Try Busters in Tigard on Hwy 99W near I-5. Next, try Mongolian Grill just off Cornell in Beaverton near Crispy Creme donuts. Next, try the Gast Haus, a Widmer beer property. Fabulous food and a great selection of beers. This is located near the Rose Garden. Last, I highly recommend the Ringside on West Burnside near the old Multnomah stadium. I have no idea what they call the stadium now. It's changed it's name more often than I can keep track of.
Widmer closed the Gasthaus and is going to open back up as a tasting room. No more restaurant. That sucks because the food was very good.
I used to like Sam's Hofbrau but it went out of business for reasons I'll never understand. Great great food and a SF based chain if I remember right. Yep, SF is full of great restaurants. Portland, not so much.
There used to be an excellent vegan pho place in Bethany village, sweet lemon. I believe it is still there, and if it is still as good as it was 4-5 years ago, well worth a try.
I do not care for vegan, but that place was amazing. I love pho, and it is hard to find good pho place in the us, that one is. (At least was, have not been there in the last 5 years) Google reviews still seem very good https://www.google.com/search?q=swe...%20Bistro,ru_q:Sweet%20Lemon%20Vegan%20Bistro
The bay has great food. My favorite restaurant there is sol food in San Rafael. I could eat there all the time. https://www.google.com/search?clien.....mobile-gws-wiz-serp.......0i71.9+GW2ynD/dk=
??????????? Portland is one of the best food cities in the US and has been getting international buzz for years. It’s full of great restaurants! I’ve spent a fair amount of time in SF and of course they have a ton of great restaurants, but the city no longer stands alone. My in laws recently moved up to the PDX area after living in SF (Richmond District) for 43 years (Bro in law is a Bay Area native). They are serious foodies, and while they wax nostalgic about their favorite SF restaurants, even they acknowledge that the Portland food scene has advanced light years while the SF food scene isn’t what it once was. Though they have yet to find few, if any Chinese places up here that can compete with those in SF......
We've lost many of our best restaurants, Manning's, Gene and Joe's, Sam's Hofbrau, the Gasthaus, the Carnival, Rose's, Ferrell's ice cream parlor, the broasted chicken joint in Oswego, A and W, Tik Tok's, The Original Foot Long Hot Dog joint in downtown Portland, the deli in the old semi outdoor market that was once near Meier and Frank. Trader Vic's, Wade's, Bart's Warf, Bill's Gold Coin all gone. Now, we've got a myriad of tavern's that serve deep fried crap. Can't even find broasted chicken in this town that's worth a damn.
Those were all good restaurants but they were all pretty much starch/carb loaded American comfort food (not that there is anything wrong with that) and few if any of them were “gourmet” quality. The new wave of restaurants use fresher and better ingredients and provide a wider variety of choices and flavors. I get nostalgic too but really enjoy the direction the food scene has gone....and continues to go. Pro tip; stay away from the taverns.......
I've been going to the Ringside since about 1958 and I've never had a bad steak there. Went to El Gaucho twice and my wife and I had 4 bad steaks those four times.
I question anyone's ability to judge restaurants on a high-level that includes Buster's and Mongolian Grill as a list of top restaurants.... some of the places listed are fun, or Portland icons on some level one way or another, but they are not "great food" by the standards most folks rate "great food".
There is a Yiddish expression that translates to "you can't taste with another's mouth". The SF Chronicle restaurant reviewer puts out an annual list of the Top 100 Bay Area restaurants. I've tried many. Some were great, some were OK, a few were awful. So what constitutes "great food" is hardly universal. That being said, fast food and chains are never great food.
Totally agree. But your last sentence sums it up. You're not going to find the mentioned chains anywhere near a top-1oo list, or any sort of list that doesn't include the word "chain" in the list title.