Portland's Best Restaurants 2017
Portland's 40 best restaurants
By Michael Russell | The Oregonian, OregonLive.com
From fine-dining to food carts, the word that best describes this turbulent year for Portland restaurants is "access." Access is what propelled Portland chefs to open carts or start pop-ups in parking lots, back rooms and beer bars to present their unique vision for modern Mexican cuisine, cured Nordic fish or Indonesian barbecue. Access is what led a handful of Portland's top restaurants to set aside Mondays for affordable menus filled with refined dive bar snacks, fiery Issan Thai food or plump Korean dumplings. And it's the question at the heart of our ongoing cultural appropriation debate: Who has access to the real estate opportunities and investment capital required to open a successful restaurant?
For this, our third year ranking Portland's best restaurants, we had access in mind, both for the restaurants we chose to celebrate, and for our readers. Yes, we have a new No. 1. But we've also slimmed down from 101 to 40 reviews, giving more space and consideration to each. The changes gave us an opportunity to focus on restaurants that bring us joy, and to highlight the local superlatives -- places such as Apizza Scholls, Chennai Masala or Kachka that are the best at what they do in Portland. After each review, find a mini guide to other restaurants and pop-ups either nearby, with shared owners or with a similar mission that you might appreciate. (Learn more about our methodology here.)
So find a quiet place and get to reading. In front of you is the key to unlocking Portland's superlative restaurant scene. (And for a sortable, searchable version, click here.)
40: Biwa
215 S.E. Ninth Ave.
503-239-8830
biwarestaurant.com
Lunch, dinner and late night, daily
$$
Everybody loves Biwa. Last year, co-owners Kina Voelz and Gabe Rosen made a significant change, moving the restaurant down the hall and replacing the a la carte izakaya menu with a set-price omakase. Well, the restaurant is back. Despite signs out front reading “Parasol Bar,” their replacement for the original subterranean space, Biwa has returned with a greatest hits menu of Japanese drinking snacks, plus a few new twists and an expanded bar. The old ramen is here, and so are the good pork and shrimp gyoza and fried chicken karaage with its bracing mustard sauce. Mackerel comes both pickled and grilled, part of a menu section that includes steak, lamb, pork belly skewers and tasty flaps of nori-wrapped mochi. Before moving down the hall, Biwa was experimenting with a raw bar. That’s returned with plump cubes of salmon, lightly charred albacore tataki and oysters on the half shell. Also relatively new is a small okomomiyaki selection, with both a squid and a vegetarian version showered in bonito flakes. With Portland’s izakaya scene growing exponentially over the past two years, it makes sense that Voelz and Rosen wanted to shake things up. But for now, we’re glad the old Biwa is back.
Don’t miss: Clay pot udon noodles with pork and shrimp dumplings, a dish from Biwa’s first menu.
If you like Biwa, try: The biggest change in Portland’s izakaya landscape? Japanese ramen chains expanding stateside. Since 2015, Kizuki (11830 N.W. Cedar Falls Drive, Beaverton) and Afuri (923 S.E. Seventh Ave.) have opened full restaurants, while a third, Marukin (609 S.E. Ankeny St., Suite A; 126 S.W. Second Ave.), has stuck mostly to ramen at its two Portland shops. Meanwhile, Biwa has a late-night sister restaurant in Noraneko (1430 S.E. Water Ave.). Two nights a week, Montavilla’s Tanuki (8029 S.E. Stark St.) has the monopoly on perverse fun.
39: Muscadine
1456 N.E. Prescott St., Suite F
503-841-5576
muscadinepdx.com
Breakfast and lunch, Wednesday-Monday
$$
For a new generation of southern restaurants in America, fried chicken must come with a side of context. At these restaurants, which in the Northwest include Seattle’s JuneBaby and Portland’s Mae, chefs are mining histories both personal and societal, celebratory and tragic, presenting menus that attempt to undo the Disneyfication of the cuisine. At Muscadine, Mississippi native and Southern Foodways Alliance member Laura Rhoman serves appropriately salty chicken fried to a golden, lacy crunch; morsels of juicy, cornmeal-crusted catfish; and the Country Captain, a lowcountry curried chicken dish with roots in the 18th century spice trade. Everything here is fresh — even the homey cloth napkins are handmade — and you’ll struggle to settle on two or three sides. (The creamy Anson Mills grits and tender collard greens are a must.) Sometimes a visit to Muscadine means dodging a late-summer rain with pillow-shaped, powdered-sugar-tossed beignets and a bourbon-condensed milk coffee in the back room. Sometimes it means a perch at the bar for coffee, a mimosa, the Sunday paper and tender ham under coffee-spiked redeye gravy with poached eggs and grits. And you might just learn something about Southern food along the way.
Don’t miss: The cornmeal-crusted catfish, which might be even better than the fried chicken.
Also try: Muscadine is one of several female-driven North and Northeast Portland bakeries and brunch spots helping to redefine Portland’s restaurant scene, including the almost impossibly sweet Milk Glass Mrkt (2150 N. Killingsworth St.), its spiritual sister Sweedeedee (5202 N. Albina Ave.) and the husband-and-wife-owned P’s and Q’s Market (1301 N.E. Dekum St.).