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Portland is a city of contradictions. A place where viridescent forests collide with busy streets beneath an iconic towering pink skyscraper. Adidas and Nike’s gleaming campuses sit alongside some of the West Coast’s oldest continually operated bars and restaurants. This place is bigger, weirder, and more vibrant than you’ve heard, endlessly idiosyncratic and of itself. You might think you know what goes on here, but there’s always more to the story.
Above all, this is a place where every conversation inevitably leads back to food. With its chic bistros, buzzy new contemporary spots, and charming little cafés, Portland—home to some 600,000 residents—continues to be one of this country’s finest food cities. The restaurants here take advantage of local produce and stunning surroundings.
During the pandemic the dream-like atmosphere of Portland ran headlong into new challenges as restaurateurs grappled with rising costs of goods, labor shortages, and increased rent prices once associated with bigger cities. With growth and change came turnover and strife; iconic local restaurants like Pok Pok, Beast, Paley’s Place, and Clyde Common have all closed in recent years.
Despite it all, the city’s revered food and beverage scene continues to innovate in new ways, from a roaring beer and wine culture to hundreds of independent food carts spread across town, each offering a distinct cuisine and point of view. Without ever stepping foot in a brick-and-mortar restaurant, a tour of the city’s carts takes you from pork chops and wood-fired Mormon cookbook rolls at Ruthie’s to spicy Lao steak salad and fried soft shell crab at Golden Triangle, char siu and garlic noodles at Mama Chow’s Kitchen, fragrant moles and quesabirria tacos at Mole Mole, epic soul food plates and desserts at Kees #Loaded Kitchen, or Tuscan sandwiches and salads at Sorbu Paninoteca, and the list goes on and on. You could feed yourself from the city’s carts for months.
Chefs continue to put down roots here, cooking for a restaurant-obsessed public. At the head of this new class are restaurateurs like Gregory Gourdet, whose tribute to Haitian cooking, Kann, was named one of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants of 2023, and Akkapong Earl Ninsom, whose growing constellation of Thai concepts has become beloved staples for locals and must-visits for out of towners.
Gone are the “Portlandia days of “put a bird on it.” Today the catchphrase sounds more like, “Where are we eating next?”
The Essentials
- Don’t leave town without: Some seasoning. A jar of salt from Jacobsen Salt Co. is a lovely and practical reminder of your trip. They harvest the most wonderful Oregon sea salt out of Netarts Bay on the north Pacific Ocean. Their half-ounce slide tins make for an affordable, thoughtful gift.
- A sight to see: The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is the city’s cultural center, home to innovative exhibitions and the Northwest’s largest planetarium, perfect for all ages.
- The best place to stay: Jupiter Hotel and Jupiter NEXT, two properties located next to each other on Southeast Burnside Street. The cocktail bar Hey Love inside of Next is one of the best hotel bars in America.
For breakfast, pastries on a volcano or lifesaving pho
Portland is built right into the forest, with huge evergreen trees all around and massive mountains looming in the distance. Start your day by taking a short hike up to Mount Tabor, an extinct volcano within city limits that serves as a public playground for locals.
Visit Coquine Market for some of the city’s best pastries. Along with chocolate chip brioche, sweet and savory scones, jalapeño cheese sticks, and a rightly famous smoked almond and salted caramel cookie, the market serves tasty coffee drinks from local roaster Coava. It’s an airy shop, run by husband-wife team Ksandek Podbielski and Katy Millard (who also helm Coquine’s lauded sister restaurant of the same name next door) that would be just as at home in the French countryside and offers local produce and wines alongside small sandwiches and snacks. With breakfast, coffee, and goodies in hand, ascend the nearby Mount Tabor Park, a gently sloping zigzag network of walking trails and playgrounds with plenty of fresh air and stunning views.
If you’re in need of something more substantial for breakfast, Hà VL & Rose VL Deli are the ideal destinations. Peter and Loan Vuong’s duo of family-run Vietnamese soup shops serve a menu of immensely satisfying, soul-reviving pho and bún that change daily. An unofficial tribute website tracks the revolving offerings and hours (this place is that popular, and there is no official website), and most Portlanders have a favorite special; mine is the turmeric noodle mi quang, a yellow pork broth flecked with peanuts, ground pork, and ground shrimp, topped with a slice of Vietnamese meatloaf and a sesame rice cracker. There is no hangover this bowl cannot defeat. And in some great news for VL fans, a third location from the same family, Annam VL, opened in late 2023, dedicated to street food and “unfamiliar regional soups.”
Espresso and kakigori or a bookstore tour
Great coffee came early to Portland—third-wave coffee stalwart Stumptown opened its first shop all the way back in 1999—and some 25 years later the city is packed with solid options in every neighborhood.
Courier Coffee is a lovely local roaster that’s also home to co-owner Sakiko Setaka’s Japanese shaved ice and snack project, Soen. From spring to fall Setaka serves kakigori flavors like green tea mochi and seasonal fresh peach. She also offers delicately sweet inari and fresh-wrapped hand rolls, plus a sharply curated range of green teas imported from Japan all year long. Get a coffee and a delicious custardy canelé or the excellent iced green tea (served with a huge spear of hand-cut ice), then take in the soundtrack of punk music punctuated by the happy whir of the imported shaved ice machine.
Around the corner you’ll find Powell’s Books, the largest independent bookshop in America. This is a required visit for anyone from out of town, but don’t stop there. You can explore nearby Hi Books, a charming independent bookshop with a focus on art and photography. And further afield you’ll find Green Bean Books, a children’s bookshop, as well as Third Eye Books, which features authors from the African diaspora.
For lunch, an Indonesian discotheque or a delicious dive bar hideout
Thomas and Mariah Pisha-Duffly have made a name for themselves with their growing group of bars and restaurants across the city. Whether putting chili-shrimp jam on a cheeseburger or spooning sambal into cocktail sauce, they view Indonesian and Peranakan cuisine through a distinctly Portland lens that’s casual, contemporary, and above all else, fun. Oma’s Hideaway, their playfully maximalist restaurant, makes for a Technicolor escapist lunch retreat. The menu includes spicy laksa noodles, salted egg yolk curry fries, and a Filet-O-Fish riff made with fried fish balls. The interior glitters like a psychedelic disco, and best of all, you can make a lunch reservation—a scarce option in this city. The restaurant’s location on SE Division is ideal for a post-lunch walk to check out shops, galleries, and more bars.
Hop in a car for a short drive to the north part of Portland, where you’ll find great record stores like Mississippi Records, vintage clothing shops like Zero Wave, and public green spaces, including the stunning rose garden at Peninsula Park. These destinations also set you up for a visit to the hybrid bar and restaurant Tulip Shop Tavern. This is very good upscale bar food, with deceptively normcore weekly specials (patty melts on Mondays, hot chicken on Thursdays) executed with low-key high-end precision. Like any good dive, the bar has a dark, mellow atmosphere, but look closer and you’ll find one of the city’s strongest drinks programs, with local beer and outstanding cocktails. Tulip Shop feels reminiscent of “Old Portland.” Most everyone here looks like they might play in a metal band or work part-time at a bike shop.
Between meals check out bottle shops galore
Looking to fill a little space in your suitcase or stock up your Airbnb fridge? Explore Portland’s vast array of bottle shops. Several factors are in our favor here, including an internationally famous local beer and wine scene, an established import market, and the lack of Oregon sales tax. Wine drinkers should not leave Portland without visiting E&R Wine Shop, home to a deep selection of wines from near and far and a staff that can happily guide you toward the ideal bottle from Oregon, Burgundy, or points unknown.
Wine fans seeking additional cult Burgundy and Champagne options (or vintage Oregon wines from yesteryear) would also do well to visit Cru & Domaine, a new bottle shop that has come on very strong in its first year. Beer lovers have for decades patronized Belmont Station, whose heaving shelves offer a who’s who of cool local and national beer selections, with a fun pub next door to facilitate additional beer enjoyment. Newer to the scene is Sunflower Sake, a charmingly diminutive bottle shop and tasting bar that’s home to one of the finest retail sake selections in America. Whether you are a sake expert or just starting to learn and taste, Sunflower is a destination worth exploring in Portland.
For dinner, a Thai prix fixe, contemporary bo ssam, or a revelatory trip out of town
For nearly a decade now, Langbaan—led by executive chef-owner Akkapong Earl Ninsom—has pushed the boundaries of Thai food in America. The new location is ensconced inside the also excellent but far more casual Phuket Cafe. Scallops in coconut cream, sweetly complex pineapple curry mussels, crunchy morsels of Thai fried chicken and taro cake in Thai iced tea egg yolk custard await.
New to the scene is Jeju, a modern interpretation of Korean BBQ and bo ssam from chef-owners Peter Cho and Sun Young Park, whose restaurants Toki and Han Oak have helped define Portland’s dining landscape. Jeju opened in the summer of 2023 with a set-course dinner menu featuring delicate lacy mandu dumplings and bone-broth-fortified black vinegar, an assortment of contemporary cocktails and Korean sools (a range of Korean alcoholic drinks), and a rotating main course based around whole animal butchery (think pork shoulder alongside spicy sausage), sourced from small Pacific Northwest meat purveyors. Peter Cho serves his mother’s recipe for kimchi as part of the banchan, and dinner finishes with fluffy bowls of icy bingsu, with malty misugaru crumbles and fresh berries in every bite.
If you’re up for a longer road to dinner, one of the most exciting restaurants in Portland right now is actually an hour or so south of the city. Chef Matthew Lightner’s Ōkta is located in the Willamette Valley hamlet of McMinnville and is worth the time and the drive. The restaurant offers a hyper-locavore Oregon fine dining experience built on seasonality, produce from the restaurant’s farm, and a curated wine offering from sommelier Ron Acierto. If you find yourself too thrilled by dinner to journey back to the city, the restaurant’s upstairs Tributary Hotel is luxuriously understated, and offers a remarkable in-room breakfast service from the Ōkta team.
Nightcaps and Nibbles
A quirk of frontier law requires all drinking establishments in Oregon to serve food whenever liquor is available. In modern times this means our best barrooms are also home to wildly good food, meaning an after-dinner drink can easily turn into a whole other meal.
The subterranean Scotch Lodge is a portal into the world of Tommy Klus, a noted whiskey-obsessive and obtainer of beyond-rare bottles. The modern classic Penicillin cocktail comes fully upgraded here with culty Ardbeg and Auchentoshan whiskies. Even if you’re not particularly hungry, you cannot leave without trying the giant fried softshell crab sandwich with white kimchi and shallots served on fluffy milk bread. And speaking of hard-to-find bottles, explore the vivid world of agave spirits at Comala, home to more than 85 bottles of small producer mezcals and tequilas, each served with a story portraying the exciting artisan craft distilling culture of Mexico.
If beer is on your mind, head straight to Grand Fir Brewing, where brewer Whitney Burnside’s offerings run the gamut from easy-drinking Texas Czech lagers to pine-sap floral West Coast IPAs. Good beer like this demands food, and here it’s paired with roadhouse cuisine from chef Doug Adams, a Texan transplant whose Calabrian chili wings, sweet-spicy beer nuts, and weekly BBQ specials make reaching for another pint dangerously logical.
The glass list at the wine bar Heavenly Creatures is consistently impressive. Here you’ll be poured hard-to-find Burgundy and Loire Valley imports alongside more local selections from winemakers like the Color Collector and Morgen Long, all in Portland’s version of a charming little Parisian caviste. While wine is undoubtedly the focus, the chefs are doing remarkable work. How about a comte-curry spring pea samosa with your glass of Chenin Blanc, or gorgeous whipped rice pudding in burnt orange sauce and a splash of Macvin du Jura to end the night? Although, who says the night ends here? There’s always one more spot to try in Portland.