Over the past year, Portland restaurant openings have been a game of musical chairs, only one with more chairs than players.
After a decade and a half of growth for a food scene called the nation’s best as recently as 2015, the pandemic brutalized the city in 2020, leaving more empty restaurants than tenants to fill them. Many of those empty storefronts, some in prime locations, spent 2022 calling up former food carts and itinerant pop-ups, small businesses happy to accept friendly terms on a previously unattainable address.
This isn’t necessarily bad. More opportunity has meant more experimentation — Indian fusion brunch! Manga-inspired ramen! Royal Thai cuisine! — with unsung chefs opening dream concepts with little money down. If you’ve sensed a sameness creeping over local restaurants, as big groups stamped out safe, formulaic concepts in each of Portland’s six quadrants, this is an exciting time to eat out.
It has also meant plenty of misfires — carts that couldn’t scale, pop-ups that never popped, newcomers that came and went faster than a flurry of early-winter snow.
On the brighter side, the restaurants that do survive have a chance to become the next Pok Poks, Le Pigeons and Beasts, helping to build and define the local food landscape for more than a decade. Kann, our 2022 Restaurant of the Year, could be the first cornerstone.
All the restaurants here opened — or expanded to full service after a limited COVID opening — between November 2021 and October 2022. All sit within city limits. Our hope is this won’t be just a handy list of places to get a good meal, but a possible glimpse into the future of Portland dining.
Read more: The 40 best restaurants in Portland you need to try
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GUIDE TO THE GUIDE
Restaurant critic Michael Russell visited nearly 100 restaurants to bring you The Oregonian/OregonLive.com’s guide to the 10 best newcomers of 2020 and 2021. He made his picks based on the quality and impact of the food and experience and, as always, paid for his own meals along the way. Each pick is listed with its current hours and pricing, though given the circumstances, checking ahead for unexpected changes is a good bet.
PRICE KEY
$ (about $14 or less per entree)
$$ ($15-$20 per entree)
$$$ ($21-$30 per entree)
$$$$ ($31 or more per entree)
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No. 10: Pastificio d’Oro
Looking back at summer, some of my fondest memories involve sitting with friends on the wobbly picnic tables outside this St. Johns pasta spot, the sun’s last rays disappearing behind the dive bar just down the street.
At the time, Pastificio d’Oro was just a promising Monday-Tuesday pop-up at Gracie’s Apizza, with former Jacqueline chef Chase Dopson making pasta from scratch and painter Maggie Irwin taking orders, pouring wine and tossing farm-fresh salads with her signature honey-sweet dressing.
The restaurant, which took over the pizzeria full time in November, remains a true Mom-and-Pop, only one where, according to Dopson, almost everything is made from scratch. But what makes Pastificio d’Oro unique, even by crafty Portland standards, is that Dopson mixes, rolls and forms all of his pasta by hand using a mattarello, or long wooden rolling pin, a time-intensive method more familiar to Italian nonnas than typical American restaurants, where even the fresh pasta is typically flattened by machine.
Visit today to find Dopson’s pastas — some squash-stuffed tortelli, perhaps, or a tagliatelle al ragu — plus bowls of that zippy salad and plates of aged prosciutto and frybread. A rustic tart or sugar-dusted cake rounds out a menu kept blessedly small. There’s a small wine list, good Negronis courtesy of The Garrison next door and if you time it right, you can follow your dinner with a movie at the St. Johns Twin across the street.
What to order: With a group of two or more, it would be borderline irresponsible not to order the whole menu.
Details: After launching as a Monday pop-up, Pastificio d’Oro switched to Thursday-Sunday dinner hours in November; 8737 N. Lombard St.; doropdx.com ($$)
Read more: Pastificio d’Oro is your favorite pasta cook’s favorite pasta restaurant (review)
No. 9: Rangoon Bistro
To wrap your head around Rangoon Bistro’s uniquely comforting approach to Burmese food, it helps to know that co-owners David Sai and Alex Saw met while working at an upscale Italian restaurant in Malaysia.
What does that mean? Well, if you happen to order the noodle, Saw might finish them in a saute pan with their own starchy water, creating a pleasant slick using a technique more commonly seen in Southern Italy than Southeast Asia.
After teaming up with Nick Sherbo, a fellow former Bollywood Theater cook and the only partner not born in the country also known as Myanmar, Rangoon Bistro launched as a farmer’s market stand in 2017, serving tea leaf salads and coconut curries to customers at Northeast Portland’s King Farmers Market.
Today, Rangoon Bistro’s menu resembles little else in Portland. The fried chicken is inspired by Sai and Saw’s time in Malaysia, which explains the similarity to the popular Southern Thai fried chicken at Hat Yai. Only here the marinade of lemongrass, curry leaf and mild red chiles adds deep flavor to a crunchy bird more reminiscent of American fried chicken, with juices flowing down your chin from the first bite.
The winter menu is perfect for cold nights, with slurpable noodles, coconut rice and rich curries. But summer will bring the return of the restaurant’s signature khao pyan sane, a “very large dumpling” stuffed with seasonal veggies or pork, as well as warm evenings perfect for easy-drinking tamarind Pegu Clubs sipped on the sprawling front patio.
Burma? Malaysia? Italy? Wherever it comes from, it feels like home.
What to order: Pork shank noodles, fried chicken and a Pegu Club, and keep an eye out for specials.
Details: Rangoon Bistro is open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday and lunch on weekends at 2311 S.E. 50th Ave., 503-953-5385, rangoonbistropdx.com ($$)
Read more: Rangoon Bistro’s take on Burmese: ‘not the way mom or grandma cooks’ (review)
No. 8: Jojo (the Restaurant)
Few carts were as well positioned as Jojo to make the brick-and-mortar jump. Successful enough to not just land a prominent space, but hang onto it through months of delays, the brand had developed a loyal following through its social media feeds filled with silly memes and serious fundraisers alike.
Still, while fans and financing can help, they don’t guarantee lines beyond the opening weekend. That Jojo has been a hit is a credit to owner Justin Hintze and his team.
Here in a wood-framed Pearl District dining room glammed up with disco balls, hanging plants and orange banquettes, Hintze has built carefully around Jojo’s core menu, throwing in a few smart additions that already look like slam dunks. That expanded roster includes golden fried Ota tofu sandwiches, a bar stocked with flavored sodas and desserts inspired by the same convenience store aisles as Jojo’s savory side.
When I first tried Jojo, the sky-blue truck was parked at a Sellwood-Moreland car wash, serving smash burgers, fried-chicken sandwiches and a namesake dish typically found tanning under a corner store heat lamp. But from that first bite, it was clear these weren’t your everyday grocery store ‘jos. As I learned, Hintze had tested dozens of recipes before settling on his double-fried technique.
Today you can dip those jojos — or some pleasantly chewy cubes of popcorn tofu— into house-made ranch, sambal mayo, tangy Alabama white or a half dozen other sauces, each sauce available in a vegan iteration. If you have a food-loving teenager in your life, surprise them with a birthday trip to Jojo. They’ll thank you someday.
What to order: A smash burger, fried-chicken sandwich or popcorn tofu and a shake, boozy or otherwise, plus a side of jojos.
Details: Jojo (the restaurant) is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, with weekend brunch service coming soon at 902 N.W. 13th Ave., 971-331-4284, jojopdx.com ($$)
Read more: Jojo the restaurant’s secret sauce? Building around what made the cart great (review)
No. 7: Pasture
“Have you tried Pasture yet?” a sandwich-obsessed friend texted me in July. “I think I found my Tails & Trotters replacement.”
I had gone by Pasture, a roving pop-up turned eco-friendly butcher shop and deli on Northeast Alberta Street, hoping to try one of the restaurant’s early dinners, when steaks picked straight from the butcher case were seared off and eaten on the spot with a glass of natural wine. But evening hours didn’t pan out, and were quickly replaced by takeout bento boxes.
That might have been for the best. Pasture is my pick for Portland’s best new sandwich shop, with straightforward stacks of house cured, brined or smoked meats sliced thin and topped with lettuce, pickles, cheese and sauce on a scrunchy Dos Hermanos bakery roll.
It almost doesn’t matter which one you order: The O.G., a banh mi-inspired pastrami spread with house-made hazelnut chile oil; The R.B., with its sliced sirloin and buttermilk ranch; even the Cubano. The specific details are less important than the quality of the meat within.
Beyond sandwiches, there are shelves of local olive oil, sea salt and wine available to drink in house for an additional $15 corkage. It’s worth a look in the deli case just to see the impossibly pink beet sausage, which you can take home for the grill or eat on a bun here with swipes of mustard and remoulade.
There’s also a burger, and it’s the one I’ve ordered more than any other this year, an anti-smash burger with good beef ground as course as restaurant tartare, gently seared, placed with pickles on a brioche bun and held together by prayers and melted provolone.
What to order: Scan the QR code (I know) and pick from one of the dozen daily hot and cold sandwiches. Enjoy.
Details: Pasture is open for lunch Tuesday to Saturday at 1413 N.E. Alberta St., 503-841-5033, pasturepdx.com ($$)
Read more: Pasture is Portland’s best new sandwich shop (review)
No. 6: Bluto’s
Before it opened, Lardo chef Rick Gencarelli described Bluto’s as “Greek-inspired,” a place to come for hearth-grilled souvlaki skewers, mint-flecked ouzo mojitos and soft-serve ice cream capped in tahini magic shell. Even the name was cribbed from a Greek hero of a different sort: John “Bluto” Blutarsky, the merry prankster from the Oregon-filmed frat comedy “Animal House.” You could almost hear the shouts of “Opa!”
Turns out, Bluto’s is a lot less Greek, and a little less gonzo, than those early descriptions had us believe. It is a skewer restaurant, and a good one at that, with herb-marinated chicken, spiced ground lamb, shrimp and Olympia Provisions sausages all skewered and seared over the hearth’s crackling flames.
But the focus of the team, including Executive Chef Barry Fitzpatrick, is on putting high quality food on plates, not smashing them at the end of the night. The best thing here is the flatbread. Not pita, per se — there’s no pocket, for one — but closer to a compact version of laffa, the high-hydration Iraqi bread that was an early inspiration. Gently grilled on the hearth, dusted with salt and oregano, it’s slipped into a slim paper sleeve, still warm. You’re meant to rip off a nice chunk of bread and swipe it through the menu’s second-best item, a smooth, tahini-rich hummus topped with chickpeas and the Yemeni spice blend zhug or spoonfuls of spiced beef and golden raisins.
Not everything is on that level. Vegetable dishes are a welcome break to the meat-and-carb parade, but often inessential. Cocktails feel like an afterthought. But then there’s the fun wedge salad with bacon and house “ranchziki,” the thin pork chop laid sizzling on a bed of fries and the sticky-sweet phyllo triangle stuffed with graviera, Greece’s second favorite cheese, which could prove a hit with your kids. And if it doesn’t, there’s always soft serve.
What to order: As much souvlaki, flatbread and hummus as you can eat.
Details: Open for lunch and dinner daily at 2838 S.E. Belmont St., blutospdx.com ($$)
Read more: Bluto’s isn’t very Greek. It is very good (review)
No. 5: Gabbiano’s
Before the pandemic, local chefs seemed determined to reinvent Italian American cuisine in Portland, with restaurants and pop-ups including Omerta, Il Solito and Ava Geno’s topping tables with red-checked tablecloths, Chianti-bottle candleholders and cheffed-up takes on chicken Parmesan. But none of them nailed what we love about red sauce cooking until Gabbiano’s.
The restaurant opened in January in the former Yakuza, on a Concordia neighborhood block already crowded with pasta spots including the neighboring Ripe Cooperative and corner wine bar Dame. But David Sigal and Blake Foster of the Zoo Bar pop-up had the Gabbiano’s formula dialed in from the start. The room — breezy in summer, cozy in winter — quickly filled with people happily enjoying sauce-drenched “cups” of fried mozzarella, big plates of spaghetti and meatballs and more espresso martinis than you’ll find on a full season of “Below Deck.”
After years of COVID restrictions, Gabbiano’s feels like a release, and a perfect date spot for 2022. Even when chef Liz Serrone’s kitchen gives classic recipes a tweak, they still feel respectful of Italian American tradition. Take the spaghetti and meatballs, a big plate of clearly fresh noodles, soft but not overcooked, with garlic-spiced beef and pork meatballs drenched in tasty marinara.
I’ve enjoyed the lumache with spicy ‘nduja, and am curious to try the brown butter alfredo and eggplant Parm “Liz-agna.” But it’s hard to break away from the favorites. Is the fried mozzarella, a trio of golden-fried mozzarella “cups” cradling marinara sauce, too big? That might be the point. The chicken Parm is breaded, fried, as big as a catcher’s mitt, topped with melted mozzarella, marinara and a side of garlic bread. It’s as classic as they come, and a perfect pairing with the house red.
Gabbiano’s is a serious cocktail bar, too, albeit a seriously playful one. Come for the limoncello drops, the martinis served in their own little shaker and the “caprese” Negroni infused with sun-dried tomato and basil and garnished with a cherry-sized mozzarella ball. The Old Fashioned is excellent.
Among all the great spots on our new restaurant guide, this is the one I’m most likely to return to on my own time and dime. Gabbiano’s is that rare place we didn’t know we needed — perhaps even thought we didn’t need — a red-sauce restaurant overflowing with warm hospitality and melted mozzarella. Some things don’t need reinventing.
What to order: Mozzarella cups, a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs, an amaretto sour slushee and a bib.
Details: Gabbiano’s serves dinner Wednesday to Sunday at 5411 N.E. 30th Ave., 503-719-4373, gabbianospdx.com ($$$)
Read more: Gabbiano’s is the red sauce Italian restaurant Portland didn’t know it needed (review)
No. 4: Lilia
Between the cafes, the restaurants, the bakery and the bar, keeping up with República Hospitality has been head-spinning. The group, which rose to prominence last year through its eponymous Pearl District tasting menu restaurant — a best new restaurant winner in 2021 — launched a half dozen new projects in 2022, including a dimly lit Northwest Park Avenue taqueria that rebranded as a cocktail bar not long after I visited at.
So far, the gem among the newcomers looks to be Lilia, a new South Waterfront restaurant offering “Pacific Northwest cuisine through the lens of a Mexican-American chef.” The chef in question? Juan Gomez, who came here from República, and here presents a menu of chef-driven tweaks on classic dishes, including familiar taqueria fare such as quesadillas, tacos dorados and huaraches.
You can order a la carte, but you should probably just do the tasting menu ($80 when we visited), which starts with some nicely shucked Tide Point oysters under a little mound of piquant pear-serrano granita. The crispy quesadilla, with dark blue corn tortillas stuffed with gooey cheese from Salem’s Don Froylan Creamery and dotted with discs of apple-green radish, is a worthy rival to the famed rendition at República.
Meals here tend to crescendo with some properly oily pork collar carnitas that Gomez rests for seven days in lard, confit-style, then crisps up to order and serves alongside some griddled pan arabe — think of a Mexican version of Indonesian roti and you’re not far off. It’s delicious, if not for the faint of heart.
Desserts don’t quite match the level of the savory courses — a sturdy arroz con leche panna cotta was an interesting experiment that didn’t pan out. Revisiting the oyster, with its spicy, sweet, refreshing granita, is a fine way to finish off a meal.
What to order: The tasting menu, though if you only order one thing, it should probably be the carnitas.
Details: Lilia is open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday at 3159 S. Moody Ave. ($$$)
Read more: Lilia is a highly personal, hyper-seasonal Mexican restaurant like no other in Portland (review)
No. 3: Phuket Cafe
How do you follow a remarkable run of Portland restaurant openings, including the first regionally specific Thai tasting menu in America, a beloved Southern Thai fried chicken chain and a celebrated barbecue spot fusing the smoked meats of Texas with the curries and wok-fried dishes of Thailand?
If you’re Earl Ninsom, the Bangkok-born owner of Langbaan, Hat Yai, Eem and more, you build a Thai steakhouse complete with retro-chic decor, steaks served with a fiery tomato relish and seating in a life-sized mock Thai train car parked out front.
Of course, Phuket Cafe isn’t just a steakhouse. The restaurant, which took over the Ataula space in January, shakes up the most eclectic cocktail menu this side of Northeast Portland’s Expatriate; presents cheese-stuffed, pandan-green roti with crème fraîche and salmon roe, as if they were blini; and might be the only place in America where the salad section includes a whole fried fish (and a yummy one at that).
But at its heart, this is a chophouse. As such, you’re probably here on a date, staying warm near one of the train car’s heat lamps. And although the appetizers, fish “salad” and vegetable sides are the things I crave most often, you’re probably going to be constructing your meal around one of the meaty bone-in chops, either a dry-aged Brandt ribeye or a Lan-Roc pork chop. And you’re almost certainly ordering one of the playful cocktails with names — Candy Gram for Mango, Tricked-Out Honda or Silver Cloud Hotel & Casino — like tracks from some great lost chillwave album.
If you checked out Phuket Cafe over the summer and were dissuaded by the crowds, it’s worth revisiting now. Langbaan has officially relocated here to the foot of the West Hills. From Friday to Sunday, the tasting menu takes over the entire dining room, moving Phuket Cafe outside. Reservations for the train car aren’t too hard to find.
What to order: Unless you’re here for steak, focus on seafood — the albacore ceviche, prawns in turmeric curry and whole fried fish “salad” drizzled with peanuts, herbs and sweet sauce are winners.
Details: Phuket Cafe is open for dinner daily and weekend brunch at 1818 N.W. 23rd Pl., 503-781-2997, phuketcafepdx.com ($$$)
Read more: Phuket Cafe is a retro-chic Thai steakhouse in Northwest Portland (review)
No. 2: Cafe Olli
Lots of new Portland restaurants have attempted to open as “all-day cafes,” a buzzy new phrase hinting at an ambitious aim: to revive restaurants’ role as an essential third place. Few have realized that goal as wholly as Cafe Olli, which opens six days a week, including 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, plus weekend brunch.
No, you don’t get an award just for staying open. But Cafe Olli isn’t just a place to gather, it’s Portland’s best new bakery by day, and the city’s best new pizzeria at night. That means you can arrive early for coffee and a charred, flaky pastel de nata, the Portuguese egg custard tart, or drop by at dinnertime for a chunk of good pork baked to sizzling tenderness in the brick oven once belonging to Ned Ludd.
If you remember that restaurant, walking into Cafe Olli will be a shock. Gone are the luddite tchotchkes and old pots and pans coating the walls. In their place, plain white walls, a perfect canvas for the pizza, a standout even in this pizza-mad town. These super-thin, super-crisp pies are topped with Italian sausage or ricotta and wild mushrooms or the one every table around you seems to be ordering these days, a pomodoro with bright tomato sauce and razor-thin garlic to which you are practically required to add the house-made stracciatella.
In February, we called that pomodoro pie “the single most impressive pizza in Portland right now.” I’ll go a step further here. If Cafe Olli isn’t a top five Portland pizzeria already, it’s just on the outside looking in.
What to order: A pastel de nata in the morning and a pomodoro pie (with stracciatella) at night.
Details: Cafe Olli is open for lunch Tuesday to Friday, dinner Tuesday to Saturday and brunch on weekends at 3925 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-206-8604 cafeolli.com ($$$)
Read more: Cafe Olli is Portland’s best new bakery, and pizzeria too (review)
No. 1: Kann
Open Kann’s glossy, leather-bound menu and you’re faced with the western outline of the Caribbean Island that the Spanish called La Española. The indigo-colored image is meant to orient you in Haiti, the country that inspired chef Gregory Gourdet’s extraordinary new wood-fired Southeast Portland restaurant. But it’s also reminiscent of the hand-drawn maps found at the beginning of fantasy novels.
Unless you walk in blindfolded, you might think this is by design. At Kann, our 2022 Restaurant of the Year, Gourdet has built a fantasia, with white walls, gold and cobalt blue accents, abundant house plants, a painting evoking the Caribbean sunset and a James Turrell-esque LED inset glowing from the high ceiling. Fizzy pink cocktails sail through the room on golden trays. In a time of roving pop-ups and bootstrapped restaurant openings, it’s the most impressive dining room Portland has seen in years.
But there’s more to Kann than looks. Behind the chef’s counter cutting through the room, Gourdet and his team conjure a near-mythical vision of Haitian cuisine, with dishes traditional and imagined alike charred beautifully on the kitchen’s roaring hearth. Here, taro root fritters, braised-then-fried griyo pork and soursop shave ice make a persuasive argument that Caribbean food deserves as much respect from Portlanders as French, Italian, Japanese or Thai.
Consider the spicy collard greens in peanut cream, a preparation brought to the Americas by enslaved West Africans. Consider the diri ak djon djon, a bowl of tender rice and lima beans tinted black from an earthy Haitian mushroom tea. Consider the clairin, the small-batch Haitian rhum that deserves to be talked about alongside mezcal. Consider the beef rib rubbed with a blend of Haitian coffee and spices, smoked until the edges form a shimmering bark, sliced on the bone and showered with pickles and herbs. Kann creates a world where Haiti didn’t just give us the very concept of barbecue — “barbacoa” being a Spanish transliteration of the native Taíno word — but innovated a modern Caribbean meat-smoking tradition that’s the envy of the world.
Since opening in August, Kann has become the most heavily decorated restaurant in Portland history, praised by the New York Times the month after it opened, named America’s best new restaurant by Esquire in November and currently cleaning up with local awards (including this one). A James Beard win — for Gourdet as the best chef in the Northwest — or two — for Kann as America’s best new restaurant — could follow next year.
Continue reading about our 2022 Restaurant of the Year
What to order: Akra, plantain muffins, griyo, peanut greens and diri ak djon djon to start. If you’re in a group of three or more, tackle the tender smoked beef rib and its $95 price tag. But the kitchen also showers love on less expensive mains such as epis-brine chicken, grilled red cabbage and herring or the cauliflower in sour coconut cream. If there’s still room, pineapple upside down cake; if not, soursop ice.
Details: Kann is open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday at 548 S.E. Ash St., 503-702-0290, kannrestaurant.com ($$$$)
Read more:
Kann is Portland’s 2022 Restaurant of the Year
Kann is unlike any restaurant Portland has seen before (review)
An expert’s guide to getting into Kann, with or without a reservation
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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