Neighborhood:
Laurelhurst & Northeast 28th Avenue The currently unnamed portion of the Kerns neighborhood within a five-block radius of East Burnside Street and 28th Avenue (we tried TweBu, but it didn’t stick) is noteworthy both for its high concentration of restaurants, including a half-dozen of the city’s finest, and the Laurelhurst Theater (2735 E Burnside St. (read more), 232-5511, laurelhursttheater.com), the foremost beer-serving, second-run multiplex in town. Other sites of note include a handful of decent vintage stores and a handsome, streamlined Coca-Cola plant (2710 NE Davis St.). Just up the hill is the symbolically gated community of Laurelhurst, a haven developed in the teens for rich, white teetotalers. The neighborhood, the main entrance to which is marked by sandstone fence posts, is entirely residential, but its curvy, tree-lined streets are worth a visit to check out the many beautiful, stunningly expensive craftsman homes and the very shiny gold statue of Joan of Arc planted in the roundabout at Northeast 39th Avenue and Glisan Street. Laurelhurst is bordered to the south by Laurelhurst Park, a gorgeous 30-acre park designed by the Olmstead brothers that encompasses a small lake, an off-leash area, basketball courts, a dance studio, horseshoe pitches and an expansive picnic area. —Ben Waterhouse
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.
