California Grubbin'

food: 5/5 experience: 3.5/5 overall: 4.5/5 Blue Star was the second alternative a Lyft Portland native gave me when I suggested I wanted to go to Voodoo, the Portland doughnut landmark. Ni, he said, Voodoo is overrated and the lines are long. Lo, go to Blue Star and Pip's instead. And so I did. Lo and behold these doughnuts are expensive! They're about tree-fitty each. The fritters are more and the doughnuts are less but it averages out to about that much. Hey, at least there's no sales tax in Portland, right? Still, a $35 bill for nine doughnuts seems a little excessive somehow. I mean they're gourmet but... Yeah so here's the haul. Nine doughnuts in two boxes. (from top left clockwise) Blueberry bourbon basil: 5/5 Man. I don't taste the other two things but this shit tastes like straight up  Jamba Juice  as a doughnut. That is definitely a good thing. Chocolate buttermilk old-fashioned: 4.5/5 The old-fashioned doughnut is not a typical cake...

food: 4/5 experience: 5/5 overall: 4.5/5 Let's kick off the new year with doughnuts! When I asked the Lyft drivers if I should go to Voodoo, the most famous doughnut eatery in Portland, they almost universally said it was overrated. One Portland native (one of the two or three out of more than ten) referred me to two doughnut shops, one of those being Pip's mini doughnuts and the other being Blue Star . Pip's is a cute little place that serves you freshly fried doughnuts on a plate, just like a little doughnut cafe. The doughnuts themselves are adorable and the size of a Hostess doughnette. Depending on how many you get, they're about a dollar apiece. They come in six flavors and we got one of each. They always have one seasonal flavor. Today it was sweet potato pie. Mmmm sweet potato. Their flavor descriptions are as follows: cinnamon sugar, raw honey and sea salt, nutella and sea salt, candied bacon maple, the dirty wu (cinnamon sugar with nutella and hon...

Portland, here we come! From California (Livin') to its northern brother, Oregon, I present to you the epic book store that is Powell's, host to about a million books (no, seriously, a million - look it up). Just in time for holiday shopping! (Okay, a little late.) They also have a smaller location in the south-east, but trust... this one. Portland's most notorious bookstore occupies an entire city block and includes all of three stories. They make sure to pack it in, too. Take a gander at these here shelves... Of course I went straight to the cooking section. You know me, I like my food. Four whole aisles of cookbooks and food writing. I found a few titles of interest, specifically detailing the cuisine of Southern California. (I bought the one in the middle.) They have a bunch of memorabilia, of course, including clothes... Several small sections with various merchandise ("Read Rise Resist" seems to be their slogan)... Lots of reus...

food: 5/5 experience: 5/5 overall: 5/5 A friend of ours moved to Oregon City in 2016 and we hadn't seen her since. We remembered she was a fan of tapas, though, so I suggested a couple tapas places and we landed on this one. Taste on 23rd. It's in a kinda bougie part of town that is reminiscent of Carmel, with lots of boutiques and yoga studios and stuff. The restaurant is inside what looks like a townhouse, on top of a tea shop (yes, also a lot of these around here). We seated ourselves at a high-top table. Our friend started off with a tall blackberry hard cider. Their wine list is extensive. It is a wine bar, after all. The small plates are secondary to the wine. They were holding a wine tasting while we ate, as a matter of fact. Their food menu is small but executed perfectly. We tried some of the highlights. Two types of bruschetta, burrata, and mac & cheese. We finished off with a dessert. The cherry jam brie bruschetta came out first. The sweet yet ta...

food: 3.5/5 experience: 4/5 overall: 3.5/5 How cute, a pizza place named after a book. The Life of Pizza-Pie. They recently opened a second location but we went to their flagship one on Williams. They close a little early, at 10pm. Luckily we got there right at 9. I had to read their ingredients menu first due to my laundry list of food allergies but it looked like I was all set, so I ordered one of their three appetizers and a pizza. They have some salads but they're pretty damn basic so we skipped those. No, these are not meatballs. These are risotto croquettes. They're battered and fried balls of cheesy risotto and they're oh-so-delish and creamy inside. Comes with marinara and shredded farm (I think?) on top. Best thing we ate here. Next came the pizza. Ready fairly quickly. Unfortunately it didn't live up to expectations. I had read all over trying to find a thick-crust pizza in Portland and this was the one people recommended. Womp. The crust was...

food: 4/5 experience: 3/5 overall: 3.5/5 Portland Fish Market is actually, well, a market that sells fish and a few other things. But go around back and you'll find a window where you can order some fresh fish and chips. We came here because we heard them advertised as "the best in Portland." Okay, so they probably just advertise themselves but ya know. It was nearby. And so it was. Ordered three rockfish and one cod. Total was almost twenty bucks with tip! We would've gotten a shrimp but they were $2.50 each. This place sure ain't cheap. But it arrived in no time. The rockfish honestly was not great. It was almost flavorless. I thought rockfish would taste like snapper since they're related (or the same?) but nope, this was kinda bad. Surprisingly cod tasted better and I really do not like cod generally speaking. Cod seems to only work in terms of fish and chips. The fish was indeed fresh though, very flaky, and the batter was nice and crisp. The f...

food: 5/5 experience: 3/5 overall: 4/5 After having three Mexican meals in a row I thought it might be time for something a bit healthier. Especially given we were gonna have pizza later that night. Enter Garden Bar, with a location right across the street from Powell's Books . Portland has nine Garden Bar locations across the city, including two in outlying cities, where you can get your salad on. It's like a Pluto's or Jack's in California where you make your own salad; only they just have salad and nothing else. So I got... a salad. Mine has mixed greens, almonds, beets, herbs, cherry tomatoes, and this thing they have called fish noodles made from Alaskan pollock. They taste like fishy noodles. Plus lemon juice, Greek yogurt dressing and plenty of fresh pepper . Pretty healthy but not pretty filling. I felt like I was hungrier after I ate it than I was before. Maybe because I had only had one-third of a (rather large) quesadilla earlier. It was so good ...

food: 4.5/5 experience: 4/5 overall: 4.5/5 Laughing Planet Cafe is a Portland-based chain restaurant with an emphasis on vegan so we're already on rough waters there. They have locations in Oregon, Canada, Washington, and Reno. I visited their Reno location first. This place falls under the so-healthy-it's-nasty category. I'm sorry but no. It reminds me of that one time Selena Gomez was trying to get Justin Bieber to eat "healthy" vegan food (oxymoron) at this one restaurant and he spit his food out. Not that I did that because I can't afford to be wasting money but yeah. I got the paleo bowl because it seemed like the most filling low-carb item on the menu of vegetables. It was pretty mediocre. I mean there's just not enough healthy ingredients in there that you can make a good-tasting meal out of, or spices, or something. Something was just "missing". Plus health food is not cheap. So it cost more than a few bucks to feel moderatel...

food: 4/5 experience: 3/5 overall: 3.5/5 After polishing off a whole burrito from Laughing Planet , I was still hungry and needed a late night snack. Hey, give your girl a break, I hadn't eaten anything until 6pm that night and I had to make up for lost time. Since we were located in Southeast Portland, far away from any sort of restaurant scene, I had to make do. I found one taco truck nearby named La Catrina that was open late, and so it was. Enter huge-ass fish burrito. It's a lot bigger than it looks in the picture. One instance where the camera definitely doesn't add ten pounds. One of the best burritos I've had for sure, mostly due to its sheer size. It had crusted fish (I think it was cornmeal...awesome (not)), Mexican rice, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, and tomato, all wrapped in a tortilla that was probably one foot or more in diameter. So yes, it was big. And no, I should not have finished all of it, because yes, I put on one whole pound the next da...