more pics of Beaterville Cafe

Breakfast entrees are the usual cafe entrees, waffles, scrambles, and omelets, ranging from $3-$10. The Green Eggs and Ham, a frittata-style scramble with pesto, green onions and feta, and served with chunky seasoned red potatoes and toast or croissant, while devastating on the arteries, is a personal fave. Biscuits and gravy features one of the better sausage gravies in town. And huevos, a layering of tortilla, black beans, eggs, sour cream, salsa and green onions, is lacking the ranchero sauce, but it is really addictive all the same.

You can substitute tofu or 2nd Nature eggs, too—nice!

Lunches are the big triple S: soups, salads, and sandwiches, not a huge menu, ranging from $3.25 to $7.

The Berlin Inn is one of those places that I remember on the way to some place else, and think, I made the wrong decision. It's not terribly close to home, and I don't eat german all that often, so it's just not on my radar. Which is silly, because it's quite good.

This small place, stuffed to the brim with germanica, is popular with many, though it might be a bit much if you're claustrophobic. Stairs, small rooms, and tight turns make this definitely not wheelchair accessible.

The weekend (or should I say, wockenende) frühstück is a relatively small menu. There are several veggie items, including buttermilk and German pancakes, and blintzes, several meaty dishes like pork chops, chicken schnitzel, or leberkäse with eggs, 3 omelettes, and 3 benedicts. Everything but the pancake/blintze/North Sea Toast comes with your choice of bratkartoffeln (think, German home fries) or potato pancakes.

They offer three German beers on tap: today's selection was Allgaüer Hefeweizen, Spaten Premium Bock, and Salvator Paulaner. If you're interested at all in the local beer scene or German beer, be sure to chat with Marty—he's a wealth of knowledge and loves to share.

Prices range from $6-$12.50 a plate, and portions, as you might imagine, are huge. We got the Best of the Wurst omelet, and the leberkäse plate. Each was a gut bomb of food. Our potato pancakes were unlike any I've ever had: throughly, pan-fried until they were like crocquettes, but the omelet and leberkäse were both good. I needed a nap afterwards.

Beulahland is one of my favorite hangouts--good beer on tap, yummy sandwiches and soup, a mess of veggie options, a friendly funky place with a pool table, a jukebox, some pinball, a giant dictionary, and a computer with internet access. Well, they also do a yummy breakfast. True to the Beulahland way, they are unpretentious, inexpensive, filling and yummy. We had Stumptown coffee, a brekkie burrito and the two-berry and ricotta pancakes. The burrito comes with cumin flavored potatoes, yummy and well cooked. Oh, and the burrito is just plain great. The berry pancakes are a delight, so large that they dwarf the plate. I think we paid less than $10 for breakfast for two, not including tip. Damn!

Other Press

• Bar Fly


• Gulch Guide

We had heard that breakfast at Bob's was good, so we headed out there one Saturday. Their info isn't kidding: it is only about 15 minutes from Portland by car.

You go into the Whole Grain Store, and the counter to order food is back and to the left. Don't be surprised if there's a line and you have to slowly inch by the breads. Sooner or later, you'll get to the front and you can order.

After you order, you take your number and claim a table, either on the first floor, on the patio, on the second floor. Water, coffee, and pop are self-serve, and the stations also include maple syrup, butter and honey. Someone will deliver your food and make sure you have everything you need.

The breakfast menu is rather sparse: 16 items, omelettes ($7-$8), breakfast eggs ($4.75-$7), cereals ($2.50-$4), a fruit bowl ($6) and a kids plate ($3.50). There is also a vegetarian menu of 10 items ($4-$7), most vegan. All the menus are online.

So where are the carby things that you think of when you think of stone-ground whole grain goodness? It seems they are relegated as sides (or on the veg menu). After all, they offer vegan and non-vegan flapjacks made from buttermilk, 10 grain, or buckwheat, as well as buttermilk waffles, and vegan and non-vegan french toast. I would have liked to have a multiple carb breakfast, but building your own plate is expensive, or so it seemed at the time. We ended up having eggs and cheese grits with scratch biscuits. The grits were excellent, and the whole-grain biscuits were yummy, flakey, and a little messy.

The next time I go back, I'm definitely going to try the flapjacks. Maybe with a side of cheese grits...

The downsides are definitely that Milwaukie isn't so close for those of us who live in town, and it doesn't look like you have a lot of public transit options on Saturdays. And Saturday morning probably means a wait in line. The meat products are turkey based. And everyone from Clackamas County is there on Saturday. Including Bob and Charlee Moore whose grandparently visages appear everywhere, and they eat there too!

This is definitely worth the trip, especially during the week, for Bob's Red Mill fans, vegans, and whole grain enthusiasts.

I hate to damn Bridges with faint praise, but it's a neighborhood joint. Mind you, they're reasonably friendly, generous with the food, relatively popular, so much so that there's frequently a wait, and their food is consistently not bad. It's just inconsistent about being great.

Bridges is a sunny little corner breakfast joint. There are a couple booths, and quite a few tables, but it's crowded enough that wheelchair access would be a hassle.

It's smoke-free inside, and they have an awning hanging over some picnic tables on the Russell Street side if you prefer the company of your dog, or want to people-watch the folks going in and out of the Nike Outlet store. There is some exposed bike parking, and a gravel parking lot behind for the motor vehicles.

The menu is split into Benedicts ($9.50-$10.25), Omelettes ($8-$9), and Specialties ($7.25-$9.25). There's a dazzling selection of food items: burritos, french toast, fruit plates. You can also get cocktails and mimosas ($4.50-$6.50), bottled beer ($2.75-$3.25, selection varies, though usually it's some Wolaver's Organic Pale, Deschutes ales, Fat Tire, and Henry's), and wine by the glass.

Most non-carboload dishes come with potatoes. These are garden variety roasted potatoes, and like most places in town that serve them, they're not very good. They tend towards mushy.

This morning, we ordered a classic Benedict, and the Eggs Fiesta. The latter seems like it should have an exclamation point—whadda name! But sadly, the Fiesta, while its individual components were okay, there was nothing about the combination to write home about.

The benedict was fine. No complaints. Local canadian bacon, nice sauce, eggs just right. If only the potatoes were better.

more pictures of Byways

First, let's look at breakfast, which runs til 11am on weekdays and all day on the weekends. The coffee is good, and hot. The menu looks like the usual greasy spoon fare: eggs & protein, omelettes, pancakes, hash. In fact they serve four different types of hash which look beautiful and taste even better. Griddle fare includes buttermilk pancakes, but also amaretto french toast, and super fabulous blue corn hotcakes with pecan butter. Eggs are treated respectfully and are always tasty. Potatoes are well-cooked home fries—not my fav, but hey. And, I don't know that this is the best bacon in town, but it's sure the best bacon I've had in town for quite a while.

Lunch is more of the same, stuff that sounds unassuming and unexciting until it's in front of you. They have malts, brown cows (coke with vanilla ice cream), rootbeer floats, stewarts sodas and arnold palmers (lemonade & iced tea). The lunch menu is the three Ss: soup, salads, sandwiches. The prices range from $3-$9, and the salads range from tuna salad, chef, cobb, greek, back to chicken salad. French fries accompany all the sandwiches, and they're thick on one side, thin on the other!

The counter makes great seating if you're there by yourself, and the booths, by the display case of vintage travel souvenirs are great if it's quiet or you're in a small group.

This is a small place and popular, so on the weekends, bring the paper and plan on a wait.

I wasn't expecting much with this cute space just outside of Hillsdale. You can eat downstairs, or in the more bistro-like upstairs. They offer a weekend brunch, of about 12 breakfasty things and 11 lunchy things, as well as champagne, coffee nudge, bloody marys, and mimosas.

So it all started well: greeted at the door, immediately brought menus, coffee and water. The coffee, eh, okay, nothing to write home about. We order, and as we wait to eat, the upstairs fills. And still, one waitress. So, I wasn't terribly surprised when my meal came to the table cold, or that I never got a coffee refill. I watched as the folks behind us waited to get the tab, then waited for the waitress to pick up their credit card, then waited for it to come back—all in all, about 20 minutes!

Unfortunately, the food was similarly lackluster. My cold ham and cheese omellette was very overdone. It was accompanied by potatoes (a handful of smushy pan fried potatoes) and "fresh fruit" (three very thin, very dry slices of melon, one of starfruit). The Hillsdale Heap (potatoes with veggies, egg, and cheese) had eggplant mixed in with the veggies—just not the most harmonious combination. To add insult to injury, I was still hungry afterwards!

Breakfast all day. Same day service. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, beer and bar. I'm trying to get excited about this, honest. We went in for dinner, and the best part was the fresh draught beer. We ordered a couple burgers, one with a side of chili, the other with a side salad, and an order of cheese fries. The burgers were nothing to write home about. Chili, thick and unspectacular. Side salad, almost inedible. Cheese fries were pricy, soggy, unseasoned and thoroughly underwhelming.

A lot of people love C&S for breakfast.

So we went back after maybe a year and a half away. Dear g-d! First of all, new owners. What was the restaurant side is now the bar side. You walk in, into the bar (because the restaurant door is locked), and the louvered doors to the restaurant are shut. Hmmm, looks like you can't eat in the restaurant, right? No, you can, if you don't mind being in an oddly unfinished room with no heat.

That said, I would have prefered that to sitting in the bar. Three TVs, with three different channels, compete with neon and the video crack addicts for your attention. And, it's smokey. Really smokey.

They of course have a full bar, a wall of wine, and maybe 6 taps of unexceptional stuff. Maybe half of those are micros you can get anywhere (Widmer, Redhook, New Belgium). The wonderful Widmer KGB imperial stout is no longer there.

Breakfast was reasonable and okay, which is to say, nowhere as decent as it used to be, and not recommended. The "sausage and pepper bacon" gravy tasted of neither (but there was a lot of it). The ragin' cajun omelette was completely overdone, with icky so-called andouille, lackluster overdone home fries, and not really toasted english muffin. Coffee—Denny's stylee. Service was friendly, however.

I admit, I was drawn in by the offer of free waffles. This last Saturday, they had a free waffle day.

I told a friend who lives in Arbor Lodge about it. "Oh, I've been there", she said. "It's good, but $3 is a lot for a waffle."

Hmmm. So I go early on Saturday morning and am pleased to see a clump of folks standing and sitting outside who are clearing enjoying their waffles. Neighborhood folks who are regulars, who have no idea that today is free waffle day, are ordering waffles and $1 coffee, or lattes, americanos, and mochas. The atmosphere is pure neighborhood.

So here's the deal: it's a waffle stand in a parking lot. You go up to the window and order. A few minutes later, you get your espresso drink, if you ordered one, and your steaming hot waffle. The waffles are folded in half and wrapped, its contents safely tucked inside, perfect for one-handed eating.

So, fresh baked waffles, made to order, range from $2 for the butter & powdered sugar to $4 for the ham & cheese or sausage & maple. The majority of waffles are $3.50: sweet cream & jam, peanut butter & jelly, s'mores, nut fluffer, peanut butter & nutella, nutella & raspberry jam, and lemon curd with whipped cream. You can also create your own waffle with one ($3) or two ($3.50) toppings.

We saw, and heard raves, about the ham & cheese, black forest ham with either cheddar or smoked gouda. We ordered the way-over-the-top sausage & maple, and the simple elegant butter & powdered sugar. Both were excellent.

The sausage & maple is just that: pork sausage patty and maple spread (100% organic—it appears that most things are groovy with obvious exceptions like nutella) tucked into a waffle, and it does taste like waffles with syrup and sausage, which is to say, one of the great joys of breakfast.

The butter & powdered sugar showcased the waffle itself—slightly sweet, crispy, lovely. A perfect carrier for all sorts of foodie delights.

You can call ahead to order, and, they take credit cards. They even have wifi. And, a $1 cup of coffee.

Now, of course, it's not without problems. There's limited seating, and no roof. And, presenting a waffle as a thing you gobble down like a hamburger means it doesn't seem like very much food. But, make no mistake—these are filling, even if they take a little time to register in the belly.

more photos of Fuller's

Fuller's is an old school coffee shop, with a double horseshoe shaped counter. It's all counter. Everybody, except the folks that sit outside in good weather, sits at the counter.

The breakfast menu is short, with the general breakfast stuff: eggs and meat, omelets, pancakes, french toast. Prices range from $5.25 to $8.50.

But there are a couple interesting things. Heuvos rancheros at Fuller's is the most interesting and not even vaguely authentic interpretation of the dish. It's so wrong! A disk of egg is topped with cheese, then a mixture of stewed tomato, onion, mushrooms, and bell pepper. Refried beans with cheese, and salsa are served on the side. No tortilla! Georgia's Potatoes Deluxe takes hash browns and covers them with the stewed tomato mixture, plus spinach and cheese. And, german pancakes are an eggier version of the American ones.

How was the food? Good, simple, delicious. The coffee sucks, though they do have espresso. We had the pig in a blanket, which is a german pancake surrounding link sausage, and the aforementioned heuvos rancheros. Both were great.

The hash browns are absolute standard-bearers. Shredded potatoes (seemingly freshly cut, could that be?), are perfectly cooked, crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside.

Egg dishes have toast on the side, from bread I believe they make themselves.

As good as the food is, the people watching is also superb. It's easy to pick out the tourists with their Powells walking maps and Pearl shopping guides, as well as hungover locals.

• Road Food

And, it's also a great lunch place. On weekdays, breakfast is served all day (which is to say, until 3pm), and you also have a selection of sandwiches and entrees like meatloaf with mashed potatoes and mac-n-cheese.

I had their excellent, unpretentious, burger. It's substantial, but not too much—maybe a third of a pound, cooked to order. The bun is squishy but not bad squishy, and the burger is dressed with the usual lettuce, tomato, onion, and.... whole-grain mustard aioli. I was a doubter, until I bit in. It's a good burger—one of the best in town.

It comes with fries or salad. I can't speak to the salad, but the fries were thin, double-fried, a slight hint of batter, perfect.

Another argument to come in on the weekdays is the Heuvos Rancheros. It's just an wonderful combination of eggs, tortilla, nicely-seasoned beans, and sauce, the sort of good meal that sticks in the corner of your mind for a long time.

Some people like the cocktails, ranging from $4-$6, including the EmergenC Elixir (orange vodka, EmergenC, muddled lemon, and a splash of cranberry juice). There are coffee and champagne cocktails too. Beer in bottles, and Caldera pale in cans, but no beer on tap.

I first fell in love with the roasted potatoes. Potatoes can be the most lovely food, but so often at breakfast they are lackluster, undercooked, underloved. Not these potatoes, oh no. Little wedgelets, crispy, tender, delightful, I could eat a bowl of these plain.

But no reason to do that with all the wonderful stuff on the menu. There are 19 different egg-variables, from the traditional eggs, potatoes and toast to omelettes to scrambles to benedicts, $5.50-$9.25. The basic ingredients are good, even free-range groovy, stuff, and it's all kept simple enough so there's some semblance of balance.

Take for example, the classic benedict. The hollandaise is lemony and luscious, topping the soft poached egg, the local canadian bacon (yumm!), the crispy english muffin, and begging to be draped over the potatoes.

Another example of being caught off-guard is the white chocolate chip & toasted hazelnut pancakes. One, you could feed several people well with one plate. Two, the white chocolate serves as the secret agent taste that makes the pancakes irresistable. Three, real maple syrup and a bowl of butter bricks wait on your table.

They also have some sandwiches, which I may never try. The menu is amazingly vegetarian friendly, with 14 different options, and you can sub in tofu for eggs for a buck. Oh, and they serve Stumptown coffee. No espresso.

The two dining rooms are a little cramped, with the back one like a basement bar, and the front like a bright and cheerful diner. The rooms have both booths and tables, and there are a couple of outside tables for good weather as well.

Just know, you'll probably be waiting a bit to get in, and you'll be waiting outside. But you can have some coffee while you wait.

After having been there for lunch, I am so bummed that they aren't open for dinner. But I guess that's good for my wallet.

Press:

• BarFly
• Portland Tribune
• Willamette Week

Brock writes

Has really decent food as well, and nice atmosphere. I think they're even doing some sort of breakfast now.

This strip mall location means there's always parking. While it looks like an Asian Sheri's inside, and there is the unfortunate name, this is a very decent neighborhood viet-chinese restaurant.

The menu here is very extensive. Lots of appetizers, variants of pho, and other soups, as well as bun (noodle dishes with protein). They also serve beer, and bahn mi (vietnamese sandwiches) all day. Breakfast is definitely of the vietnamese variety. It's bright and cheery too.

This is the only place I've seen on the menu that they will switch out fish sauce for soy sauce if you ask. Still, I don't know that this is a great vegetarian restaurant unless you're willing to not ask any questions.

We tend to get pho, with its rich fragrant broth and lovely fresh salad plate (avoid the brisket—they ain't kidding about the fat). But if you're up for an adventure and you have a bit of time, try out the specialty dishes. Last night we tried the Banh Khoai Tom, special crispy fried sweet potato & shrimp. It was excellent—though it would have been nice if the owner had mentioned that it would take a half hour.

This is not a date place though. It tends to sound like a bus station even when there are only a couple of tables, and when the busser rolls around her huge rubbermaid bussing cart, people in the Pizza Hut next door probably know it. Still, a bowl of pho soothes a lot of woes...

This restaurant is closed as of 4/29/2006

Helser's appears to be about to implode due to its popularity. But it's popular for a good reason: a good breakfast at a fairly reasonable price. Cheap eaters will want to get there before 9 (probably, quite a bit before nine, as it seems to fill fairly early), and order off their early bird menu. The scotch eggs are insanely good, as are the occasionally offered potato pancake sandwiches. And while I'm still waiting to find a place that does french toast as good as my own, this is the best I've found in a while. Decent coffee, and the opportunity to start the day with alcohol are other bonuses. On nice days, there are tables outside as well.

An acquaintance raved about the cheeseburgers at Hope's Deli. As I sat, hungry and weak, watching a documentary on cheeseburgers yesterday, I was ripe. Hope's serves breakfast and lunch, with a small cheeseburger combo coming in under $5. They serve american and asian style food. And, boca burgers!

So, my cheeseburger was small, dressed with pickles, shredded lettuce, tomato slices and thousand island dressing. French fries were crickle-cut. No-name ketcup on the tables. All and all, nothing to write home about, but cheap, emphasis on cheap, and filling, complete with its own indoor tables.

OUT OF BUSINESS

And like all things, there's a story about this. Colin Portnuff, the owner, died somewhat suddenly in February, and while it appears that there might have been some public miscommunication about whether Island Joe's would continue, it appears that for now, it is not. I knew Colin (and still panned his restaurant), and I'm very sorry to see him, and Island Joe's, go.

The time I went looking for the John Street, I got totally turned around. I'm not at all used to St. Johns. So I end up at the fire station, and not only do the firemen know of the place, they all start raving about it.

It's that kinda place. A tiny hole in the wall. Prices are kinda high for breakfast but you can't fault how good it is.

Karam has always been a foodie's wet dream, but I've never been convinced. Sure, it's a nice atmosphere and they have alcohol, they make pita to order (and whole wheat if you ask nicely), and they have a huge, unusual menu. Maybe it's just because I've been such a fan of Ya Hala. Who knows?

We went for lunch, and I was pleased to see a big breakfast menu (15 items from $3.50-$7) also available at lunch. Then I ignored it. Did I mention the lunch menu? With 17 ala carte main courses ($7.50-$19.95), 11 sandwiches ($5-$6.50), 10 pizza/calzoney things ($6-$8.95), 8 salads ($4.50-$9), and 4 stews ($8-$9.95), it might take a while to decide. We ordered the meat mezze, which has one of everything, a falafel sandwich with baba ghanouj, Fatte with lamb, and the lamb shank. The hummus and baba ghanouj are excellent. The Fatte, a layered dish with pita, roasted eggplant, garbanzo beans, pine nuts and yogurt was beautiful and yummy. The lamb shank came in a broth with vegetables, also gorgeous. Portions were huge, and everything was very tasty—we were all moaning over our food. We were groaning, but still ordered dessert (6 from $2.25-$4.50) (katayef bil-ashta and katayef bil-jos) which were also really good.

While there are lots of vegetarian choices and ways to eat cheap, the menu is kinda pricey. And the service—leisurely. Our lunch took over an hour and a half, making all of us late, and for three folks going a bit overboard, cost us $20 each. It's certainly easy to eat under $10 if you show some self-control, but you might as plan for it taking a while. It's worth it.

Kelly's is just what it seems: a smokey bar with breakfast served all day. And while it seems from the outside like a dive, it's just playing. New owners have taken the truism More neon is better to heart, and it's really rather an interesting tavern. And it gets the most interesting when we're talking about beer and appetizers. One in particular, Fried Macaroni and Cheese Bites, is so wrong, and so very right. With 20 taps devoted to micros, plus PBR and a couple other macros that your dad or your cow-orker prefers, everyone can be happy.

more photos

Still, when I noticed the Kennedy School does breakfast, I knew I'd be heading over there sooner rather than later.

Kennedy School is a former school, built in 1915, retired in 1975. Its one-story modular design was a model to others and got national recognition. In 1997, the McMenamin Brothers worked their magic, transforming the school into guestrooms, bars, a theatre, brewery and restaurant, all with a smirking reference to the school it once was.

And note the year: 1997. Before Alberta was happening, before New Seasons even existed. Before Nature's Northwest went bad. The McMenamin Brothers took a big chance on a property in an area that a lot of folks saw as a bad neighborhood. Good or bad, the Kennedy School project was a huge force in the area's gentrification.

The Courtyard Restaurant is the former cafeteria, right on a courtyard, and I was surprised as we walked in the room how I wanted to linger. The room is full of mismatched light fixtures, huge wood booths, a gorgeous bar, and of course, a whole wall of windows onto the courtyard which is gorgeous: lots of tables, chairs, benches and small pews surround beautiful plantings, and a huge fireplace.

In a word, the place is beautiful, and comfortable, eccentric but in a thoroughly pleasant way. It's so thoroughly Portland, and the acid-trip stuff that makes me gag about McMenamins (men wearing overalls with a hammer for their head, women who look like some SCA witch, stars and moons, so many stars and moons) is so very subtle if it's there at all. I love this room.

We had coffee that they roast themselves: not bad at all. The breakfast menu ranges from $4.15-$9.40, from eggs to flapjacks to biscuits & country gravy to cereal. The waitron recommended the benedict, which is significantly more expensive than everything else. So we ordered heuvos rancheros and biscuits and gravy, along with a side of sausage.

The menu is tremendously vegetarian friendly, just as Kennedy School is tremendously wheelchair friendly.

Anyways, the food: bland. There was plenty of it, but nothing had much of any flavor.

The biscuits were like mutant dumplings, absolutely huge, covered in a white sauce. There was plenty of gravy, but it tasted really more like a white sauce than a sausage gravy. Mmmm, white sauce over giant biscuits...

The heuvos rancheros, of course, did not have anything resembling ranchero sauce, just warmed corn tortillas, bland black beans, unmelted shredded cheddar cheese, poached eggs, a bland salsa, and sour cream. Even the sausage didn't taste like much of anything.

This bummed me out so much. By the time we had gotten our coffee, I had decided that I wanted to spend as much time as possible in this room, or once it stops raining, in that courtyard.

Tuesday is the grand opening of K&Z. I've been a couple times during the soft opening, and while they've been working the kinks out, the food has been right on target.

I've got more photos online if you care to look.

more photos

Breakfast is served from 10-3 on the weekends. The menu is pretty straightforward: a handful of omelettes like the Super Protein (stuffed with bacon, ham, sausage and cheese), the Ham and Cheese (which is big chunks of ham in a cheese omelette) and the Green Eggs and Ham (a pesto version of the Ham and Cheese); a handful of scrambles; a breakfast burrito; egg, meat and carb combos; and a couple kid's options (leggo my Eggo!).

We've been there several times now, and it's a good honest, tasty breakfast. Two omelettes and a coffee rang in at $16. While the roasted potatoes aren't quite as good as Genie's, they're still pretty darn good, topped with raw garlic, parsley and parmesan. If you're familiar with Laurelwood's garlic fries, it's not quite that garlicky, but if you don't like (raw) garlicky potatoes, you probably won't like these.

Toast products come with little commercial jam tubs, but it's actually good.

It's a good, satisfying breakfast with the option of letting your children run free, or having a bit of the hair of the dog. Of course, if you're allergic to children, sit in the bar—or go somewhere else.

more photos of the Little Red Bike Cafe

I've been obsessed with this place for a couple of weeks now, and it's only been open a week.

Lelo in NoPo wrote about the sweetest little restaurant ever, and how the owners were blogging about it. So like a good reader, I followed the link to the Little Red Bike Cafe Blog, and absolutely fell in love with the owners, Ali and Evan.

So I was thrilled and excited when they did finally open and I could finally make it there.

Basically, this is an adorable, charming Portsmouth coffeeshop with light breakfast food and sandwiches, coffee and espresso, milkshakes and housemade ice cream.

On our visit, we tried a breakfast sandwich (the paperboy, $5), a tuna sandwich ($6), a cup of "regular" coffee, an americano, a pot of french press coffee, and a chocolate malt($5).

First of all, the coffee is excellent! This was the first time I've had Courier Coffee and I am a believer! We are so lucky to have so much good coffee in this town and here they serve it strong. If it's too strong for you, ask for a little water added. Yum.

The milkshakes are made from ice cream from Eugene (not with their housemade), and that malt was easily the best I've had in recent memory. Unlike some other malts I've had recently, this was not super-sweet, and not overly chocolately, but it was a perfect meeting (to me) of chocolate, malt, sugar and fat, and it was like the milk shakes I remember (and covet) from childhood.

The paperboy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. It's a simple sandwich: fried egg, american or cheddar cheese, on ciabatta. It comes with a cup of coffee or tea. You can add veggie bacon or bacon for a buck. And it is delicious, just simple perfection. Grand Central, you are no longer my favorite breakfast sandwich.

The breakfast menu is simple and inexpensive. Three different egg sandwiches for $5 or $6, a bowl of yogurt, fruit, and granola for $5, and various baked goods and doughnuts from Fleur de Lis, Dovetail and Voodoo Donuts. All the breads come from Fleur de Lis as well, and are excellent.

The Tuna sandwich is albacore tuna salad with cheddar, green onions, and apple slices. It usually comes on ciabatta but this time it came on multigrain bread. Other lunch options include turkey, curried tempeh salad, roast beef, BLT and avocado, 2 different grilled cheeses, and two peanut butter sandwiches, with prices ranging from $4 to $6.50.

If you're not a fan of coffee or milkshakes, they do have old-fashioned sodas like Bubble Up, Coke in glass bottles, Sioux City Cream Soda, Nesbitts Strawberry, some Izzy's, Bulldog Root Beer, Vernors, and Yoohoo.

Housemade ice cream can be had for reasonable as well: 95 cents for a double shot in an espresso cup, through 2 scoops for $4.50. I haven't tried the housemade ice cream, but I'm looking forward to it.

They have a couple outside tables, bike parking, and pretty ample parking nearby. They have a bike up window open after 3pm, and they have an everchanging bike-in incentive. But mostly, Ali and Evan are sweet, their space is comfortable, and their food and drinks are divine. I'm so happy to have a destination, now, in Portsmouth!

Lorn and Dottie's has been one of my favorite places for breakfast for a really long time. Favorite is probably not the right word, as there are better places, and cooler places, and places we end up more frequently, but L&D has consistently good food, and consistently short waits. It's very reasonable, very nice, and the city's best kept secret for weekend breakfast downtown. So what's not to love?

So imagine my surprise that we end up there on Labor Day (because all the places I wanted to try on the west side were closed for the holiday! Sheesh!), and find out that they're not open weekends any more.

Hmm, I think. New owners? New cooks? The menu is the same, the prices are the same, and it appears the family that runs it is the same. But all our favorite waiters and waitresses are gone. And it appears the crowds are too, as the place has plenty of open tables and the entire counter is empty.

We order with some trepidation. At this point, we're taking one for the team. It seemed like they had so much more business on the weekends, why would they be closed for them? It doesn't make any sense.

Remembering the old rule, we stick with the starches. This is where Lorn & Dottie's excels. Hot cakes ($6-8.50), plain or with blueberry or banana pecan, dutch babies, german potato pancakes, and the yeasted waffle... oh, the yeasted waffle ($6) is so light and airy and wonderful. But the dutch babies ($9-10) are too. And the potato pancakes ($6-8.50) are great with applesauce, or ask for sour cream.

They offer Banana-Nut Bread($3) and Jalepeno Cornbread ($3), too, both really good. They also have steel-cut oatmeal ($5) everyday, Cream of Wheat ($5) on Wednesday & Thursday , and Zoom ($5) on Fridays.

Not that the eggs are bad; they're not. Really. But the starches are the thing.

So we order a yeasted waffle with Canadian bacon ($8.50) and 2 eggs with potato pancakes and sausage ($9), along with two coffees. Now, this is Starbucks coffee and not really great Starbucks coffee at that, but they do keep your cup full.

The food comes, and it's as good as ever. Delicious, filling, everything we ask of breakfast. So why are they closed weekends? What gives?

T. Spring writes:

Marcos in Multnomah Village has the best egg plant salad you have ever met and some wonderful desserts as well. They are famous for breakfast.

You could do a lot worse than Muddy's. Yummy and very reasonable breakfast all day. The best french toast in town, even beating out Henry's. Homemade chipotle hot sauce. Good, groovy coffee, groovy eggs, yummy baked goods and really good bread. Homemade strata on the weekends to die for. Our only qualm was that they don't do over-easy eggs. But hey, at least they are totally upfront about it. Lunch features the three Ss - soup, sandwiches, salads, along with a quiche of the day. Not that I've ever made it to lunch, but I bet it's good. It's like hanging out at home if your home is an adorable victorian filled with mix-matched furniture, and clean. And with good food, and good vibes. They now have bottled beer and house wines to make this an excellent, low-key place to hang out and get some work done. Or not.

The specials board rarely if ever exceeds $6. Now this is a special I can get behind! They have a pretty standard breakfast menu, but with a sense of humor. You can get the classic bene, or a country bene (biscuit, sausage, egg, gravy). You can get the veggie omelet, or the hobo (all the meats plus onions), or the combo, which is described as veggie + hobo = smiles. And you have your choice of the best hashbrowns in town, or O'Briens. The most expensive item is that combo omelet/scramble at $8.

The sausage gravy is better than a lot of places (though the winner is still the Overlook for sausagey taste). I wouldn't drink the coffee there. But when you consider that PBR ($1.75), Hamms ($2), and micros (Sierra Nevada Pale, Terminal Gravity IPA, Full Sail Amber, and Widmer Hefeweizen- $3) are on tap, who needs coffee?

The Nite Hawk is a funny little place. A recent advertising campaign seems to be bringing in a younger than 70+ crowd to this time capsule from the early seventies. Dinner and lunch here are okay, serious family restaurant fare, but breakfast is the real deal.

This place is all about booths and a counter. The restaurant is non-smoking; you can smoke on the lounge side, and perhaps the only way to tolerate the lounge side is by smoking. They have their own parking lot as well as street parking, a little bit of bike parking, and they're located at a MAX Yellow Line stop.

Breakfast is served all day. They list breakfast specials on the board, usually about a half-dozen of them with the most expensive being $5.95. When we were in, they also listed a prime rib & eggs, which was significantly higher.

The coffee is awful. But they're lavish with it.

Menu items lean heavily towards meat, eggs and potatoes, and run from $3.95-$8.95. We had pigs in a blanket, biscuits and gravy, and the standard eggs-sausage-potatoes-toast with hashbrowns rather than the default cottage potatoes.

The pigs in a blanket was a huge plate of four long breakfast sausages tucked into pancakes, then sprinkled with sugar. It came with garden-variety "pancake syrup", and it was just fine.

The gravy on the biscuits could have been more hearty, but it was the first gravy we've had in months of eating out in Portland that actually tasted like sausage. It even had some visible sausage particles! It was easily doctored with pepper and hot sauce. The biscuits were hidden, but were fine.

And the standard American breakfast was just that. The hashbrowns were great diner hashbrowns.

If you get bored, there's Keno and scratch-offs, and the lounge features video crack and pool.

Most patrons, if they're in a for a hair of the dog, prefer a red beer (a glass of lager with a tomato juice chaser), but with a full bar and a couple of beers on tap (Bud, Coors Light, Fat Tire, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Widmer Hefeweizen, and Black Butte Porter), you can have whatever you'd like. Or RC.

• BarFly

more photos

This garish corner in Brooklyn has wonderful neon, but that's about all it has, appearance-wise, going for it.

The Hot Cake House is a 24 hour joint that serves mostly breakfast, though some sandwiches and burgers are also on the menu.

I had read that most people order the hot cakes, so I got them with eggs and chorizo. After seeing the hashbrowns on the grill, I had to have some of those as well, and they conveniently come with a mexican omelette.

And voila, everything was great. Not like exquisitely great, but definitely diner food great. Eggs and chorizo were a huge portion of just that, lots of chorizo, everything nicely combined. If they had fresh corn tortillas, I might eat breakfast nowhere else. The hot cakes were absolutely hot cake-like, doused in some butter-like substance, and then served with something that is heated, but probably not pure maple syrup. Hell, it may contain no maple syrup for all I know (I saw some patrons bring in their own)!

The mexican omelette was stocked full of cheese, chorizo, onions and peppers, and the hashbrowns are thinly shred, but these are bigger thin shreds, nice and brown. If I lived in the neighborhood, I might be there all the time. The coffee looks scary—we didn't go there.

The place is small, a combination of fast food booths and homebuilt stuff, all a very cheerful yellow. The people watching, day or night, is superb.

Other press:

• Hotcake House hits half-century: 24-hour eatery is a timeless testament to carbs and crowds
  Pete Schulberg, The Portland Tribune, Apr 29, 2005


• Late night fine dining
  Betsy at Metroblogging Portland, May 14, 2006


• i am pariah: bloated


• Up All Night: Original Hotcake House is Your Best Friend
  Adam Gnade, The Portland Mercury, Apr 14, 2005

It seems that everyone in N & NE Portland were up watching the Trojan implosion, and then decided to go out to breakfast. We pulled up at John Street Cafe and were shocked to see the inside and the outside crowded with people.

I was with my companion, he who does not willingly wait for breakfast, so we obviously needed to come up with Plan B tout suite. But we're in St. Johns, which is a bit sleepy at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. There's Pattie's—no, that's out. There's the New Portland Rose, which was also deemed unsuitable. I didn't know about Slim's but I bet it wouldn't have passed muster either.

And so with lowered expectations, we went to Our Daily Bread. It's a family restaurant. However, it's not a chain, and the name is from the fact that they bake their own bread. The coffee was awful, but was there immediately with a menu and a glass of water.

The interior is all about wood, but very comfortable.

Breakfast is offered all day, and the ranch breakfasts are all about eggs and meat: three kinds of sausage, corned beef hash, chicken fried steak, and three kinds of conventional steak are among the offerings ($6.75-$19). There are pancakes, french toast and waffles ($2.50-$6.75), omelettes ($6.75-$8.50), even espresso. And from 6-10am, there are five $4.50 breakfast specials.

So, I ordered the classic ham & cheese omelette with hash browns and homemade cornbread. HWDNWWFB got pigs in a blanket.

Quickly our food came, and hey—it was great!

The omelette was perfect: a thin crepelike egg layer swaddling chopped ham and melty cheese, neither over or underdone. It wasn't an exercise in trying to pile food on the plate, but it was tremendously filling. The shredded hash browns were crispy and lovely, creamy on the inside, not at all greasy. And the cornbread was warm, obviously freshly made, northern-style so slightly sweet, served with creamed butter.

The pigs in a blanket were plate-sized pancakes rolled around link sausage, served with applesauce, creamed butter and syrup (sorry dunno if it was real maple or not).

We both attacked our plates and began talking again once we hit about half through, which was about when we had to say when.

Another example of what makes St. Johns great: unpretentious, hard-work, and value on the buck.

First, let me say: this is a family restaurant. So don't get your hopes up about gourmet or really good. But this greek diner/lounge has a pile going for it. Among other things, if you live in the neighborhood, you'll see your neighbors there. The non-smoking restaurant side is busy, bright, and very diner-like, with an assortment of booths, tables and counter seating. Go at breakfast or dinner, and you'll find kids—not a lot, but some. The lounge side is dark, soothing, busy, and smokey, with its own counter, what seems like thousands of TVs playing sports, and two fireplaces(!). You don't have to drink on the lounge side (just be tolerant of smoke)—and at breakfast time, is about half full, though there's not a lot of folks in for their hair-of-the-dog.

What the Overlook does exquisitely is the diner breakfast. Lots of options, always some cheap less-than-$5 specials, and the food is reliably solid. Get the grits if they have them—you can doctor them up into something fantabulous. The two of us went a bit nuts and still got out for less than $15, not including tip, for breakfast.

One part community meeting space, one part resale shop, one part Av0n distributor, one part diner, it's one big jumbled mess and it's Pattie's. They must be doing something right, as they've been in business since before the turn of the century (this last one at least). Breakfast there is unexceptional, and it's not for a lack of not trying. The taco meat that appears in an omelette is just unseasoned hamburger. Does the cook use salt and pepper? Everything appears to be in some sort of food service packaging, and truly, in some sort of chaos.

This is the sort of place that makes me think, yeah, if I were willing to give up my life, I'd be able to have a diner-cum-resale shop. The dining area is clean and tidy, but one of the counters is completely covered with stuff, including a soda fountain which has had better days. I admit, looking at the piled up stuff (merchandise? a goodwill donation?) unnerved me, and sort of lowered my expectations. And lowered expectations are good—no one is going to confuse this with John St down the way.

They have a full lunch menu of antojitos (snacks) and platas including carne en su jugo, machaca, pollo entomatado, tinga and albondigas, as well as all the shrimp favorites and carrot, potato and oat patties (no, really—and singlely, not together). They call their food southern Mexican style, and the cashier speaks excellent english and is very personable.

Podnah's is one of my favorite places for lunch or dinner. And now, it's one of my favorite places for breakfast.

Beginning Saturday, October 6, Podnah's will be serving weekend breakfasts from 8am - 1pm.

I was lucky enough to get a preview and man, this is some mighty fine grub. The menu is short. The copy I have has four entrees plus drinks. But, man, I love the fact that he's narrowing in on what he's good at.

Here's the menu (current last week, your mileage may vary):

Biscuits & Gravy $5.50, with 2 eggs $7
Smoked Trout Hash $7.50, with 2 eggs $9
Ham, Grits & Eggs $8
Kolaches $2 each
Coffee $2
Fresh OJ $3
Mimosa $4.50

Both biscuits & gravy and grits are foods that are often really fantastic at home, and really underwhelming in restaurants. There are really very few restaurants in town that do either well. But if anyone can do these well, I think it would be Podnahs. And they do.

We ordered the Biscuits & Gravy, and Ham, Grits and Eggs, and each of them were excellent. The biscuits and gravy were your classic country gravy, studded with big pieces of breakfast sausage. The gravy was excellently seasoned, and honestly, it's the best gravy I've had outside my own. The biscuits were simultaneously crisp and flaky. As well as golden brown and delicious. Yum.

The Ham, Grits and Eggs, were a big slice of really decent ham, with really wonderfully creamy grits, and eggs any style. I ordered them soft scrambled, and they were quite creamy too. The grits were just plain great -- rich, and humble and wonderful -- one of the better grits I've had in a restaurant.

We sat next to someone who was having the Trout Hash, who said that he just couldn't order anything but the Trout Hash because it was so good. I would have asked to have a bite, but I think that he might have assaulted me.

Anyways, who knows what Rodney will have this weekend, except I expect that biscuits & gravy and grits will play some sort of role.

Okay, so I didn't eat in the dining room. I had a catered lunch at a meeting.

When I think of catered meals, even from nice places, I think of premade sandwiches wrapped in saranwrap and steamtable fare. My expectations are lowered. I'm happy if anything tastes at all like the original foodstuff.

But I was much impressed with the Red Star. I'm writing this from the standpoint of if I had eaten in the dining room: those were my expectations. And they were met, ably.

Much to my surprise, we were offered a smaller version of the lunch menu. Appetizers range from $6-13, and we tried a clam chowder, crab-salmon cakes, a beet soup, grilled asparagus salad, a caesar, and a roasted beet salad. The presentation was gorgeous, and everything I tried was excellent and nuanced.

For the entree, there were a range of choices: salmon, cheeseburger, fish and chips, quesadilla, chicken breast sandwich, prime rib french dip, new york steak, and mac-n-cheese ($10.50-$24)—we tried all but the first two. Again, beautiful. The mac-n-cheese was as good as a homemade version, with a nice crust. The steaks were thick and grilled to order, and so flavorful. Everyone else raved about their food, and everything looked so good, enough to make you think, maybe I should have ordered that.

We also had dessert—also lovely and tasty.

My lunch, if I had paid for it, would have been $30. Was it worth it? Yeah, I think so. The atmosphere of the place is definitely business lunch, but the food was good. And was beautiful. I don't know that I'd be going there every month, but once every year or so? Why not?

And really, that's a good thing. It makes that meal a special event, which is nice given that I, and perhaps you, eat out entirely too much.

So. Simpatica. I've only been for brunch, but it's one of those things that stands out. Not only is it the best breakfast you've had all week, it might be the best meal period.

First of all, all the meats come from Viande, which conveniently enough is their meat shop. Yum.

Every week, the menu changes. Prices range from $8-$10. Some things stay, like belgian waffles, chicken and waffles, and biscuits and gravy. So, with something like chicken and waffles, where the fried chicken is the best in town, and the waffles come with a fruit or berry based syrup (or regular maple syrup if you'd prefer), it's easy to get into a rut, and order it every week. A wonderful, magical rut!

But you are rewarded for trying the new stuff too. There's always a frittata, a hash, and crepes. There's always the breakfast sandwich, the cheeseburger, and the philly cheese steak.

I've had the cheese steak: best in town. The cheeseburger may well be the best too—if only it came with french fries. And, I've tried everything else that was close enough for me to stab, and everything, everything has been superb. Every meal there has been memorable and delicious.

They serve Stumptown Coffee, bloody marys, mimosas, wine, beer and cocktails, to ease your way into the morning.

So what's the drawback, other than it just happening on Sundays? Well, Bon Appetit named Simpatica one of the Top 10 hot new restaurants in the US for 2006 (June 2006), and so the lines waiting for breakfast have just increased. Now everyone knows about it. Gee, thanks!

The room is loud, and in the best of circumstances, you have your choice of a 4-top or a communal table. That said, you may meet some new folks.

This is just a little corner cafe/diner: tiny, really, with a couple of booths, a few more tables, and counter seating. In nice weather, they have a patio as well. It's the sort of place that you can ID from the street because the windows are all fogged up, and there's a line of people reading newspapers.

Yes, they did trademark "You eat here because we let you", so there is a bit of attitude, theoretically. Sometimes, there's enough folks staffing; sometimes, it's just Denise (who's worked there since the beginning of time) and someone else working the entire place. So yes, your (Portland Brewing) coffee cup and water glass won't stay full.

As noted, the coffee is not what you come here for. They do serve expresso, or drinks if you need some hair of the dog.

And they do serve lunch. Not that I can speak to that.
The breakfast menu is huge, and there's always more on the chalkboards. If you can't see them, ask, or just make a point to check them out.

There are traditional breakfasts ($4-$8.50) which are egg, protein, potatoes, toast, including some absolutely excellent scrambles. If you fear you aren't getting enough pork in your diet, try the meat lover's scram. It has, of course, ham, bacon, and sausage in bite-sized chunks with a little jack cheese—delicious and easily two meals.

Potatoes are big slices, fried on the griddle—they don't do it for me, but they are a good excuse to have some homemade salsa.

The ala carte menu ($3.50-$7) has favorites like a decent biscuits & gravy (which you can get as a half order), and the Tichenors (Tichenor's choice, the dilemma, the other dilemma), which is home fried hash browns covered with all manner of things.

The griddle menu ($2.50-$6) includes pancakes, french toast, waffle, and blintzes. The pancakes are huge, covering an entire huge round plate (and you can get real maple syrup for a surcharge).

And finally, there are 3 egg omelettes ($7-$8.25).

With a big menu and a lot of specials, you have choices, and they all seem to be solid. The heuvos rancheros are a favorite, a delicious (and completely inauthentic) carb-fest of corn tortillas, refried beans, ranchero sauce, eggs, potatoes, and pickled jalapenos. Yum! And you can add avocado.

Whenever I have friends staying in NW, this goes on top of the list for what to do for breakfast.

Tabor Hill gets slagged a quite a bit and I'm not sure why. Yes, it used to have other owners (who have gone on to create the John Street Cafe), and yes, it's just a diner. Yes, it's not at all trendy... you won't spot hipsters or activists or folks showing off their new squeeze. So, what do you want?

What I want, and why I come here is simple. Hash browns. Golden brown goodness accenting any egg dish you could want, most in the four dollar range. The menu indicates home fries, and you'll need to actually specify hash browns when you order.

What they have is standard diner fare, at standard diner prices. It's not pretentious. I haven't been there for lunch or dinner, but my gosh, any place with kielbasa and decent hash browns is okay with me.

The place is small but cute, and obviously professionally designed. Lovely art lines the bright walls, and the glassware and china and nice and unexpected.

The breakfast menu is short: one page, made up of Huevos a la Mexicana, Huevos Rancheros, Omelet Poblano, Omelet de Carnes, Desayuno (typical american breakfast), and Burrito de Desayuno, ranging from $5.75-$6.50.

We ordered the ranchero and the Omelet Poblano. Everything on the menu (except the burrito) comes with potatoes and toast, but when we saw the owner having his breakfast with rice and beans, we asked for that on the side of one of the plates. Meanwhile, we drank good coffee out of smallish cups, and had okay orange juice.

As usual, we drained the coffee and water quickly. I didn't wait long before they were replenished the first time. The next time came as we were paying the bill.

The ranchero was fine. Not the best we've had but at least more typical than most in town. A round two sunny-side up eggs topped a tortilla and then was covered with a tasty pureed sauce. The eggs and sauce were good, but the tortilla was this knife resistant thing on the bottom of the plate, which didn't want to be eaten with the eggs.

However, the potatoes. Not seasoned, not browned, tasting of nothing.

The omelet was also fine. It was topped with the aforementioned diced poblano, and the interior of the omelet was the mild chili-onion-tomato stew that the menu says gives Mexican food its characteristic taste with some mushrooms and cheese. Of course, we were expecting more poblano, so that was a disappointment. The rice and beans, also fine, though not exciting. I learned after the fact that the beans are vegetarian, which explains why they weren't unctuous, but doesn't explain why they were underseasoned.

We finally flagged someone down to ask when they open, and we didn't really get an answer. 10am, maybe? Sorry!

The menu also has a reasonably priced lunch, with many vegetarian options, and a much-more expensive dinner ($10-$16 for entrees), with no vegetarian entrees. The menu that I have shows the usual beers, though I'm told that they don't have beer yet.

In the end, I'm not sure I'd go back. Autentica is yummy, and while they also have service problems at times, they're yummy. With 21st, there's the parking issues, and the food just wasn't that exciting.

But I've been motivated to get over there lately, now that I am completely infatuated with grits, and I know Tin Shed's got 'em. Unfortunately, I was a little undercaffeinated, so I didn't take a lot of notes.

The inside is a nice, but small and crowded space. The outside, under a giant roof, and backed by a giant fireplace, is almost twice the size of the interior, and really pleasant on a nice day. That patio is a great place to dogwatch, as many folks bring theirs with them. Inside or out, you serve yourself coffee and water.

They have a big new breakfast menu that debuted 4/29/2006. We ordered Huevos Ranchitos, Roll Over, and two sides of cheese grits.

Now, we habitually order the You Gotta Have it, which is eggs any style, meat, toast or homemade biscuit, and potato pancakes or grits. I love potato pancakes (really, I just love carbs), so that's what I always end up ordering. It's good, solid, great biscuits—what's not to love?

Huevos Ranchitos is just like the ranchero version, except there is no ranchero sauce, there are 2 layers of tortilla, as well as jalapeno-stewed black beans and rice, scrambled eggs, homemade salsa, sour cream, and green onion (they own stock in green onion). It was tasty but it would have been better if everything if the things that should be hot: like beans, rice, and eggs, actually were. The rice was all clumped as if it had come out of the cardboard carton in your fridge. The beans were not spicy at all, but they did have a nice cumin flavor.

The Roll Over starts with a layer of potato pancakes, then a layer of scrambled eggs & sausage, then a layer of bacon gravy. I expected this to be a conflict of interest, what with the sausage and bacon, but it tasted great. However, nothing on my plate was consistently hot either. The gravy was the warmest element, but it had hot and cold spots (ooogh).

The grits were most disappointing. They're plain grits with grated cheese added almost as an afterthought, and the grits were so not hot that the cheese wasn't melting. Butter, also not melting. I finally sent them back to be nuked.

To their credit, we complained, and they comped us for one meal. We saw some other plates going back to the kitchen, so maybe someone was having a bad bad day?

Unfortunately, we had a really lackluster dinner there recently as well.

Other reviews

• Portland Blog

more photos of Toast here
It's exciting that all these new breakfast spots are opening SoHo (south of Holgate. C'mon, it's better than FoPo, you've got to admit), and I've been spoiled by how good they are. So we walked into Toast: a Neighborhood Restaurant with some high expectations.

Reports are very good on the dinner there.

We were in for breakfast. Note one: it's small, and there was a wait. It opened a week ago, and there's a wait! I guess the neighborhood was ready for them.

But soon enough we were seated at the counter. I had my jacket under my butt and my purse hanging from my knee because there were no coat hooks, or stool backs. That's fine, as long as you don't have a coat or a purse. But there are foot rests on both the stools and the counter itself, so it could be much worse.

One thing I noticed right away that I liked. They offer beer, wine and mixed drinks ($5-7) to go with your breakfast... and some of the mixed drinks don't have alcohol ($3). That's brilliant! Why isn't everyone doing that? I mean, that's seriously a great idea.

So we ordered a Zero Gravity (ginger ale, OJ, splash of cranberry and orange zest) and a Conscious (pomegranate, lemon, lime, OJ and soda water). Both came in pint glasses, and both were very good.

Our waitress brought us by a monkey dish of two mini scones to munch as we looked at the food menu. And that's where my trouble began.

The menu has 12 entrees, and nothing really suited me. There were lots of mentions of members of the onion family on the menu, and I know most folks love onions. It's just not my thing. But just about everything that isn't vegetarian has pork: pork belly, griddle ham, cured pork, which seems kinda promising.

So we order a sausage turnover, the Benedict oh ($9), and the Golden Pig ($8.50). We're immediately told that they're out of the sausage turnovers, sadness.

The Benedict oh is soft poached eggs, housemade sausage patties, chard, and housemade english muffins with a bit of bearnaise sauce.

The Golden Pig is pork belly with three basil scrambled eggs & crispy shallots on a slice of toast.

So the food comes, and my first response is, what is this? I'm used to seeing breakfasts including some potatoes or some salad or some fruit. This is just the entree, by itself, seeming dwarfed by the whiteness of the dinner plate. It looks very small and spare. So I order a potato rosti ($2.50).

My benedict is an interesting idea, really. The housemade sausage is something I'd never order again, but I can imagine the benedict with chard and pork belly or cured pork could be really good.

The pig is tasty, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The rosti comes, onion-laden. Oh well.

$26.00 later, and we're out. And I have to wonder, with prices like those, if it will remain a neighborhood restaurant. True, breakfast entrees at Bar Carlo and Arleta Library are similarly priced, but just about everything is excellent at both, and your entrees will fill you up at either. And while I'm really not opposed to the small plates idea applied to breakfast, I want that small plate to be really good. Is that too much to ask?

This place is very popular for breakfast, and for good reason. It's a charming little space, with a comfortable counter, and the food is reasonable and tasty. Fried cornmeal served with butter and heated maple syrup is a delight, as is the blueberry pancakes. Egg plates also appear delectable and overflowing.

Veganopolis is an all vegan cafeteria in Portland, Oregon. For those of you who perhaps aren't clear about vegan cuisine, the method is simple: No animal products whatsoever are used in the kitchen; Our emphasis is on flavorful and nutritious soups, salads, sandwiches and vegan baked goods. We will also be serving fresh Illy coffee and espresso, juices, iced green tea and organic sodas.

Veganopolis is a nice combination of fake meat and fake cheese, and actual vegetablish entrees. This place is a gold mine for the lactose intolerant as well as raw foodies.

But how do omnivores who aren't crazy about vegetables do with it? Well, obviously enough, fine.

First, the web site. There are menus and they are up to date. The specials for today are posted in HTML. They have a weekday buffet from 11-3 of an entree and sides for 6.95 per pound. And a Saturday breakfast buffet for the same price.

Drinkwise, there's espresso, a cooler of drinks and beer, and fresh squeezed OJ. There's a selection of soup, salads, sides, and sandwiches, made with just about any type of fake meat you can think of. Prefer your protein in the form of tofu or almond pate or housemade cashew ricotta? Well, duh!

It's a lovely space with great light, wide open, wheelchair accessible. A couple tables outside allow you to enjoy the ambience of the neighboring Subway. There is also seating on the mezzanine, which gives you the opportunity to be secretive (or to look down upon the front kitchen/counter area).

With the exception of the daily raw platter, everything is under $7. I'm addicted to their seitan caesar sandwich on a ciabatta roll, which won't convince anyone that it's meat, but it's really tasty all the same. And I love the idea of the vegan BLT. Next time...

Vita Cafe is all about groovy for breakfast and lunch. The cover of the menu expresses their earnestness forthrightly: common meals, fair price, organic and local, free range, hormone free, dairy-, egg- and wheat-free.

Vita was the sister cafe to SE Belmont's Paradox Palace Cafe. Now they both have new owners and it will be interesting to see what the future brings.

The Vita is back, and you'd never know they were ever gone. We went in early on Sunday afternoon and the place was packed. Folks were even sitting outside in the sprinkles.

Vita has made its name for being vegan & carnivore friendly. You can get any number of animal-free dishes, or you can get a groovy hamburger. Breakfast can consist of eggs and potatoes, or tofu & rice, or really anything in between. Vegans and vegetarians love it: the food is plentiful and cheap, and you can have it with beer, wine or liquor.

Breakfasts range from $3-$9, and include corn cakes, scrambles, french toast, heuvos rancheros, & biscuits and gravy. 15 of the 24 breakfast items can be made gluten-free.

We ordered a couple old favorites: biscuits & gravy, heuvos rancheros, and NW corn cakes, plus a cup of black bean soup with homemade herb and onion bread.

The black bean soup was excellent and flavorful: a basic rendition, but a very nice one. The bread was a hit, with its slightly sweet crust and herby-oniony filling.

The heuvos rancheros were particularly creative. Fried tortillas curl up on the plate, covered by what tasted like vegan chili, eggs (or tofu), salsa, guac, and a cilantro-y vegan creme. If you were looking for something closer to authentic, well, you'll be disappointed, but the contrasts between the smooth and crunchy, the spicy and the bland, was very nice.

Biscuits with almond gravy has always been a favorite, and they just didn't taste as wonderful as I remembered. Maybe my tastes have changed? If I wasn't working from sentimentality, they probably would be fine, though the biscuit was a little heavy.

But the NW Corn Cakes do stand up to memory. Corn cakes, as big as a pancake, covered with toasted hazelnuts, and served with organic maple syrup. Yum.

Most folks around us were having lunch, and that looked good too. The fishwich, a deep fried square of tofu with lettuce, pickles and vegan tartar sauce, was very popular, as was the free range, hormone-free beef burgers and fries. Mac and cheese, made with vegan cheese, also appeared to be a big hit. Lunch prices top at $8, and dinner at $12 (with most entrees ringing in under $10), and nicely, the full up-to-date menu is online.

They have four beers on tap. And they have a Wednesday special, 5pm-close: $2 well drinks, $2 drafts, $5 cocktails, and $5 food specials on the fishwich, mac & cheese, grilled cheese, tofurky sandwich, or thai pasta. And, from 5-7pm, they have a $1 kids menu.

Definitely recommended for vegetarians and vegans.

Carrie writes (7/2001),

It's one of my all time favorite restaurants! Its friendly, intimate and a treat to all in the pdx community, both queer and straight. They seve cocktails and have a brief yet quality wine menu, and offer vegetarian options. Favorite dishes include polenta with portabella mushrooms, seafood pasta and even the filet mignon!

Everyone I know loves this place. Yet the one time I went there, my meal was inedible. I keep meaning to give them another chance, but the thought of spending the money just isn't appealing.

This is really just a neighborhood joint, smokey and friendly and overly bright. There's pool and pinball, beer and liquor, and food, natch: both bar-snacky things like taquitos and poppers, and meals. This includes a 2 for $7.95 breakfast which was quite edible and quite cheap (and quite smokey).