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The new St. Jack is sleeker and tailored more to the westside, shedding its former hominess for the bottom floor of spiffy new condos. The eatery also gave up its pastry counter—with patissier Alissa Frice getting her own spot next to St. Jack investor Kurt Huffman's new commissary bakery.
But St. Jack's westside iteration has nonetheless already surpassed the original—and not just because chef Aaron Barnett's kitchen crew no longer has to prep on the dining-room table. The new bar section is St. Jack's trump card, augmenting the always-estimable wine list with expanded cocktail selections and a separate menu offering haute takes on American-style trash dining. It just might be the best restaurant bar in Portland, whose eateries often treat their adjuncts as little more than a chance to shake a little change from those who arrive without reservations.
Don't worry, though: St. Jack's restaurant section maintains the same casual-luxe atmosphere of the original, if in slightly more polished form. The menu also keeps most of the old favorite gut-busting rustic French dishes, from the delicate mustard-wine-cream sauce of the mussels Dijonnaise ($24) to the trademark chicken-liver mousse ($8). The boudin noir blood sausages are likewise in attendance, served with apples and potato puree ($24). The hefty cheese list is a treasure ($7 for one wedge, $21 for five)—especially the Saint Servais, an unpasteurized cow's milk cheese that pretty much tastes like curded-up onion butter. The chili, mint and cilantro agneau Marrocains ($30)—merguez sausage and a pair of lamb chops propped up like Francis Bacon's notion of a butterfly—are worth losing a belt notch for.
But as we discovered after foolishly trying to waltz into the restaurant without calling ahead—waits can easily top an hour—the airy bar is where the fun is these days. The separate bar-side menu sacrifices both formality and cost, but not at the expense of ridiculous decadence. Case in point, the boudin noir "pigs en blanquette" ($14), a pair of puff pastry-wrapped blood sausages (with cherry mustard side) that amount to France's frank-in-the-hand answer to both the corn dog and the Coney. As you pop your teeth or fork into the sausage, you realize it contains its own meat sauce. It's unendingly brilliant—maybe the best high-low mash-up since the foie gras hamburger.
Speaking of which: Le Hamburger, an $11 ciabatta-breaded beef bomb stacked with sauce, Gruyere and caramelized onion, used to be available only as a "secret" happy-hour item, kind of like the off-menu Big Burger at Carl's Jr. At the bar, the burger's now a staple—a fat-on-fatty meat stack that might as well be foie gras. Although, if you're feeling redundant, you can drop an extra $18 to load it with foie gras. (We did not do this.) But there is a more sumptuous foie dish on the same menu for $20, and an excellent foie burger down the street at the Q19 cart pod for $8.
The most jaw-droppingly impressive item at St. Jack is also the humblest: The pork rinds ($6). The massive skins are as puffed as a pastry and almost as delicate. The most labor-intensive item on the menu, the rinds require three days' worth of fat-skimming, boiling and drying. This, it would seem, is the restaurant's substitute for Frice's baking. Dusted with Espelette pepper and dipped in maple syrup, the skins are dessert and a horror movie all at once.
Throw in St. Jack's flagship cocktail—a cardamom-spiced, gin-blossomed Barrel-Aged Bijou ($12)—or any of its gin cocktails, for that matter, and you end your night feeling dirty, drunk and superior all at the same time.
You know…kind of like the French.
- Order this: A burger, a dog, some fries and some pork rinds. Did we forget to mention the insanely rich garlic aioli that comes with the fries?
- Best deal: That burgerâs $9 at happy hour.
EAT: St. Jack, 1610 NW 23rd Ave, 360-1281, stjackpdx.com. Restaurant 5-10 pm daily. Bar 4-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 4 pm-midnight Friday-Saturday.
WWeek 2015