haydn, some souvenir chocolates from Moonstruck and a few pints at Bridgeport Brewery, our total food and drink tab for the trip was only about $130 each, including tip. And that means that I can afford to go back again and again and again!