So with the help of some buddies, I compiled a list of 100 Things to Eat and Drink in Portland.
It's an idea that I've been kicking around my noodle for a few months now, inspired by similar posts coming out San Francisco and San Diego. When I first raised the subject, I first stipulated that there would be no restaurant repeats. Every restaurant can only be represented once. That was met with skepticism as to whether or not 100 items could even be reached!
The first thirty or so items were easy, as they represented the Top Of Your Head Hits of Portland. Things like the Vietnamese fish sauce wings at Pok Pok, or the amore pizza at Apizza Scholls.
The next thirty involved a bit more thought. Neighborhood favorites and hidden gems. Things like the crab soup at Ha&VL sandwiches or the debris po' boy at EaT Oyster Bar.
And that's where it sat. 60 items, over halfway but still not complete. This was back in April, and I luckily at least kept the list in tact though unpublished.
Recently, I've been working to re-focus http://pdxplate.com away from mere message board to actual online community hub. Increased the blogroll, started reaching out more via Twitter, etc. Part of that effort involved changing up the front page to more of a magazine-like format where it acted less like a holding place for random links and more like a splash page for the latest columns.
Portland is an interesting city in that its online food community is thoroughly fragmented, and so I developed software in the form of the http://pdxplate.com/blogs reader to help round it all up in one place. Yeah, that even includes the Yelp reviews. (I might not necessarily agree with Yelpers as a whole, but I love their spirit; they're the ultimate Take One For The Team players.)
By the time June rolled around I had come back from New York and decided to attack Portland with the same vigor that I did a brand new city. Truly, I'd only lived here a bit over a year, and so by and large it really was a new city. And just like I would come up with a list of things to eat for a target vacation city, I decided to do the same in Portland.
I was visiting recently opened restaurants like Laurelhurst Market and Nel Centro, as well as new carts like Nong's Khao Man Gai. That first post-New York list got me so focused and excited that I was about to write up a second list.
And that's when I remembered that I was still at 60.
Opening the list back up, I fleshed it out with new items, like the Thai rendition of Hainanese chicken rice and the bulgogi tacos of KOifusion. It all came together very quickly. I had to spend a day getting all the map links working, but the end result is this:
http://pdxplate.com/guide/100-things-eat-and-drink-in-portland
While I could similarly talk about what Portland lacks (and it's a great food town, but it certainly lacks), I think there's plenty to celebrate, and it's with that in mind that I say that I know you'll find something tasty to eat and drink here if you want to.
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