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. 1: Canard.
If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to eat at Le Pigeon in the early days, before all the accolades and expectations, just head one door down to its youngest sister, the all-day restaurant/cafe/bar Canard. Here at The Oregonian’s 2018 Restaurant of the Year, chef Gabriel Rucker, chef de cuisine Taylor Daughterty and their team fire off cheeky high-low riffs on fast and frozen food quicker than you can grab them.
Where else can you find a cheap bag of Tim’s potato chips sliced open and blasted with fancy sour cream, onion and caviar? A crispy calamari tartine that with tangy marinara and green bell pepper evokes the French bread pizza you heated up in a toaster oven as a kid? Some dishes are keepers: the classic bistro oeufs en mayonnaise livened up with trout roe and smoky maple syrup; the fantastic dry-fried chicken wings served on a wooden board with some truffled ranch; and the duck stack, golden pancakes smothered in duck gravy, a duck egg and seared foie gras.
The burger is the restaurant’s raison d’etre, a slider-sized, White Castle-inspired steam burger with French onion soup mix blended into griddled beef, melted American cheese, spicy relish, caramelized onions and yellow mustard on a fluffy Hawaiian roll. It’s a work of art best enjoyed during the afternoon and late-night happy hours, when the price drops from $6 to $3. It can be dangerous to give yourself over to nostalgia too fully, but at least in 2019, there’s no place we’d rather eat than Canard.
Order: Oeufs en mayonnaise, chips and caviar, calamari tartine, fried chicken wings, steam burger, a Paris Brest dessert with seasonal fruit or a soft-serve to-go.
Insider tips: We’re not sure who needs to read this, but Canard serves martinis at 8 a.m. and allows minors until midnight.
Canard serves breakfast, lunch, happy hour, dinner and late-night daily at 734 E. Burnside St., 971-279-2356, canardpdx.com
-- Michael Russell @tdmrussell
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