The Showoff's Guide to Portland

[September 29th, 2004] Now that summer's tourists are gone, you've got visitors coming. Doesn't matter who they are. Thing is, you like them. You want to show them a good time. The Visitor will come from towns such as Manhattan or Chicago or even Austin, Texas, places brined in an insouciant brew of so-what. Like most Portlanders, you take your citizen's mandate to educate the ignorant seriously, and now duty calls. The best route to rattle the Visitor's mind? The stomach, of course, the stomach. Here are the steps:

Beer, food & movies. The brewpub/theater combo, brilliantly conceived by the brothers McMenamin in 1987, is unsecret weapon No. 1. The movie pub will make even the most sniffy Manhattanite giggle with excitement. Doesn't matter if you think the food is only so-so or Hammerhead doesn't top your list of local microbrews. The simple idea of watching a movie in public (for cheap!) and drinking beer will seem revolutionary to the Visitor. Our country's Puritan roots have made it second nature to question the introduction of alcohol into any non-sanctioned activity. This movie/brewpub thing, it feels so very frontier. The Visitor will love it. Promise.

Ocean-fresh ingredients. Alas, there is no signature Portland dish, but there are ingredients that tell our story. Picking blackberries from the bramble and baking them into a pie is definitely quaint but lacks the requisite wow factor. Instead, go big with the Dungeness crab (bio handle: Cancer magister), the puffed-up crustacean that lives only up and down our edge of the Pacific. It's allegedly named for a coastal town in Washington state, but I like to imagine a more lurid history. There was once this crazy scientist, see. He did all these wingnut experiments on crab DNA in his basement lab, and when things got out of control, Doc ended up making these boffo huge crabs with the sweetest meat ever. When the crabs escaped their dungeon home, they pinched their creator to death on their beeline to the ocean. Despite the mangling of their name, the crabs survived.

The Visitor, used to the puny blue crabs on the East Coast, will be shocked and amazed by these giant crabs. But do not, repeat, do not present the Visitor with a pre-cooked crab. Instead, get yourself down to Pacific Seafood's retail outlet at Southeast 33rd Avenue and Powell Boulevard. You can generally pick up the live critters for $4.99 a pound at this huge outfit, which supplies most local restaurants with fish. Take your new pets home, put an ocean-sized pot on the stove, shake in some salt, get it to a hardy boil and cook the crab (mind those flailing pincers when you're putting it in the pot) for about 12 minutes. Let them sit for about five minutes. They'll continue to cook as they cool. Lay down some layers of newspaper and make a nasty mess while enjoying Oregon's ocean bounty.

Local fast food that tastes good. Not every place has a chain like Burgerville, you know. Most cities are stuck with McSoulkillers and Nasty Kings and that's all. Burgerville offers a seasonally rotating menu with ingredients from local providers--that's freakin' revolutionary. My pinko lefty vegetarian friend from New York City pronounced, "I hate fast food. But I love fast food. And this is fast food I can love." This was even before she had tried the blackberry milkshake.

Veggie consciousness. Speaking of pinko lefty vegetarian friends, these are people you can definitely impress here. Now, every major city has a cool, mostly meatless cafe like the Vita, and the Veg Visitors will enjoy Portland's versions, but that's not what's going to get them. As one veggie New York expat recently told me: "It's not just the individual places, it's the overall veg-friendliness of this town that's extraordinary." Indeed. Here's your itinerary:

Day 1: Nicholas Restaurant

This Lebanese powerhouse drapes monster-sized fresh pitas across your plate that you use to lap up a zingy vegan mezza platter.

Day 2: Queen of Sheba

Get the vegetarian mega-platter that heaps smartly spiced-and-stewed vegetables over spongy, pancakelike enjera bread. Finger-lickin' good Ethiopian.

Day 3: Food Fight!

Shop for a picnic at this all-veggie corner store that puts the EAT into fake meat.

Day 4: Higgins

Pony up the cash and hit one of Portland's fancypants places that does an amazing job catering to the meatless. Northwestern booster Higgins is highly recommended. While the salads at this restaurant are always bright and bursting with flavor, a recent dinner menu offered an empanada of grilled corn, chilies and tofu, and a pasta with hazelnut pesto. Plus, there's an amazing array of Portland-area potables available at the bar.

Reinventing the food wheel. In other cities, famous restaurants might focus on a little-known cuisine type or highlight an undiscovered ingredient or promote a big-name chef who cooks to impress. What makes the Portland food world so very Portland is the way restaurateurs disassemble the very mechanisms that fuel food service and rebuild them in new, interesting ways.

You know about Ripe's family suppers. Perhaps you've been to Pix's dessert dim sum fests. Another innovator on the local foodie block is Voodoo Doughnut, which is doing its damnedest to restore fluff to America's stagnant doughnut culture. Freaky performance-art doughnuts (made with such things as Cocoa Puffs and Strawberry Quik), noir-ready nighttime hours, wacky in-store events and coffee-'n'-doughnut weddings all serve to promote their vision of the New Doughnut Lifestyle.

You may be sick of hearing about Portland's edible bounty, but remember, you've got a virgin on your hands.