Cheap Eats 2009

[March 11th, 2009]

Well, this one’s a no-brainer. Of all our annual guides to restaurants, bars, shopping and so on, could any possibly be more appropriate right now than a directory of our favorite places to eat cheap? We reviewed 135 restaurants all over the city for this year’s Cheap Eats guide, not a single one of which will cost you more than $15 for dinner—and most will sell you a meal for under $10.

Inside you’ll also find a few of our favorite coffeehouses of the moment and a list of 25 excellent things to eat for under $7. Why $7? Because Oregon minimum wage is $8.40 an hour—about seven bucks after deductions—and we don’t think you should have to work longer than an hour to pay for a good meal. Want even more cheap eats? Find out where Portland chefs go when they aren’t in the kitchen.

What you won’t find are many food carts. Now, don’t get us wrong, we have nothing against Portland’s dozens of excellent carts. On the contrary—we like them so much that last year we started an event just to honor them. Our second annual Eat Mobile food cart festival is Saturday, April 18, and we’ll have a guide to our favorite food carts in the paper that week.

Don’t see your favorite restaurant in here? It may be in our Restaurant Guide, the list of our 100 favorite restaurants that we print every October—that’s where you’ll find Podnah’s Pit, Apizza Scholls, Blueplate and Ya Hala. Then again, we may not know about your secret spot yet. Send your suggestions for next year’s guide to bwaterhouse@wweek.com, and we’ll check them out.

Happy eating,

Ben Waterhouse