Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Portland, Ore., Meals for $8 or Under
Setk Kugel, Frugal Traveler
The New York Times, September 4, 2014
Portland, Ore. — bike-friendly and, to this New Yorker, shockingly affordable — might also be the most delicious small city in America. So, finding myself there with about 30 hours to spare at the end of a West Coast trip earlier this week, I didn’t have to think too hard about a plan: rent a bike and look for a few cheap meals around the city.
Make that really cheap meals. And even avoiding the food carts and trucks that have been famous around town (and are old news for Frugal Traveler readers), my options were seemingly unlimited. I zoomed around on a rental from Everybody’s Bike Rentals ($25 flat, since there’s no Oregon sales tax), roaming about 40 miles and having (tastes of) 15 meals or meal-size dishes, all recommended by friends and colleagues. All were $8 or less, not including tip, and were as satisfying as they were eclectic.
I’d no sooner try to define the “best” cheap meals in Portland than I would chime in on the city’s much-commented-on process of gentrification, in which the Portland food scene is very much entwined. So instead of a “best of” ranking, here’s just a plain old list of eight high-value examples of the city’s uniquely energetic frugal food scene.
(Lest I look like more of a pig than I actually am, note that I only ate portions of each meal, giving the rest away to Portland’s homeless when I could find them, and friends when I could not.)
The Maple at Meat Cheese Bread, $7.50
This breakfast item boggles the mind. Two half-inch slices of maple bread pudding are slapped on the griddle and then served sandwiching a hand-formed pork sausage patty, melted chipotle Cheddar and a heap of fresh fennel. I’m ruined for life, at least until this place opens a branch in New York. Within two blocks of my apartment. How about it, guys? I’ll guarantee you a regular client base. Then again, the price would probably double.
The Chatfield at Pine State Biscuits, $7
The other breakfast sandwich among my picks, the Chatfield is a just-baked buttermilk biscuit (barely) sandwiching a crisp, seasoned and juicy hunk of fried chicken, along with thick-cut bacon, melted Cheddar cheese and a smothering of apple butter. That’s just automatically delicious, if more a full brunch than something a sane person would eat every day. Most Portlanders who urged me to go to Pine State (and several did) prefer the Reggie, which substitutes their popular house gravies for apple butter. But as long as you’re going for buttery-juicy-salty-meaty-cheesy you might as well go for broke by adding sweet.
Tacos de canasta at Uno Más, four for $6
There are plenty of good Mexican places in Portland, although for some reason most are judged by the quality of their burritos. (You crazy West Coasters.) At Uno Más, tacos rule, and a lunch-only special of tacos de canasta (“basket tacos”) are not necessarily better than their excellent traditional tacos but are certainly more interesting. To make a taco de canasta, the tortilla is briefly fried on a griddle with guajillo peppers, giving it a red tinge, then filled and folded and put in the steamer. The result is a texture that is soggy, but not unpleasantly so — and explains why the dish is also called “tacos sudados,” or sweaty tacos. There are four choices — I suggest doubling up on the chicken mole and the requesón and red chile. The tacos are tiny, so after eating four you may need “uno más,” and luckily, with $2 to spare you can have a popular taco al pastor, with well-spiced pork and bits of pineapple.
Meatballs and polenta at 24th and Meatballs, $8
At this mini-restaurant whose seating area looks like a porch tacked onto the side of Uno Más, meatballs and polenta was the only dish I tried, but it was the right call. You chose among several kinds of meatballs (traditional, pork, veggie, specials) and select a sauce (I went with tomato basil, which worked perfectly). The portion was easily hefty enough for a meal — the accompanying polenta is as creamy as advertised and fills you up fast. If you aren’t sticking to an $8 budget, go next door to the Pie Spot for the ridiculously awesome s’more “pie hole,” $3.75.
Choose your own and pay by weight at the Roman Russian Market
Categorize this deal, at a market with a separate seating area, under “volume and variety.” A friend joined me for this (and a few other) visits; we ordered a beef-filled samsa pastry (huge); a half-pound of herring salad, or shuba; sweet farmers’ cheese pancakes called syrniki, served hot under cool sour cream; a couple of little oreshki, walnut shaped butter cookies filled with caramel. We even splurged on two disgustingly sweet Russian sodas (I had the neon-red barberry flavor, whatever that is) and still spent only $15.50 total.
Chèvre cheeseburger and truffle fries at Little Big Burger, $7
I was wowed by the lack of a regular trash receptacle (the four bins are labeled compost, compost, compost and cans), but most come to this casual spot for the burgers, not the waste disposal system. The $4.25 cheeseburger looks small, but it’s a quarter-pound of meat, and if that’s good enough for McDonald’s customers, it’s good enough for ... O.K., maybe skip that comparison. Unlike that ubiquitous chain, Little Big Burger serves their burgers, made with good local beef, on a brioche bun, offers several cheese options and (like just about every other burger place in this local-sourcing-obsessed town) local ketchup. (In this case, Camden’s Catsup.) The truffle fries are, conveniently, $2.75.
Runner-up: the $7.50 lamb burger at Foster Burger — add pickled beet for 50 cents. But you don’t get fries.
Kao-Pune soup at Mekong Bistro, $8
At first glance, it seems just your “everyday” Cambodian sports bar — perfect for any U.S. Open fan who suddenly gets a craving for nom buhn jok. But the kitchen also dabbles in Laotian food — not a stretch considering much of the Mekong River is as Laotian as it is Cambodian. I was urged by a local restaurateur to try the Laotian style vermicelli red curry soup topped with crumbled ground pork and vegetables, in which Thai chiles and chile oil in the broth make the ingredients pop with enough heat to hit the sweet spot — lingering but not painful. It was a terrible dish to encounter at the end of the day, when all I could manage was a few slurps of a portion that would make a huge meal for one person.
Farmers’ market quesadilla at Mi Mero Mole, $7.50
Most menu items at this spot specializing in Mexico City “guisados” (which they describe as “stews and stir-fries”) are over $8. But several vegetarian options make the cut-off. Though the memela with rajas (a thick tortilla covered in roasted green chiles, cream and black beans) was a bargain at $6.75, the more interesting choice was the very Portland-meets-Mexico farmers’ market quesadilla. It’s served on a fresh, nutty-tasting tortilla house-made with fresh nixtamalized corn dough from La Milpa, a tortilleria outside of town. Ingredients shift, but on my visit included leeks, corn, hen of the wood mushrooms, squash blossoms and dried cherry tomatoes. (Check their Facebook page for the latest iteration.)
Honorable mentions: Tabor Bread served me a very tasty $7.50 sandwich of their homemade tomato-onion jam, sheep’s milk feta and sprouts on their European-style dark rye, but it’s not a permanent menu item. And at the Sichuan restaurant Lucky Strike I could easily have made a meal of two smallish dishes: spicy dan dan noodles with ground peanuts, and the tender pork and cabbage jiaozi dumplings in spicy, delectably oily sauce. Together they’re $8, but only during happy hour.
Correction: September 5, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the price of the truffle fries at Little Big Burger and, thus, the total price of the meal at the restaurant. The fries are $2.75, not $3.75, which makes the meal of the cheeseburger and fries $7 not $8.
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