A little portlier

I don’t like cities except for old haunted ones.  Cities that lost something, that are sinking or rotting, longing and not letting go.  Cities that indulge, that revel, that don’t know when to quit. Open air, crackly radio, torn screen, kitchen smell cities.  Hot, lazy cities, with dogs in the doorway, women laughing, men eating chicken on the steps.

So I thought Portland would be too winning for me. Too cool, can-do, and clever. And young and fresh. And gentrified.  It’s got startups and bike messengers. It’s got Nike. It’s on the list (doesn’t really matter what the list is–chefs, tech, public transport, childraising, niceness even.)

But Portland is a charmer!  It’s not so smooth after all. It’s relaxed, inviting, a little scraggly. It’s merry, funny, modest about being green. It’s got fence leaners and corner hangers.  Kids in the street. Barbecue smoke in the air. People doing hair in the yard. I saw a man walk out of a flat-top brick apartment with a skillet and call his blue Pit Bull like this:  Desirée, c’mon and get these pancakes now.

Desirée. In Portland you can block the sidewalk with your humongous crazy fragrant half-dead rosebush. You can paint your bungalow like a roll of Necco wafers. Guys eat chicken on the steps, I bet, and I know for sure they sit on coolers and play dominoes.

It’s a river town, but the Willamette is smooth, containerized, modern. Silent shipyards and nodding cranes and rail flat beds for miles. Dams, seawalls, condos, sailboats, dull waterfront parks. But bridges! Who thought of all those bridges? When you’re touring you zigzag across all day long, sewing up the banks, east to west and back on over. I’ve never seen so many bridges so close together. Drawbridges, a bridge that looks like a cathedral, another with a soaring arch, some with double deckers, one with a bottom level just for freight trains.

We hit the streets to soak up the rare sunshine. (A girl said, I haven’t unpacked my sunglasses since I moved two times ago.) There was the Mississippi street fair and a show at the  art and bar-filled Kennedy School. Friends joined us for a volcano walk and the long view from Mount Tabor. We hiked a grand green corner of the hemlock and cedar-dense Forest Park. We ran beside the breezy Columbia River next to our hotel on the Washington state line. And then there was my first Portland Restaurant Reconnoiter…

It was hard to fit meals in between bakery stops. How could I not be sweet on such a pastry-proud town? Ken’s Artisan makes great pain au chocolat–they call them “mini” but I think they are perfectly, sanely scaled. They’re the stronger bready kind that good bread bakeries tend to go for. (Us pastry people lean toward flaky and shattering, but I like quality specimens of both.) Pearl Bakery, another artisan bread legend, has crusty rolls you could eat every morning–pecan-rosemary, fig-anise. Also excellent soft Kaiser rolls, which I am deeply sentimental about, and rough tangy little rhubarb tarts.

We went looking for Gâteau Basque at Crema Bakery in Southeast, but settled for this damp delicious custard cake.

Pix Patisserie has the styliest desserts in town. (Stopped in Papa Hayden’s on NW 23rd too but it’s more towering trophy cakes.)

Portland’s got a handmade chocolate scene too. I tried a lovely rose-shaped, rose-flavored, rose-colored sugar-dusted caramel from Alma.  But the fiercest were at a tiny shop called Sahagun, which also serves ice-cold unsweetened chocolate drinks made with coconut milk. They’re dark, bitter, tonic, reviving—my dream Yoohoo.

Saturday was the farmers market on the PSU campus–pink peonies and blue irises, oozing goat and sheep cheeses, more pastry and brick oven bread, cider and wine, pastured meats and fresh fish, crowds mobbing the Italian sausage and chicken biscuits.

Portland, you’re proof that a city can have both the green and the gravy. ‘Til next time, k?

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