Interesting dining in Portland, Oregon

Portland may not be where the food truck culture started but the food trucks have taken it by storm. One nice thing about a food truck caravan is that everyone can have what they like.  I picked gyros, but there was soul food, mac and cheese, hamburgers and more. Some do so well they open up small

restaurants.  When I am in Portland I like to eat out as often as possible.  Why?  I live in Oswego where they can’t even keep a Thai restaurant going so I need to get my ethnic foodie fix somewhere else.  In Portland I can travel around the world one restaurant at a time.

On my “Wanna’ Visit Again Country List” is Morocco.  I have not

been to Marrakesh so instead I dined at the Marrakesh Restaurant where they have recreated the feeling of Marrakesh with Moroccan rugs, ornate silver urns, and dining in a sultan’s tent complete with belly dancers. You can enjoy shish kebabs and couscous – it is all yummy but the next time I go want to have the Royal Feast which includes a lamb cooked on a spit over a charcoal fire.  Don’t forget dessert. I love baklava. 

When a food cart become very successful the owners will often open up a storefront restaurant. Such is the case with Nong’s. Khao Man Gai is their specialty. It is chicken with jasmine rice, Thai herbs, and sauce of fermented soybeans, ginger, chilies and special house sauce.  There is even an instruction sheet on how to eat it.  Being in politically conscious Portland they “… make everything in house, pay our employees a living wage and offer health/dental insurance.” 

One of my favorite foods is pho (which is never can pronounce

correctly.  It is something like “fah”). It is the flavorful Vietnamese soup that is said to be “the soup that built a nation.”  They often have it several times a day but it is usually for breakfast. It is a broth with rice noodles, herbs and usually served with beef or chicken.   At Pho Van I got my pho fix.  I only speak English but when I travel to a foreign country I try to learn how to say “hello” and “thank you.” When the waitress served my pho I said “cam on ban” – it sounds like “come on” so it took her a minute to switch her brain back to Vietnamese.  When it registered she broke into a big smile.  

There are so many dining options in Portland that it is hard to decide where to eat.  I have only been to one Ethiopian restaurant and that was decades ago in Toronto so one night we decided on Ethiopian food at Enat Kitchen (mother’s kitchen). Eating Ethiopian is a social occasion. The food is served on a large platter covered with injera (soft spongy bread) with dollops of food on it.  To eat take a palm-size piece of the injera and scoop of the food.  It was all delicious. 

The most incredible meal was at Laan Bang (they are sold out

until September!). The 24-seat restaurant is located behind a bookcase inside a Thai restaurant. The 12-course tasting menu is unique.  With each item the staff gives a short dissertation about the food. It started with Totten Inlet oyster, caviar, fried shallot, aromatic broth, and herbs. My favorite was pheasant skewer, go-lac curry, charcoal oil, toasted rice power and pickles. 

Mt. St. Helens and more....

Sunday, May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens erupted.  I remember the year because in September 1980, when the new school year started, my class had a brand new red textbook.  The first chapter dealt with the geography of the United States.  One sentence read in essence, “There are no active volcanoes in the coterminous United States.” What a teaching point.  It amazed me that an author of a textbook would consider volcanoes extinct because they had not erupted in over one hundred years.  The previous eruption of Mt. St. Helens was in 1857.  The span of time was a blink of an eye in geologic time. 

On my recent trip to Portland we drove 50 miles north to Washington State and the visitor center for Mt. St. Helens.  The displays were fascinating. I remember seeing Harry Truman from Spirit Lake on TV.  Despite many alerts to leave the area he refused to leave “his” mountain.  I thought he was a hermit of

some sort but he owned Spirit Lake Lodge so he wanted to protect his business. He was just one of 57 who died.  It was too early in the season to drive closer to Mr. St. Helens but we could tell that Mother Nature is doing what it does best – recovering.  

On the way back to Portland we stopped at Troll Bridge which is listed in Atlas Obscura. It is located under an abandoned railroad bridge.  Where else would you find a troll? Under a bridge, of course.  It is located in Portland’s Forest Park, one of the largest urban forests in the United States with over 80 miles of trail. Portland has a lot of greenery.  The area where my son lives has many tree-lined streets dotted with attractive small houses, craftsmen and Sears homes. 

I loved Lan Su Chinese Garden. All Asian gardens are beautiful but I prefer Chinese gardens to Japanese gardens. Portland has both.  Lan Su Chinese Garden is a great place to sit and contemplate or for tea in the Tower of Cosmic Reflections. In addition to a wide selection of

teas they serve light meals of noodles, steamed buds, and soups plus mooncakes. 

The World Forestry Center Discovery Museum is the personification of the heavily forested Pacific Northwest.  There are many interactive displays that explain the lumbering industry and how they try to preserve this resource. I

found the display on the second floor especially interesting. It is set up so it seemed that I was traveling in Russia, China, and other parts of the world meeting people who are faced with trying to preserve forests in their countries.

When in Portland the Multnomah Waterfalls is a must-do. Around Portland the

mountains, often snow covered, are spectacular and easy to see from many places in the city but it takes a 30-minute drive to these beautiful falls.  The 611-foot cascade can be viewed from the base or to enjoy an up-close perspective people can take the paved trail to the

Benson Bridge. It is a popular site for wedding photos but in 1995 while the bridal pictures were being taken a 400-ton boulder broke loose and plunged 225 feet into the upper pool creating a 70-foot splash that made for some very wet bridal images. The hearty and fit may want to hike another mile up the steep path to the top of the falls. I passed on that.

Oregon Trail Interpretive Center

The Willamette Valley is a 150-mile long valley in Oregon and was the terminus of the Oregon Trail. Some made it, others settled along the way, some branched off and went to California in search of gold, others died, and some were born on the trail.

I have always been fascinated by the Oregon Trail. It was a 2,000 miles trek from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City and was used by hundreds of thousands in the mid-1800s.  People from the East Coast first had to make the arduous journey to Independence.  Some used the Erie Canal.

I always wondered how the family discussion went before they set off. “Lydia, pack up the children and everything we need into the wagon and remember we need farm equipment, seeds, food, and provisions for a four-month trip.”  Often it was much longer. W. Barlow wrote

“Oregon City only eight months and four days from Illinois.” A typical wagon was 12-feet long and 4-feet wide.  I find it hard that a wife said, “Yes, dear, that’s a good idea. We will leave our home and friends to travel through the unknown to a new place.” 

Each wagon train had about 80 wagons divided into three units with a total of 140 people. The conversations along the way when it was blistering hot and the wheels sunk into two-feet of mud must have been fiery.  In fact one lady refused to continue, left her husband, and returned to set his wagon on fire. 

On my recent trip to Portland I booked the Oregon Trail Trip which

included a visit to the Oregon Trail museum.  The building is designed to bring to mind the covered wagons.  Each step to the entrance has a stop on the Oregon Trail such as Chimney Rock and Scott’s Bluff.  In fact, the Willamette Valley today is a prosperous wine growing region.  The museum has an excellent video and many displays plus demonstrations.  

I best recall the story of the Sager family.  They started out with mom, dad and six children.  The oldest, John, was 13 and a baby was born along the way.  The parents died on the trail and John led the other children to Oregon.  Sadly, only the three girls lived to adulthood.  Catherine wrote a book about the journey which is one of the best accounts of the trip. 

Several years when John and I were in Kansas we spent a couple

nights with a covered wagon train.  It turned out to be one of my favorite trips.  The wagons went through the Tall Grass Prairie so there were no houses, fences, telephone poles or other hints of civilization.   I decided to walk since that was what most of the people on the trail did, mainly to lighten the load for the animals pulling the wagon.  They said not to worry about snakes because the vibration of the wagon wheels frightened them away but the ground was so bumpy walking was difficult so I decided to hop on the wagon.  It too was bumpy.  

A couple years ago I was in Nebraska at Scott’s Bluff and Chimney Rock where there is also a museum.  Both were major landmarks on the journey west.  Our Manifest Destiny to extend from ocean to ocean is a reality but I think Westward Movement is still continuing as more and more people move westward from the East Coast. 

Walking tour of Portland, Oregon

 I spent Easter in Portland, Oregon with my son, Jim.  One of the things I wanted to do was to check out the Shanghai Tunnels so Jim booked the “Underground Walking Tour.” I had read that, in the 1800s, sailors were not eager so sign up to work on a ship headed to far-flung ports so a contractor would get sailors drunk and put them on a ship headed East. The contractor would get paid for each sailor he “shanghaied” and when the sailor woke up he was on a ship headed to Asia which could take two years.

The practice was not unique and occurred in many ports but on the West Coast it flourished in Portland. Our guide said that in Portland it was called ‘crimping’ and that the ‘crimps’ used a variety of nefarious means to get sailors aboard ship. The name is derived from the Dutch word for a holding pen. One of the more notorious crimps was James Kelly, “The King of Crimps,” who set a record for rounding up 50 men in three hours. But his most famous deal was in 1893 when he delivered 22 men to a ship who had mistakenly consumed embalming fluid in an open cellar of a mortuary, most of them dead. The captain, used to comatose sailors, did not discover most of them were dead until after they had set sail. Kelly received $52 for each man!

As the guide said we would learn about of the “terrible, horrible, no

good, very bad things from Portland’s past” as we walked through Old Town.  In the 1800s there were 17 men for every female and while the marriage prospects for women were great it also led to one of civilization’s oldest professions. They were euphemistically called “seamstresses.” Besides a bar and pool hall, the Merchant Hotel’s third floor had many seamstresses. In an effort to avoid taxes Madame Nancy Boggs had a two-story tavern/bordello on a barge on the Willamette River.

When she was told a raid was coming (the police were some of her best customers) she would have a steamboat captain tow her to the other side of the river. One night someone cut the anchor rope and the pleasure palace floated down river where it came to rest on a sand bar. A friendly steamboat captain came to her rescue, towed it back, and she was back in business.

Prohibition only lasted 13 years but it has provided every

community with a plethora of stories.  Portland was no exception.  The police, after making a raid, would take the confiscated booze and, in front of the press, make a public display of pouring it all in a vat, but unbeknownst to the public, the vat emptied in the cellar where is was rebottled for sale.

In the “they thought of everything” category, Erickson’s Saloon had a 684-foot bar staffed by 50 bartenders in fancy vests. It offered five-cent beers and a free “dainty lunch” of sausages, roasts, pickled herring, and cheeses but the unique feature was the trough that ran along the bottom of the bar – a urinal trough. Loggers, sailors, and others did not have to leave the bar when nature called.

Today Portland is considered progressive and liberal but in 1844 all blacks were ordered to get out of Oregon and an 1846 law made it illegal for blacks to live or work in the state. The law stayed in effect until it was repealed in 1925.

Visiting Portland - the Rose City

Portland has been dubbed the “Rose City.”  There are several theories as to how it got its nickname but roses thrive in Portland so well that it is home to the International Rose Test Garden, which is free to visitors. It is where, as the name implies, they experiment and grow a variety of roses.

John and I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Portland which was a good deal because it included breakfast, free parking, a pool, and it was close to everything we wanted to do. The first day we headed to the 100-year old mansion, the home of Henry and Georgiana Pittock both of whom added to the development of the city.  Their home, beautifully decorated for the season, had some of the latest inventions of their time including a central vacuum system, intercoms, and indirect lighting plus a there was great view of the city of Portland.

We always search out museums to visit and love it when we find a unique one. Such was the case when we visited the World Forestry Center Discovery Museum, which is the personification of the heavily forested Pacific Northwest.  There are many interactive displays that explain the lumbering industry and how they try to preserve this resource. I found the display on the second floor especially interesting. It is set up so it seemed that I was traveling in Russia, China, and other parts of the world meeting people who are faced with trying to preserve forests in their countries.

The Japanese Garden is just one of several gardens in the area. I appreciated the free shuttle ride from the parking lot to the gardens. The much-acclaimed Japanese Garden has five distinct garden styles all creating a sense of peace, harmony and tranquility based on the essential elements: stone, water, and plants. It was a bit misty while we were there – cloudy days seem to be the norm – but I think it made us appreciate the colors more.

At the risk of sounding like a pre-teen I thought the Grossology Exhibit – “The Impolite Science of the Human Body” especially well done and fascinating. I mean where else can you learn that snot is so important that your nose makes a new batch every 20 minutes!”  I have to admit John was much more interested in touring the U.S. Navy’s fast-attack submarine, the USS Blueback.

We were told that Multnomah Waterfalls was a must-do. Around Portland the mountains, often snow covered, are spectacular and easy to see from many places in the city but it takes a 30-minute drive to these beautiful falls.  The 611-foot cascade can be viewed from the base or to enjoy an up-close perspective people can take the paved trail to the Benson Bridge. It is a popular site for wedding photos but in 1995 while the bridal pictures were being taken a 400-ton boulder broke lose and plunged 225 feet into the upper pool creating a 70-foot splash that made for some very wet bridal images. The hearty and fit may want to hike another mile up the steep path to the top of the falls. I passed on that.

Portland is a foodies’ paradise where a chain restaurant is hard to find. We had an inexpensive, delicious lunch at one of the many food carts, an authentic Moroccan dinner at Marrakesh Restaurant, and ate at the Kennedy School, now a restaurant and hotel.