Neighborhood:
Laurelhurst & Northeast 28th Avenue Old cool, new cool: The residential glamour of the Laurelhurst neighborhood and the plucky chic of 28th Avenue’s indie restaurant row collide in this little patch of east Portland, where it’s possible to pray to a gleaming, golden traffic goddess, catch a $3 movie with beer in hand and taste-test politically influenced flavors like “Barack-y Road” at Staccato Gelato ((read more)google.com/?q=232 NE 28th Ave.,Portland,OR">232 NE 28th Ave., 231-7100), all within a 12-block stretch. The sweeping grandeur of the 27-acre Laurelhurst Park (3601 SE Oak St.), with its graceful pond, militant ducks and epic pick-up basketball games, is a natural spot to waste an hour. The area’s not without controversy: In 2002, the Coe Circle traffic roundabout’s bronze Joan of Arc statue (Northeast 39th Avenue and Glisan Street) was “restored” to a blindingly shiny gilded gold leaf finish, leading to untold automobile collisions. West along East Burnside Street, the landscape shifts to the more modest bungalows of the Buckman neighborhood. In the 1990s, the ’hood’s main artery of Northeast 28th Avenue was a shabby collection of storefronts best known for the beloved Laurelhurst Theater (2735 E Burnside St., 232-5511), a second-run cinema pub with a penchant for classic flicks. A decade later, the area was garnering glossy-magazine headlines, thanks to enterprising chefs who—sick of taking orders at corporate restaurants—capitalized on cheap eastside rents and opened their own kitchens, including the stellar wine bar-meets-small-plates pioneers Noble Rot (2724 SE Ankeny St., 233-1999) and Navarre (10 NE 28th Ave., 232-3555). A blueprint for Portland’s current crop of foodie streets, the area has only grown more popular and spendy since; nowadays, diners merely shrug at a two-hour wait for Ken’s Artisan Pizza (304 SE 28th Ave., 517-9951) and window-shop at the street’s ever-increasing array of boutiques specializing in local garb, plants and religious icons cast in chocolate (Alma Chocolate, 140 NE 28th Ave., 517-0262). No worries: Cool-kid hangout Beulahland (118 NE 28th Ave., 235-2794), karaoke mecca Chopsticks Express II (2651 E Burnside St., 234-6171) and black lung central Holman’s (15 SE 28th Ave., 231-1093) rarely have a table wait. —Kelly Clarke.
Featured in Restaurant Guide 2009
Navarre, in northern Spain, is considered an “autonomous region,” and Portland’s Navarre, something of a pan-Continental tapas restaurant, has likewise cultivated its own autonomous gastronomic space. The spices are exceedingly simple—salt and pepper, say—to let the actual flavor of each ingredient come through, and the presentation is just as simple: to order, you mark the various dishes you’d like on a little paper menu, sushi-style. In the tiny hardwood space the kitchen feels more open than most—it’s as if you’ve been invited over for dinner. The food shifts weekly, but some stalwarts are the sterling crab cakes and the parchment trout, which must be unwrapped like an Old World present. I’ve never had a bum dish—and for a small-plates restaurant, that’s a hell of a compliment.
Order this: Parchment trout, crab cakes, anything with mussels.
Best deal: Anything, really—just order the small instead of the large and it’s likely to be around $5. You can get out of here for under 10 bucks or rack up a fortune, depending on mood, hunger and impulse.
I’ll pass: I repeat: Never. A bum. Dish.
MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
