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The muff-faced flameshirt of Flavortown, Guy Fieri, rode the fart car into Portland this weekend.
The sometimes Smashmouth frontman, known for his permanently surprised hair and fertility-goddess physique, has of course been shutting the front door in Portland for years on his show Diners, Dive-Ins and Dives—declaring that the following shotgun-blast-to-the-map of restaurants were "money," "off da chain and/or hook," and, especially, "gangsta":
Pine State Biscuits, Bunk Sandwiches, Podnah's Pit, Otto's Sausages, Pok Pok, Byways Cafe, Blueplate Lunch Counter, Tin Shed Garden Cafe, Frank's Noodle House, Arleta Library Bakery and Cafe (thus, obviously, launching Sarah Iannarone's mayoral campaign), Edelweiss Sausage and Delicatessen, The Country Cat, Industrial Cafe and Saloon, Shirley's Tippy Canoe, and PDX 671.
Well, here are the next generation of Portland DDDs that might now fill with types of people you didn't think you'd ever see in person—as curated by random people who took pictures of the bleached, anthropomorphic chia pet.
Sure, Fieri was partying with Festus a bit.
But that's a normal human activity, one that any human person would do if given the chance—including, apparently, Cider Riot owner Abram Goldman-Armstrong.
But Ezeli apparently went also on-shoot with the Famous Flame.
Look closely, and you'll discover that the spot where they were eating contains the signage of downtown Portland's Original Dinerant.
The downtown hotel "modern all-day diner" features such innovations as a donut slider appetizer, a chicken-and-waffle sandwich, a croissant Monte Cristo with marionberry jam, six different $10 boozy milkshakes including a bourbon salted caramel, and a hamburger whose patty is 50% bacon. Fifty. Percent. Bacon. We have to anticipate that being very, very gangsta.
….Aaand here is Guy hanging outside of Swiss Hibiscus on Alberta—a homegrown Swiss-by-way-of-Hawaii restaurant serving up sausage, schnitzel, snails and Swiss-style spaghetti (the Swiss, as it turns out, are a multifarious people).
And here's a young Californian tourist following Guy's apparent advice and rolling into Grassa, the Lardo pasta satellite serving up fast-casual squid-ink pasta, porkbelly mac and cheese and grilled chicken picatta with fried skin on top. (Among the porkbelly dishes, get the porkbelly carbonara, though.)
UPDATE 3:25 pm: One of Fieri's producers filled in the other three spots Fieri stopped in, on Twitter.
Ataula is a fine, fine Spanish casual-modernist tapas restaurant with a killer salmon montadito, and very far from being a diner, a drive-In, or a dive. Matt's is our co-food cart of the year—and by far my favorite 'cue cart in Portland. P's and Q's also has very nice brisket, but theirs might come in a picnic basket.
Anyway, that's all we know about Porkbelly Fieri's activities in town—although we're happy to hear about more sightings/warnings in the comments.
Enjoy these restaurants while you can, if that's what you were doing before.
But while we're on the subject, that same Californian tourist outside Grassa stopped in, of course, at Screen Door—its front door still somehow undarkened by Fieri—and took note that the restaurant's specials menu was devoted to Gene Wilder, who is sadly no longer with us,
The menu features a Snozzberry Shortcake, a little top hat on the letter S, and a quote from the song that we imagine Guy Fieri sings to himself in the shower:
So shines a good deed in a weary world. Goodbye, Mr. Wilder. We'll miss you horribly.
Willamette Week