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!

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Like any other type of sandwich, banh mi benefit hugely from being made fresh in front of you. You can frequently get banh mi at Vietnamese groceries and some restaurants as a grab-and-go, wrapped in cellophane, and they just are no where near as good as a fresh sandwich.

Bread makes a difference too—if you can find a place that bakes the bread fresh, you can bet the banh mi is going to be good. And Binh Minh is a bakery as well as a banh mi shop.

Binh Minh is a phone booth of a place around the corner from the Pacific Super Market. They have a couple tables indoors that aren't really designed to be sat at for more than a couple American-sized people, and a couple tables outside. You go to the coolers and pick up your beverage, a gelatin dessert, shrimp flavored chips, etc, and then step over a step and order from the sign board on the wall.

Foodwise, I'm told it's pretty traditional. There are eight sandwiches, most $2.50: the Vietnamese sandwich (banh mi cha thit nguoi, $2), meat ball (banh mi xiu mai), barbeque pork (banh mi xa xiu), lemongrass chicken (banh mi thit ga nuong), Vietnamese pork (banh mi cha lua), fish (banh mi ca), pate (banh mi pate), and shredded pork (banh mi bi).

There are five soups and stews: fish soup (chao ca, tom, $5), Vietnamese rice noodle with pork (bahn cahn tom, xa xiu, $5), egg noodle with beef (mi bo kho, $5), beef stew with french bread (banh mi bo kho, $3.95), and french bread with round egg (banh mi op-la, $3.25). You can add extra meat or vegetables for 50 cents more.

I haven't tried any of the soups or stews, but I've had all of the sandwiches, and, wow, there's not a bad one in the bunch. I particularly enjoy the pate, but the lemongrass chicken is also great, and an option you don't always find elsewhere.

In addition, they always have some stuff in the hot case: steamed pork buns, and spring rolls for sure.

The sandwiches, let's face it, aren't huge: they're about the size of a skinny hoagy, so plan on getting two or supplementing it somehow.

The staff aren't terrifically friendly, but they know english well, and they're really speedy.

Stopping in to Binh Minh is always a treat—I think their banh mi are the ones to beat.

Cash only!

• Vietnam's far, but tasty lunches are nearby
• Hot Chefs, Cheap Eats

CLOSED

To all our customers

First, I'd like to thank each and everyone for dining with us for 16 long years. But the sad news is, we are being forced to close our business due to the owner of the building. He wants us to vacate the premises by July 31, 2007. We hate to close the doors to you at this location. But you may visit us at 3126 N.E. 82nd Ave. across from Madison High School (503-252-1343). We would appreciate it if you would not dine here in honor of El Burrito Loco. I feel we were robbed of our business and you continuing to dine here would support the building owner if he try's to open here with our same food recipes. Thank You once again. Hope to see you soon!!!

The Original El Burrito Loco owner's

I stopped by this evening to try to pick up a burrito, and saw the place emptied out, with the owners hanging out at the door. It appears, according to the owners, that they've been forced out by their landlord. They're asking folks to please:
1. Do buy food at the Burrito Loco on 82nd, across from Marshall High
and
2. Don't buy food at whatever goes into their new space.

The Mercury has more details.

(there's a thread about Burrito Loco's closing on Portland Food and Drink Discussion Forum)

Yes, it's a Grateful Dead reference, and a Mount St. Helens reference.

This place is unassuming from the street, except, for all the cars parked around it. It's small—you walk in and order at the counter. They offer chicken wings and all manner of other deepfried things, like french fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings, tater tots, mushrooms, pickles, twinkies. They also offer 12 excellent sauces, including a couple that will blow the back of your head off (and I'm a hothead)—lucky for us, they provide celery matchsticks that you can try all the sauces for your favorite combination of hot, sweet, and flavor.

You can order wings by the half dozen, and that's how they do the saucing as well. Each order comes with blue cheese dressing or ranch—your choice.

There are tables, natch, and some reading material. Usually, the food arrives soonish. Of course, if you're eating spicy deep-fried food, you need something to wash it down, which is where the 7 taps of microbrews and Rainer come in handy. And, they even have "Portland Wings" (sheesh, it's tempeh) for vegetarians. Damn. While I can't speak to tempeh and pickles, the wings and fries—it's all good.

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.

This little hole in the wall is part of the big high-end Elephants Deli in NW. With grab-n-go coolers, you can get salads, sandwiches, and take away meals, as well as yogurt, and every possible type of chi-chi pop, water, beer, wine, bubbly, etc. Baked goods and deserts wait at the center island. Hot sandwiches and soup can be ordered straightaway in the back. The cost for any of the food items tends to come in shortly before $7, so as long as you can restrain yourself at the drink cooler, it's not an expensive meal.

The drawbacks of the place is that it's popular, and the table situation is tight: like Paris-cafe-tight, not built for our supersized American bodies. Still, you can get lucky and score a table on the sidewalk and watch them tear up the parking lot right in front of you.

photo by Molly Holzschlag

airport & Washington Square locations still open.

Ken's is one of a couple bakeries in town making excellent bread products. That said, Ken's is my absolute favorite. Everything is handmade, using the best organic flours and ingredients, the slow way. The breads are incredible—if you like French-style breads, this is the place. It's a bread-lover's paradise—and an Atkins dieters' nightmare.

In addition to bread, they have yummy sweets—a pain au chocolat to die for. They have awesome sandwiches—the best croque monsieur in town, and they have beer and wine as well as espresso.

They also have a mean pizza night, Mondays, from 5:30-9:30, serving bistro-style pizza.

Downsides? They're often packed, and finding parking on 21st is a pain (though if you're there before 3pm, you can park in Basta's lot). Tables are tiny—great if there's two or less of you, not so great if you're coming in a pack. And, it's a small place. Service can be quite brusque (though it's always markedly better when Ken is around). And, they close early (7pm T-F).

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!

more photos

Reedies and other Woodstock denizens can happen by during the week, but for the rest of us, an Otto's visit means Saturday. And if nothing else, you can identify Otto's by the crowd of people in front.

You can just stay outside, grab a soda from the tub and buy a sausage, but it's worth it to go in. First of all, they have beer on tap:

• Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
• Otto's IPA (made by Raccoon Lodge)
• Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown (a seasonal)
• Pilsner Urquel
• New Belgium Skinny Dip (a seasonal)
• Deschutes Obsidian Stout
• Thomas Kemper Root Beer

• Vernors (in glass bottles!)
• Thomas Kemper sodas
• Stewart's
• Red Rock
• Cricket
• Henry Weinhard's
• Green River
• Boylan's
• Crush
• Big Red

The menu will list the sausages on the grill. There's usually wieners, smoked pork sausages, and chicken sausages, with regular, potato or whole wheat buns. For $1.50-$3, you have lunch. Or half a lunch. Whatever. Load up on the limited condiments and take a seat outside if there is one. Cuz there aren't any tables indoors.

I know far more esteemed critics have called Otto's one of the best 10 hot dogs in the U.S., but I don't think it's quite that good. They're tasty dogs but they pale compared to others in SE.

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.

In front of the house, there's the pizza by the joint place, where you can get a slice or a sandwich and a beer or soda and sidle up to the counter. In the back, there's a lovely, tiny dining room that looks out on the back parking lot, but in spite of that, manages to be charming. There in the dining room, you can have table service and order off a menu.

Pizza by the slice has at least 4 pies ready for munching. The prices are in the $2-$3 range for slices. They also have 4 salads ($4-$7), 4 panini, 4 heros, and 4 cold sandwiches ($6.50-$8.25), and out of each of those categories, one is vegan, and most offer a lacto-ovo veg option as well. All the sandwiches come with soup (a good vegan minestrone or a soup of the day), the house salad, or a pasta salad. They have 13 different wines by the class ($5-6.50), and 6 different beers on tap ($3-$3.75).

We ordered the Italian Job, a huge cold sandwich made of sopressato, capicola, provolone, roasted peppers, pepperoncini, tomato, red onion, lettuce, oil and vinegar on ciabatta, with the minestrone. Also, the Maspeth: fresh mozzarella, tomato, basil pesto with prosciutto on como, with a side caesar, and a pepperoni slice.

The pepperoni slice was pretty good. Pizza by the slice always tastes worse than a fresh hot pie, and that can't be helped. But the crust was crunchy and crackery, the sauce was not overabundant, but prominent, the pepperoni was good, and the cheese was okay. Still, for pizza by the slice, this was mighty good.

The Italian Job was one of those sandwiches that is so tall, it ought not fit into your mouth. Everything in it tasted zingy, tasty and fresh. The ciabatta roll from Grand Central was the perfect foil: crusty but not too crusty.

The caesar was good. Slightly undressed, which I'd rather, and some restraint with the shredded parmesan and the croutons. The Maspeth was Caprese-esque in ingredients only, though the gooey, stringy mozzarella was a delight, especially with the pesto. The roma tomato was okay, it wasn't as bad as most sandwich tomatoes out of season, though I'd rather just wait til summer. The proscuitto kinda disappeared into the sandwich.

Brunch is served on Saturday and Sundays, with prices from $5.75-$12.50, and with entrees ranging from breakfast pizza, panini, a scramble, some omelets, a tofu scramble, and polenta with buffalo brisket!

The sitdown menu has a pile of yummy-sounding Italian appetizers ($3.50-$9), a handful of pastas ($7-$13.25), and some specialties ($9-$10) like lasagne and ravioli and risotto. Of course, there are also pizzas ($9-$23), including the most decent sounding vegan pizza I've ever heard of: a white bean & roasted red pepper spread topped with tempeh (I'd pass on that) and veggies. They offer red sauce, alfredo, garlic & olive oil and pesto as bases (as well as the white bean/roasted red pepper spread), and they even offer a clam pie.

So, we went back for dinner. This was not as good of an experience.

Now, before I go any further, let me say that I know folks who have had great experiences on the sitdown side of the restaurant. It just sounds like I got unlucky. But lo, this could happen to you!

Right off the bat, we order drinks, and my Fino Fizz comes back to the table with Chambord rather than limoncello. We placed our order, for a large spinach salad, a pasta carbonara, and a house lasagne (not to be confused with the special lasagne). Our salad came quickly, lightly dressed and quite good. The fresh baby spinach leaves were tossed with tiny tiny bits of candied walnuts, cubes of roma tomato, and ricotta salata. Then began our long wait.

It appears, if you order a pizza, it will come out quite quickly. We watched two tables who had ordered well after us get their pizzas and finish them before we got our pastas. I'm estimating a wait of about 40 minutes between ordering, and pasta arriving at the table.

It should be noted that the pizzas looked really good.

As noted on the menu, the carbonara was cream-based, and was fairly garlicky. That's not traditional, but I didn't mind it. The pancetta was well carmelized, and the peas were peas.

The lasagna was made with housemade sausage, which were all the size of really small hail, or smaller. It really didn't taste unlike lasagna you can get at the grocery store.

Both pastas were accompanied by several slices of really stale Grand Central bread—so stale that I could barely bite through it.

Several times during the meal, someone would haul trash or recycling through the dining room. At several points, I could smell cigarette smoke, even though the dining room is non-smoking... maybe coming from the bar?

Service was an issue the entire meal. For the majority of the meal, there were three tables and two servers, which I suppose explains why my water glass was dry for twenty minutes. At one point when the server did come into our orbit, I asked for a glass of beer and she asked if she could take the remainder of my drink (I had maybe a quarter of it left). I had asked for the beer then because it had been about 15 minutes since she had been at the table, and it wasn't unreasonable to believe they'd leave me there with both an empty water and empty drink glass.

I watched as this same server brought tasters of red wine out to a neighboring table and then couldn't remember which was pinot and which was chianti.

This was a big disappointment after our great lunch the day before. Our dinner experiment cost us $55 after tip. So my recommendation to you is, go for pizza or sandwiches. The pizzas are really tasty.

According to the Willamette Week, there is no more lunch service. Valentines is a lounge with small plates. Sigh.

Pizza by the slice. Pizza by the pie. Microbrews on tap, and wine. Huge salads. Now expanded, so... there. And obviously, it's good -- in my top three favorite pizza places in town. And reasonable -- a slice for under $3, a salad for about the same, a beer for about the same.

more photos

The hot dog here is all-beef with a satisfying snap, served on a toasted bun. You can substitute veggie and turkey dogs for no extra charge; or a red hot, cheese filled, or sausage of the day for a buck more (when we were there, it was linguisa). The red hot is a nice variation, with enough spice to make you take notice. You can get the usual salad dog, chicago stylee, or a Coney Island, as well as more unusual toppings like olives, salsa, cucumbers, sour cream, and cream cheese. Try a red hot St. Peppers if you are a bit of a tiger. Prices range from $2.50-$4.50.

So, fries. With cheddar, big chunks of jarred jalapeno, chili—yum. The fries are krinkle-kuts, and not a huge serving. The chili—ah, it's okay, not great—more like a chili sauce than chili. The cheese fries aren't as good as others in town, but still, cheese fries! ($2.50-$3.50)

Of course, a frosty beer is the best side to a dog. They have four beers on tap (when we were there, they were Lucky Lab's stout, Sierra Nevada Pale, Lompoc's C-Note, and Pelican Kiwanda Cream Ale, for $3 a frosty glass. Bottled beers are also $3. Happy hour, from 4-8 everyday, means drafts are 50 cents cheaper (and PBR a $1.25).

You can eat on the Hawthorne sidewalk, inside, of course, or on their back patio. Non-smoking until 10pm.

Sadly, the quality tends to dip when Zach isn't around, but if he is, this is a great cheap eat.