Skip to main contentI have seen the future of breakfast, and his name is John Gorham.
Dining out for the morning meal is a Portland institution, from corn-flake french toast at Mother's Bistro to omelettes at Tin Shed. But Tasty n Sons—the brunch palace Toro Bravo chef Gorham quietly launched this spring in North Williams Avenue's Hub Building—outstrips its predecessors in fundamentals, economy and daring.
In a cavernous, airy hall previously occupied by the vegan restaurant Nutshell, a large chalkboard listing Tasty n Sons' farm suppliers now hangs like an art installation. It signals Gorham's intentions: He has moved the concept of Oregon-grown tapas—with every plate designed for sharing—to brunch. Once grasped, the notion of morning small plates seems intuitive (what is every childhood breakfast, if not a passing around of family bowls?) but its success here is thanks to the equally important understanding that anything good that happens before noon requires a generous investment of butter.
Take, as an example and your first order, the glazed yams ($4). The tubers, harvested by Viridian Farms in Yamhill County, are smashed flat to the shape of skipping stones, lacquered in a cumin-maple syrup, and oven baked, before being quickly pan-fried in butter. The result is a skin with the flavor and texture of a caramel toffee, overlaying the smooth, soft starch of the yam. It is divine.
The most basic ingredients take on a new urgency here. Scrambled eggs, available on the Bambino plate with bacon and a biscuit ($6) or with steak tips atop a cornmeal pancake with jalapeño butter ($11), taste like the memory of how scrambled eggs are supposed to taste, the reason you've been ordering those flat Denver omelettes all these years—you were trying to get back to something, and this is it. The chicken-liver mousse on the breakfast board ($7, with strawberries, toast slices, bacon and strained yogurt with olive oil) is a more-puréed pâté that expands the boundaries of how sweet and light a meat product can be. That biscuit is impossibly thick and flaky, and combined with a battered chicken breast, a fried egg and a slice of cheddar cheese ($8), it rivals any offering at Pine State. (The menu's only weak link, in fact, is the bacon, which is undercrisped and often verges on floppy.)
As these descriptions might suggest, vegetarian options are light on the ground—in a recent menu, I counted one possibly vegan option against five items with raw eggs—and yet the Tasty n Sons kitchen does extraordinary work with vegetables. A tasso hash ($10) is remarkable less for the pork shoulder that gives it its name than for the plant matter that surrounds it (buttered and fried, of course): English peas, asparagus, shallots and cauliflower, bathed in horseradish cream. Shakshuka ($9), a tomato-and-eggs stew from North Africa by way of Israel, bakes two eggs into a pool of tender red peppers.
Equally global in inspiration is the dish that will likely become Gorham's signature: the Burmese red pork stew ($9). While it's essentially a breakfast bento bowl, its revelation is what happens to teriyaki rice when you let the cracked-open yolk of an over-easy egg drip into the crannies. What happens is very, very good.
Over the past month, I have started six days at Tasty n Sons, tasting more than two dozen dishes, and I have yet to encounter a disappointing plate. But I have noticed a change. It was initially possible to commandeer a table of your own (underneath the high skylights), but it soon became necessary to sit at the kitchen counter (a perfect place to read The Maples Stories while forking through strawberry-rhubarb-maple french toast), and eventually the only seats available were at communal dining (where new companions vocally admire your choices, as if you had yourself accomplished something). Brunch here will soon require a wait, as word spreads that John Gorham is cooking up the best breakfast food in town. This meal is too good to keep to yourself.
- Order this: Burmese red pork stew ($9) and yams ($4), followed by a half-order of Auntie Paula’s French toast ($5).
- Best deal: A chocolate potato doughnut ($1.50) is a two-bite reminder of the best county-fair funnel cake you never had.
- I’ll pass: The open-faced Monte Cristo ($6) is too rich to finish alone.
Tasty n Sons, 3808 N Williams, Suite C, 621-1400, tastynsons.com. 9 am-3 pm daily. $-$$ Inexpensive-moderate.
WWeek 2015