Restaurant Guide 2009: Northwest 21st & 23rd

Bar Mingo

Antipasti is what it’s all about at Caffe Mingo’s more affordable, less formal, sexier next-door neighbor, Bar Mingo. Ten-plus generously proportioned small plates feature everything from fresh discs of pillowy chèvre in a spicy tomato sauce, served with bruschetta, to sautéed fresh-from-the-sea calamari with scallions, garlic, lemon and parsley to big, brawny lamb meatballs that fall apart at first touch, drenched in a punchy mint-and-oregano red sauce. There’s also flat-iron steak with onion rings, smoked-trout salad in a citrus vinaigrette and the catch of the day for one-plate people. Bar Mingo’s complimentary bread service with a mini pitcher of oil and kosher salt is crucial, since there are lots of tasty sauces to sop up.
Order this: Housemade tonnarelli pasta with Manila clams, pancetta, chiles, garlic and parsley.
Best deal: Three antipasti for $21. (Otherwise they’re $8 each.)
I’ll pass: On the disjointed decor and artwork.

Bastas Restaurant and Bar

Yes, the Northwest 21st Avenue Italian bistro’s Swiss Miss roof does betray its beginnings as a Tastee-Freez, but its interiors are appealingly warm, earthy, dark and date-friendly. When Bastas opened in 1992 it was Portland’s favored spot for upscale Italian, but it hasn’t always kept pace with Portland’s burgeoning restaurant scene, and the menu has been somewhat uneven; among the entrees, for example, the excellent ciuppin (the heartier, less-spicy Italian progenitor of San Francisco’s cioppino) abuts a bland, musty tuttomare al cartoccio—spaghetti and shellfish baked in a pastry-covered dish. The “Pasta Pollo” is still well-balanced and the clam pastas consistent, but lately the real reason to come here has been for the wide-ranging, all-evening, generously portioned happy-hour food menu, ideal for sharing—like an Italian-version tapas menu.
Order this: Ciuppin if it’s winter, carpaccio, spaghetti alle vongole.
Best deal: The $5 pizza bianca, with capers and anchovy, could feed two.
I’ll pass: The aforementioned tuttomare, the oversour caper-sauced flank steak.

BeWon Korean Restaurant

Foodies may consider it anathema to make any sort of ethnic cuisine accessible to the less adventurous, but when the results are as balanced and satisfying as they are at BeWon, such things are easily overlooked. The go-deung-uh, broiled, salt-encrusted mackerel, is a fine example. The dish maintains the natural briny flavor of the fish without the heavy gloss of rendered fish fat that might be encountered elsewhere, and the charred bits along the edges are a smoky treat. The Korean marinated-beef-and-onions staple bulgogi is perfectly seasoned with a slightly sweet sauce that is a fine foil for the salty, briny and funky bits found in the array of dried and pickled side dishes (banchan) that come with the meals here. Other Korean restaurants in town may serve dishes that are more salty, or spicy, or fermented, or whatever criteria the authenticity police are using as a metric, but it’s doubtful their spaces are as elegant or their servers as informative.

Order this: The bulgogi.
Best deal: Any of the entrees, each of which comes with nine dishes of banchan.
I’ll pass: Right by it unless I know where to look. BeWon’s sunken-into-the-sidewalk location can be tough to find.

Indish

A lighter, more authentic North Indian cuisine than that on offer at typical Indian restaurants, Indish’s dishes forgo the usual curries and naan in favor of a variety of smallish plates, some of which actually require a knife. The peanut salad appetizer, basically just peanuts with pico de gallo, is more than the sum of its parts. Breaded eggplant with tomato sauce is unexpected and pleasingly meaty. While thin chapatis are less satisfying than pillowy naan, they leave room for a lush mango-coconut cheesecake or chai-rum latte at meal’s end. Nearly a year after opening in October 2008, there are still some new-restaurant kinks to iron out, but the staff’s earnestness and generosity make up for the occasional bungle. Bonus: Comfy couches at many of the tables are particularly welcome after a long day.

Order this: Fragrant lamb tikki makhani.
Best value: Peanut salad is under $4, and good with a creamy London porter. Just sayin’.
I’ll pass: The chapatis are merely OK. Opt instead for flavorful Bombay potatoes.

Lucy's Table

This adorable little restaurant hasn’t changed much over 11 years of holding down its Nob Hill corner. The black curtains, blown-glass light fixtures and glittering glassware still lend an air of casual romance; the black-clad waiters are still quick, efficient and chatty in a pleasant way; and the menu, full of pomegranate glazes, wasabi granita and other Northwest-fusion touches, looks to have been transported intact from 1998. But, hey, why not stick with what works? The meat-laden menu is a tad heavy for the warmer months, but you could hardly ask for a better winter warmer than the super-tender baby back ribs.
Order this: The goat-cheese ravioli ($9) is a customer favorite for a reason. The thick, cheesy bites of pasta are dressed with ridiculously rich brown butter and shallots.
Best deal: Lucy’s boasts one of the cheapest happy hours in town, with a large menu of small plates for $3 to $4 and $4 glasses of wine.
I’ll pass: The tomato and butter lettuce salad reconstitutes the fruit, with layers of lettuce and cheese stacked between slices of tomato, all held together with a skewer. It’s a clever presentation, but too cumbersome to be worth the effort of eating.

Paley's Place

Vitaly Paley’s place helped define early on what Portland’s restaurants would eventually be known for—local, fresh, seasonal food, attentive to each individual ingredient, served in a Continental style adventurously adapted to its surroundings. Almost alone among Northwest cuisine’s pioneers, Paley remains the same chef at the same restaurant—that little old house on Northwest 21st Avenue—that has never once faltered. He’s confident enough that his Parisian “Maison de Qualité” plaque is hung jokingly in the bathroom. The steak tartare is still here, so too the sweetbreads and pork belly, but the restaurant evolves its menu day by day to suit the season—a recent summer standout was chilled Washington oysters with an achingly delicate apple-mint mignonette. Paley’s Place is simply a testament to true epicureanism, which never meant excess but rather a light and salutary sensuousness. As the receipts say, “Peace. Love. Foie Gras.”
Order this: Any soup, chilled oysters, the sweetbreads and pork belly.
Best deal: If this is your worry, don’t even think about it. Even the half-portions nuzzle $20.
I’ll pass: $6 french fries.

Red Onion Thai Cusine

Aside from Pok Pok, locals take Thai cuisine for granted as a takeout, comfort-food standby. But in May, Chef Aut “Dang” Boonyakamol’s Red Onion forced us to sit down and take notice. The new restaurant, from the former chef-owner of Chaba Thai and Dang’s Thai Kitchen, is a direct flight to Northern Thailand hunkered down across the street from the emergency entrance to Legacy Good Sam Hospital. The stylish lime-and-brick-colored dining room serves a long list of off-kilter favorites, from soupy, shallot-y khao soi curry to salad rolls packed with sweet Chinese sausage and topped with Dungeness crab—all served in sharable portions. But it’s what Chiang Mai native Dang didn’t put on the menu that garnered him a following of Thai expats over the past decade; until recently, regulars would call him to special order deep-fried squid tubes stuffed with cilantro-laced ground pork and shrimp or homey nam prik oang, a tomato and minced pork dish that’s the Thai equivalent of spicy spaghetti sauce. He’d make his own lemongrass-and-kaffir lime Chiang Mai sausage by hand, top mounds of puckery shredded green mango with crisp-skinned rainbow trout and doctor up chile pastes with special Asian cumin seeds only found at Lily Market. Then, earlier this summer, Kenny & Zuke’s Nick Zukin convinced Dang that Americans were ready to broaden their borders. The new specials menu’s been a hit (although it still bears the legend “No refuse, no return” at the bottom). Chef Dang, 51, has been cooking since he was a kid—forced to grind chile paste for his mom in the kitchen instead of going outside to play, he says with a grin. The love and care he still takes in making this complex, deftly spiced fare is evident—it tastes just like home ought to.

Serratto

Here rustic, straightforward Mediterranean cooking lets seasonal ingredients do their thing with minimal interference. With three large seating areas, a bustling bar and private rooms, Serratto is good for groups and people who don’t like to wait. Portions are wonderfully generous—two can easily fill up on one shared entree combined with a pasta dish or one of the signature brick-oven pizzas. Pick a hearty Northwest or Old World wine to make the fare’s flavors hum. And leave room for dessert—seasonal treats like a hot Oregon berry cobbler with vanilla gelato are too good to pass up.
Order this: Toothsome fresh pappardelle with slow-cooked wild boar and a hint of orange.
Best deal: A huge pizza del giorno for $13 ($8 at happy hour)—the hot oven teases deep flavors from the day’s produce.
I’ll pass: The Caprese salad is good, but nothing you couldn’t replicate with a trip to New Seasons and a knife.

Wildwood

When restaurants get into their teen years, they’re bound to get in trouble, and Wildwood, which bid farewell to founding chef Corey Schreiber in 2007 after 13 years, went through a bit of a rough adolescence. But the restaurant seems to have recovered as chef Dustin Clark’s kitchen has grown more consistent. Service in the quietly sprawling dining room is as calmly solicitous as ever, and the menu still offers the freshest veggies off the trucks of Wildwood’s many farm partners. With the occasional exception of a dish here and there that tries to do too much (e.g., a very nice piece of grilled albacore with one too many sauces), the food is both interesting and flawlessly prepared. Case in point: a recent salad of sweet corn and arugula with walnuts, unexpectedly brightened with lime juice.
Order this: The Wildwood Burger, an impeccably spiced patty with Dijon aioli on a substantial bun, is justly lauded, though at $14 it pushes the bounds of acceptable burger-pricing.
Best deal: Chef Clark grills farm-fresh bites for $5 apiece every Tuesday from 4:30 to 6:30 pm.
I’ll pass: A recent heirloom tomato salad was too busy, dressed with blue cheese, walnuts, onions and (maybe) anise. They’re tomatoes, guys. Let them speak for themselves.