Neighborhood:
Alberta In the past dozen years, the Alberta-Concordia neighborhood has transformed from one of inner Portland’s last black neighborhoods, first into a refuge for fringe artists and finally into a less hippie, more hipster version of its Southeast Portland relative, the Hawthorne District. (read more) Alberta is still diverse, but gone is the heyday of the Clown House (a communal, bike-strewn freak-out home that once stood on Alberta), and the street’s gift shops and eateries seem increasingly targeted at a less colorful, more moneyed crowd. That’s not to say Alberta is a big co-opted bore à la the Pearl. Food is the top draw here—from the gigantic, Southern-fried breakfasts at Francis (2338 NE Alberta St., 288-8299) to the golden-brown, slightly spendy fish and chips at Halibut’s (2525 NE Alberta St., 808-9600). Alberta also has some of the city’s best taquerias, like neighboring La Sirenita (2817 NE Alberta St., 335-8283) and La Bonita (2839 NE Alberta St., 281-3662). There’s also more Thai food than you can shake a stick at, from bomb-ass red curry at Thai Noon (2635 NE Alberta St., 282-2021) to banana-roasted pork at upscale Siam Society (2703 NE Alberta St., 922-3675). For the full and the dieting, Alberta offers quaint gift shops galore, flush with silkscreened tees and crafty knickknacks. It also has one of Portland’s best new and used music stores, Trade Up Music (1834 NE Alberta St., 335-8800), and the very cool Community Cycling Center (1700 NE Alberta St., 288-8864), where you can cop a refurbed ’80s road bike on the cheap. If there’s a complaint to be made about Alberta, it’s that the entire street all but shuts down at 11 pm (unless it happens to be Last Thursday (artonalberta.org), when leftover revelers from Alberta’s monthly Art Walk often stick around well into the night). Even Alberta’s trendy bars generally close their doors early, making packed houses out of two cool, down-and-dirty watering holes, The Know (2206 NE Alberta St., 473-8729) and The Nest (1801 NE Alberta St., 282-0230). —Casey Jarman.
Featured in Restaurant Guide 2008
Siam Society stands as the site of a former power substation, although it appears from the outside to be more of a Masonic temple. Even with all the industrial style and high-ceilinged capaciousness, the restaurant interior feels cozy as a curtained dinner at the palace. Though the menu is Thai in outlook, chef-owner Adrienne Innskeep brings traditional ingredients into congress with ideas from the continent and ingredients from the Northwest: quail in Thai spices, lightly piquant lychee/green bean salad, lamb curries served with cucumber-jalapeño chutney. The resulting mixture feels less like a dignitaries’ dinner than slow-burning sex, the kind where you know you’re eventually going to knock over those heirloom candlesticks. Helping this feeling along are the Society’s unique potables, in particular the hibiscus mojito.
Matt Korfhage
