Milo's
City Cafe
1325
NE Broadway 288-6456
Open 6:30 am-2:30 pm Mondays, Wednesdays-Fridays; 7:30 am-2:30
pm Saturdays-Sundays. Kids welcome. Inexpensive.
Best bets: Smoked salmon eggs Benedict, waffles.
Nice touch: More egg dishes than any breakfast spot in
town. Stick with the Starters: Metronome's appetizers make
the meal.
Metronome
1426 NE Broadway 288-4300
Open 11:30 am-2 pm, 5:30-9:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays; 5:30-9:30
pm Saturdays; 9:30 am-2 pm, 5:30-9 pm Sundays. Kids welcome.
Moderate.
Picks: Roasted corn chowder, coconut curry soup, ahi tuna,
Cajun-style catfish. Nice touch: Hard-edge ambience
with soft-touch service.
Two recent arrivals, across the street from one another on
Northeast Broadway, present an interesting paradox. They are
both hard-edged in their design and decor, with high ceilings,
open kitchens, jazzy colors and exposed duct work for that
industrial, sharp-angled look. Yet the style of each place
is quintessential Portland--casual, soft-flannel and obliging.
(After three visits to Metronome I stopped counting at 17
the cheerful response "No problem" to questions and requests.)
Metronome, which modestly bills itself as "An Eastside Cafe,"
and Milo's City Cafe, with its more urban name, have been
attracting eager crowds, and it's easy to see why. Each one
takes food seriously despite the informal feel of the place,
and each feels very much a part of the neighborhood while
having goals that are at once limited and ambitious.
For the moment, Milo's is open only for breakfast and lunch,
and I limited my excursions to the former meal. Huge windows
beckon light into the airy spaces, flooding the lemon and
gray walls, stainless steel trim, and the various canted
angles of the lofty room. There's a decidedly art deco look,
from the furniture to the tableware to the typography of
the menu. Despite the lack of any soft fabrics, it's a comfortable
and buzzing place, the classical music a welcome wake-up
for the day. What makes Milo's quite remarkable is the plethora
of egg dishes: 22 in all, grouped under "omelets," "hash
& eggs," "eggs and..." and "...and eggs." All those
"and's" suggest you can mix and match to your palate's content.
The Carbonara hash, a hearty mix of bacon, caramelized onions,
garlic, pepper and potatoes, is nicely blended even as each
ingredient stands out with its own integrity. The poached
eggs are perfectly done, and they gush with golden gore
over the hash.
By all means begin your breakfast with the bracing fresh-pressed
apple juice, which struck me with a New England wine-sappy
jolt. Feeling nostalgic on the next trip, I sought out eggs
Benedict, a dish from the days when this recipe was considered
elegant; I tried a regional variant with smoked salmon replacing
the more traditional slice of ham or Canadian bacon. This
dish originated at the turn of the century at Manhattan's
famed Delmonico's Restaurant, when the aptly named Mr. LeGrand
Benedict complained there was nothing new on the menu; Mrs.
B. and the maitre d' put their heads together, and the result
was a poached egg atop toasted English muffin halves, ham
or bacon, and Hollandaise sauce. Milo's sauce is smooth
and guiltlessly light. If you like kiddy nostalgia, order
the playfully retro peanut butter and jelly-stuffed French
toast, not a serious breakfast dish but certainly fun; and
most likely you've never had the caloric pleasure of peanut
butter doused with maple syrup. If you like Reese's peanut
butter cups, you can now have a sybaritic breakfast version:
Jeremy's peanut butter chocolate chip waffles.
Metronome's aspirations are loftier, and for a simple place
its presentations can be surprisingly attractive. If you
order carefully, you can have a fine light dinner. I say
"light" because the soups, salads and appetizers are superior
to the entrees, and my advice is to make a meal from the
first three categories. Why a fall-off occurs with main
dishes, I'm not sure, but this bistro excels at the parentheses
of the meal (desserts are also quite fine). The coconut
curry soup is stunning, unctuous and satiny, tartly redolent
with lemongrass, subtly inflected with curry, and briny
with rock shrimp; Thai restaurants would be proud of this
dish. Roasted corn chowder, a dish that interestingly shows
up on the brunch menu, has lots of coriander and cilantro,
and is smoothly puréed with a deep maizey flavor.
Equally good is the thick wild mushroom soup, with its bosky
flavors of the earth. No soup Nazi here, only the gods of
pottage.
An appetizer of ahi tuna is wonderful: The raw fish is
sliced so rice paper thin you might think you're seeing
dabs of pink sauce, but each piece explodes with flavor;
squiggles of jade wasabi paste circle the plate. A salad
of wild mushrooms, al dente string beans and warm
potato chunks in a champagne vinaigrette is nicely composed,
the various tastes playing off one another in a startling
fashion; it's a perfect cold-weather salad. The only disappointing
starter was an order of mushroom- and duck-filled spring
rolls--not crisp enough, though a bed of greens under the
rolls, splashed with sesame oil, was a welcome addition.
The kitchen needs to rethink its way with pasta. Pumpkin
risotto seemed like a splendidly autumnal idea, but it was
difficult to taste the normally nutty, sweet flavor of the
gourd, and in addition the rice was far too wet, almost
gloppy in texture. Duck linguine looked unappetizing and
was tasteless; served in a bowl too deep and too small,
the rich ingredients fell leadenly to the bottom. I was
glad to see catfish, an under-appreciated item, on the menu;
it's done in blackened Cajun style (in our trendy world
this is already a retro preparation), but while the pungent
spices leapt out from the smoky cooking method, a tomato
garlic sauce tended to mask those flavors. A decidedly bland
roasted pork didn't fare much better, and the accompanying
polenta was lumpy: a cafeteria dish.
On the other hand, I thought the grilled salmon absolutely
perfect, simply done in a light sauce of lemon, capers,
white wine and butter to complement the fish without taking
a thing away from it, and served with brilliantly fresh
vegetables.
I recovered my starter (and starting) happiness with crepes
stuffed with caramelized apples, surrounded by fresh strawberries
and raspberries, a soft, sweet conclusion. I'd also recommend
a delectable Napoleon--almost like a cannoli--with crisp
puff pastry surrounding a delicate crème pâtissière,
and orange slices alongside.
I'd return to Metronome, because I think the staff's will,
their earnestness, and their desire to produce pleasant,
attractive and reasonably priced dishes will keep them on
their toes. There's nothing wrong here that can't be remedied,
and there's enough talent to warrant confidence. But as
Willy Loman's wife famously asserted, more "attention must
be paid."
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 10,
1999
|
