Each year, The Oregonian revisits dozens of Portland restaurants, then ranks the city’s 40 best for a guide that lands on web browsers, inboxes and driveways this week. Here we’re counting down the top 10 list for 2019, continuing with No. 8: St. Jack.
Five years after moving from its original Southeast Clinton Street home to more a polished space on Northwest 23rd Avenue, St. Jack feels fully adapted to its new neighborhood. Originally inspired by the wine-heavy snout-to-tail bouchons of Lyon, chef Aaron Barnett is slowly attempting to add more influence from his recent trips to Paris.
You’ll still find jiggly bone marrow and huge flaps of crackling pork rinds and tablier de sapeur, the thin, golden-fried pieces of tripe meant for dipping in a capered mayonnaise. The cheese menu still holds d’Affinois and its accurate descriptor, “fat, fatty, fat.” And you’ll still want to start with a salad, especially the simple butter lettuce with avocado and fines herbes, all the better to lay a base for the excesses to come.
But there’s also tinned fish on a plate in the style of modern wine bars, chilled poached prawns with vadouvan aioli and roasted halibut in an elegant Meyer lemon beurre blanc. If you saved room, there might be a grapefruit tart with orange blossom meringue or a bowl of baked-to-order madeleines waiting, still warm to the touch, under a shower of powdered sugar.
Let the food coma commence.
Order: Butter lettuce salad, chilled prawns or albacore crudo, fried tripe, pork rinds, mussels, steak frites, madeleines and, during the new Sunday brunch, a Calvados-soaked cinnamon roll.
Insider tip: For a fresh spin on modern, globally inspired French cooking from the St. Jack team, visit Scotch Lodge (215 S.E. Ninth Ave.), a subterranean cocktail den owned by longtime Barnett conspirator Tommy Klus.
St. Jack serves dinner daily (and late-night at the bar) plus a new Sunday brunch at 1610 N.W. 23rd St., 503-360-1281, stjackpdx.com
-- Michael Russell @tdmrussell
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