Under the Table with Jen » Noodles

Pho Sam

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:26:22 +0000

I am always torn over how to spend my precious lunch hour–do I slurp pho, do I window shop, do I sit somewhere downtown and people watch to get ideas for the novel I’m always threatening to finish? Fortunately I can do all three at Pho Sam, a positively scrumptious Vietnamese food cart on the quiet side of the downtown cluster at SW Alder, along SW 9th Avenue. After ordering the Pho Bo, I plunk down at the small table tucked into the side of the cart and breathe in the otherworldly good smell of the rich anise-scented broth teeming with strips of tender beef flank and rice noodles and herbs, then add in bean sprouts, torn up fresh basil, bright green jalapeño slices, and hoisin, hot chili sauce and a squirt of fresh lime, and go to town with my chop sticks and plastic spoon while window shopping from afar–Pho Sam’s table offers views of both the quirky Magpie windows and dreamy spendy shoe store Johnny Sole, not to mention the always interesting downtown passerby. While I generally can’t help myself from ordering the pho exclusively, occasionally I divert to the grilled pork with vermicelli noodles, the thinly sliced pork surrounded by sparklingly fresh shredded lettuce, carrots, and cilantro and scattered with chopped peanuts. Thanks to Pho Sam, I can window shop, people-watch, and eat my pho too, all in the span of 60 short minutes.

Tabla

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:12:07 +0000

Attractive, gracious, well-mannered little NE 28th Avenue mainstay Tabla boils, tosses, twirls and swirls some of the loveliest pastas in Portland–from their silken signature Tabla ravioli with chard, ricotta, poached egg and poppy seed butter, to the melt-in-your-mouth mushroom and sherry agnolotti with pickled chanterelles, to the bewitchingly summery fettuccini verde–fresh fat housemade fettucini noodles lathered in basil-pistachio pesto and tumbled with cherry tomatoes and ricotta salata. Come winter, plummeting temperatures and blustery squalls will have you blowing in on the westerly winds to huddle over a plate of spicy pork sugo tagliatelle. All the pasta is housemade, there’s excellent wine to be had, and club soda is available if you are silly enough to wear a snow-white shirt to a pork sugo tagliatelle dinner.

Khun Pic’s Bahn Thai

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:22:56 +0000

Everybody loves a good secret, and that’s exactly what you’ll find behind the creaky black wrought iron gate at 3429 SE Belmont Street. The weathered little Victorian hidden amongst the earnest thicket of brambles nearly engulfing it might look like the neighborhood haunted house, but instead you’ll find a neighborhood gem of a Thai restaurant within. The lovingly restored, coiffed and gilded dining room is filled with a hodge podge of mismatched antiques, Southeast Asian statuary, and patient locals who don’t mind waiting upwards of an hour for Chef Mary Ogard’s tangy coconut chicken soup, refreshing green papaya salad, and delicious noodle dishes like the Pad Thai or Pad Kee Mao–wide noodles cooked to perfection and tossed with spicy chili sauce and roasted chicken and fragrant leaves of fresh basil. Choose your own table when you walk in, be prepared to wait to order and eat, don’t be shy about requesting your food spicy, bring cash because your credit’s no good here (exact cash, if you want to avoid the wait for change), and above all else–relax and enjoy this magical little place.

Sawasdee Thai

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:35:06 +0000

“I’ll nod at you when your order is ready,” the nice lady at Sawasdee reassured me after I’d told her my wildest Thai lunch dreams and paid her a scant $12 to fulfill them. It was one of my very first food cart experiences, and I guess I must have looked a little worried about it all went down. After all, she hadn’t asked for my name, or given me a number, or written my order on my forehead. How would she know which noodles were mine? What if someone else took my noodles? What if I got someone else’s extra spicy version and my nostrils exploded? Foodcartlandia was a freaky place. I stepped back to the curb and waited with all the other curry and spicy eggplant-philes, watching each order get bagged and distributed with baited breath until I got the much-awaited nod, whereupon I collected my delightfully spicy Pad Kee Mao and scurried to the park to slurp noodles with the pigeons. And from that day forth, I was hooked on food carts.

Samurai Bento

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:20:22 +0000

Samurai Bento’s tip jar has a sign on it that says You Make Me Happy, and I’d have to say the feeling is mutual. When I’m craving yakisoba–thin seasoned pan-fried noodles tossed with chicken, pork or tofu and a medley of cabbage, broccoli, and pickled ginger, I make a beeline for the crowded food cart cluster at SW 10 and SW Alder and get in line with the rest of the chickenkatsu (cutlet breaded with uber-crisp panko and deep fried), yakitori (grilled salt and pepper chicken thighs with veggies and rice), and chicken katsu-curry lovers who line up every day at this cheery little shack. Pay attention to the white board in the window, if you’re lucky, the staff has written a sage Samurai-ism on it, like Vegetarians get their own menu, and there’s a small selection of sodas and water available.

Piazza Italia

admin — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:42:54 +0000

When my favorite Brits, Matt & Sian, lived here, they were mad about Piazza Italia–or “Piazzer Italier,” as they pronounced it. It reminded them of Italy–the pasta, the wine, the World Cup games on the big screen, the accents, the bickering. They ate there at least once a week. You’ll be equally taken with this likeable little Italian joint-meets-pretty Pearl District, if you can get past the sometimes insufferable clientele, like the lady at the table next to me, who kept asking “Shu-Shu” if he wanted “some of Mommie’s yummies” and using her fork to poke bits of wild boar ragu sauce into Shu-Shu’s furry chops. You can’t blame Shu-Shu for lapping it up though, Piazza Italia tosses delicious, satisfying homemade pastas like the creamy proscuitto and black pepper-kissed Linguine Squarchiarella and hearty lasagna with meat and bechamel sauce.

Hot Pot City

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:55:52 +0000

There’s nothing like a belly full of hot soup and a spicy garlic ginger breath, and that’s exactly what I get every time I eat at Hot Pot City. Securely hidden in a strip mall off SW 1st Avenue a scant distance from the Southern edge of downtown, Hot Pot City is an excellent dining destination for anyone who’s ever wanted to boil things in pots of fragrant, burbling broth. Choose your broth and get it boiling, then go down the buffet-style meat, vegetable, and sauce bar, piling your plate with anything that looks good to boil and mixing up fiery garlic, ginger, red chili, and soy sauce potions to swirl into your soup creation. Return to your pot and let the boiling begin! You’ll be boiling up hunks of dark chicken thigh meat, paper thin slices of beef and pork, broccoli, big fat udon noodles, little skinny rice noodles, cilantro, clammy white fish balls of dubious origin, your straw, your earrings, your wallet, anything you can lay your hands on really, because once you start boiling things in broth, it’s hard to stop. Just so you know–boiling your lunch will cost you $8.45, but boiling your dinner will set you back $14.45, thanks to the addition of several types of seafood to the dinner raw-food-you-can-boil bar.

Pho Oregon

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:44:06 +0000

The white granite foo dogs outside Pho Oregon might not appear to be guarding much–curb appeal isn’t one of Pho Oregon’s attributes–but beyond the slightly shabby white stucco facade and darkened doors they flank is a vibrant land where shiny granite-topped topped tables stretch in long rows as far as the eye can see, and merrily chattering diners young and old alike slurp steaming bowls of pho and delicious skewered pork and prawns over vermicelli noodles, and friendly and efficient servers hustle to and fro the kitchen with tea kettles and avocado smoothies. It makes for a delicious combination of people watching and a good tongue-scalding–the pho is so good, you just can’t help yourself.

Pho Van

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:10:32 +0000

Pho Van on 82nd is my go-to pho joint when I’m craving hot noodle soup with a Vietnamese kick. The menu offers over a dozen beef, chicken, duck, seafood and vegetarian soups–in rich broths and teeming with pungent aromatics like lemongrass, mint, basil and rau răm. There’s no greater pleasure than a steaming hot bowl of Phở Gá on a wintery evening, thick slices of chicken breast so tender you wonder how they don’t melt and disappear, thin silvery rice stick noodles, and the accompanying dish of bean sprouts, sliced jalapeños, and pungent Japanese basil. Just a note for early lunchers and those on their way home from work early thanks to a voracious soup-needing virus, the SE Hawthorne location will pho you up for $5 from 11am-12pm and 3-5pm daily.

Biwa

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:46:51 +0000

‘Twas a dark and porky ramen at stylish, bubbly little Biwa Japanese restaurant. From the Biwa ramen, which comes in two flavors–chicken ramen “light and chickeny salt flavor soup” and biwa ramen “dark and porky soy sauce soup,” to the delicate, light and refreshing Green Tea Soba tossed with prawns, ginger and intensely flavorful shiso, and the several types of udon, there’s no better place to slurp. And now that Biwa has late night happy hour seven days a week, you can slurp on the cheap late into the dark and porky night.