For many, the first surprise will be that Coquine exists at all.
If you don't live nearby, or haven't ventured up Southeast Belmont lately, you might not know about the thicket of businesses where the road elbows into 69th Avenue. Yet this is where you'll find Coquine, across the street from a retro realty office, next door to a holistic yoga studio, taking up the corner of an improbable two-story apartment building.
Inside, there's room for about 30, with small tables and a marbled bar full of neighbors talking, drinking wine and spreading cultured butter onto rustic bread with smooth wooden knives. At night, the dining room casts its light onto the rain-damp streets.
Coquine, which opened in July, is an intimate restaurant devoted to fine technique without fine-dining fussiness. It's probably the only restaurant in America that serves both a $55 tasting menu (at night) and a two-bite, $2 mortadella sandwich (at lunch). Service follows the same model: subtle, thoughtful, efficient, but never overbearing. This might look like a neighborhood restaurant, but it's one you'll want to travel to.
That's the second surprise.
Coquine
Rating:
*** (Excellent)
Cuisine and scene:
A chef trained at Michelin-starred restaurants in France opens an overachieving neighborhood restaurant on Mount Tabor.
Recommended:
At dinner: tempura green beans, hen liver mousse, bucatini, black cod, desserts. At lunch: chocolate chip cookies, mortadella-mustard baps.
Vegetarian friendly?
Not particularly.
Sound level:
Fleet Foxes "
," on low.
Beverages:
A passionately considered selection of tea, coffee, cider, beer, wine and cocktails, including a seasonal gin & tonic that's 2-for-2 so far.
Price range:
Starters, $6-$14; mains, $25-$26; whole roast guinea hen, $49; desserts, $7-$8; candy tray, $2 each.
Extras:
Reservations, major credit cards, on-street parking, disabled access.
Serving:
Breakfast and lunch daily; dinner, Wednesday to Sunday.
Details:
6839 S.E. Belmont St., 503-384-2483,
.
Coquine's chef is Katy Millard, who trained at Michelin-starred restaurants in France, spent time in the Bay Area's fine-dining world at chef Daniel Patterson's Coi, then moved to Portland, where she had trouble landing a proper gig. Along with husband Ksandek Podbielski, who most recently managed the hushed dining room at Roe, Millard launched Coquine as a pop-up, serving dinners at area farms. Those roots show every time Millard delivers a dish, lingering on the origin of the artichokes, say, or the farmer who grew the melons that went into a summer-stretching sorbet.
Related: Portland's 101 best restaurants
The name is French, the menu only vaguely so, with dishes incorporating flavors from Japan -- lacey, tempura-fried green beans with a dank brown butter dashi -- the American South -- cornmeal-crusted green tomatoes with anchovy and dill -- and, above all, Oregon produce. In summer, you could sit on the picnic tables outside and eat pane fritto, little puffs of fried dough, arranged in a starburst with strips of radicchio, or a lovely jumble of peak tomatoes, large and small, with more fried bread, olives, a treasure trove of toasty pine nuts and creamy fromage blanc. Tender, oranged-colored duck wings tossed in Calabrian chiles reminded me of ones they used to serve at the Woodsman Tavern, where Millard briefly worked.
As the weather turned, the dining room became prime real estate. If you didn't make reservations, consider the bar, which is cool and smooth and maroon veined with white like fine jamon iberico. You can drink wine by the glass here -- before Roe, Podbielski ran the tasting room at Anne Amie Vineyards; his list is smart, Oregon-focused and highly personal -- while eating a simple bowl of bucatini, the hollow, spaghetti-like pasta, with sardines, golden raisins, walnuts and fennel. One night, we drank a bottle of chenin blanc from Portland's Division Winemaking Co. We were happy. A woman next to us at the bar didn't care for the bucatini. "It's just noodles," she said.
No one could complain about the black cod, cooked gently then laid on white beans mingling with a sweet pepper sofrito and small cubes of pungent pancetta, or cured pork belly. The flavor stayed with me for days. Roast squab had its moments too, the roast bird hiding under a cascade of leeks, with tender chestnut and wild porcinis, like a simple ode to fall. There used to be a whole grilled chicken, cooked over charcoal. Now you'll find a roast guinea hen with spiced eggplant, cauliflower and bulgur wheat.
Pan-roasted squab with porcini, leeks, chesnuts and vermouth jus.
That hen lends its liver to a smooth, airy mousse that's served a sweet fig-fennel jam and thin, cracker-crisp slices of bread studded with hazelnuts. The mousse is light and easily spread over the fragile toast using another one of those wooden knives. It's rustic and modern at the same time, a decent expression of Coquine itself. If the restaurant ever does an ice cream collaboration with Salt & Straw, this should be their flavor.
Related: Portland's best new restaurants
You could come just for the desserts, angular, geometric takes on comforting classics -- carrot cake with rosemary creme anglaise and smoked almond brittle, a warm chocolate brownies with young ginger Chantilly cream and crunchy honeycomb candy -- arranged on Pigeon Toe Ceramics plates like sugar-spun standing stones. That Charentais melon Millard loved so much went into a sorbet, formed into a perfect quenelle and placed among shards of lime shortbread. Like the savory dishes, the desserts, from Millard and recent Portland transplant Liz Kennedy, push right up against the fine-dining line, never tipping over.
Star rating
The Oregonian uses a star system for its restaurant reviews, with ratings ranging from zero to four stars, reflecting the critic's opinion of the restaurant's food, service and ambience, weighted toward the food.
0 stars = Not recommended
1 star = Satisfactory
2 stars = Good
3 stars = Excellent
4 stars = Extraordinary
Some day, if they become popular enough, Millard and Podbielski might have to decide which side of that line they're on. Is Coquine a polished, destination restaurant that globe-hopping food tourists visit straight from the airport, where soups are poured tableside and meals can end with dainty candies chosen from a tray? Or is it a neighborhood hangout, a place you can drop by for granola in the morning, chicken salad sandwiches and addictive chocolate chip cookie at lunch and a simple bowl of pasta and wine by the glass at night?
But they don't have to worry about that yet.
Secret is, right now, Coquine is comfortable being both.
Update: In June, we named Coquine was named Portland's 2016 Restaurant of the Year.
-- Michael Russell