April 12, 2009 “Cocina de Tilly” Portland, OR

It had to happen sooner or later. I have a miserable head cold and wasn’t up to the task of finding a restaurant and spreading disease to other patrons.

Very conveniently located for two people, I found this place to be an excellent choice this morning. The menu is a bit limited. The waitstaff greets you and tells you to “sit down and try not to sneeze on anything” and “you get what you get so I hope you like it”. My breakfast was complemented by imported Starbucks coffee, Zicam, and a Sunday Oregonian. The turkey scramble as you see it here is a mixture of Italian seasoned ground turkey, eggs, red pepper, parsley, diced garlic, tomatoes and cheese. The chef earns bonus points for the cinnamon roll, strawberries and bananas on the side.

Since both dishes were the same today, I will use this spot to give you a rare “behind the scenes look” of a breakfast chef in action. The blinding speed with which she creates the turkey scramble is too much for my cell phone cam to keep up with.

The food here is top notch, although I found the environment a little strange. This place had a petting zoo with a spoiled cat that makes a bed out of brown paper. I would highly recommend this breakfast, but I understand that reservations are nearly impossible to get since the kitchen is typically closed on Sunday mornings.

Location: Undisclosed, Portland, OR

April 5, 2009 “La Provence Bistro and Bakery” Lake Oswego

The web is full of mixed reviews on this restaurant, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on arrival. Some folks rave about the food and some gripe about creamer packages on the table. I found this to be well worth your breakfast dollars, even if I did continue my toast streak of having to ask for previously ordered toast! It’s a running gag now and I’m not sure why.

When you walk in the door here you are greeted by two large glass counters. These are stuffed full of all sorts of wonderful heart-attack-helper items. The look reminded me of the cafe at Disneyland that was trying to be french. Maybe I didn’t spend enough time in Paris, but I never encountered a restaurant that looked like either La Provence or the Disneyland breakfast spot. From the central counters, La Provence has plenty of seating on either side. We were seated pretty quickly even though it was packed with people on a Sunday morning.

 Tilly doesn’t need an excuse to order crepes. If crepes are on the menu, there is a good chance it will end up on our table. These were light, fluffy and filled with blueberry goodness.

I am a week late in posting this review, and I usually refer to the menu to remember the exact name of what I ordered. As punishment for being a lazy blogger, the web gods have decided to make the restaurant website unavailable today. This was an omelette with all sorts of good stuff in it. I remember specifically whole chunks of garlic, and a balsamic salsa on top. It really was a great dish and I found myself comparing it to the unique Zephyr omelette from Beaterville Cafe a few weeks back. The rosemary potatoes were wonderful also. The menu link is gone, but both of these dishes were less than $10 and worth every cent.

It’s no surprise that a place like this offers a full espresso bar. Tilly took advantage of the situation and one-upped my coffee cup. I think she likes sipping coffee out of a soup bowl. I will admit it looked better than mine.

Overall, I would say this place is worth a visit. If you are a dining snob, this isn’t a 5 star atmosphere, but most of us care about the breakfast being served and don’t care that the floors are concrete.

Location: 15964 Boones Ferry Rd, Lake Oswego, OR 97035

March 29, 2009 “Voodoo Doughnut Too” NE Portland

“The magic is in the hole”. This is the slogan Voodoo Doughnut chooses to put on everything, including (but not limited to) posters, Tshirts, and yes… panties. This is not a conventional breakfast, but if you feel like shocking yourself with lots of sugar, step right up!

We visited one of two locations in the Portland area. The original spot is on 3rd and Burnside. The pink building is apparently the sequel, but I decided to try this one because the parking was probably easier. Since Voodoo is open for 21 hours a day, it wasn’t really a surprise to find a somewhat thrashed interior. The floor was littered with pieces of Cap’n Crunch and Fruit Loops. While breakfast cereal is colorful, even the most skilled doughnut eater would have trouble keeping pieces from leaping off and making an escape to anywhere but the mouth. The art work and collection of random things are fun to look at, but I wouldn’t recommend it to religious types on a Sunday morning.

I am a fan of Fruit Loops. Having them on a doughnut was too good to pass up. After downing this and chasing it with coffee, I decided that it is possible to have too much of a good thing. This was like an explosion of sweet. Tilly opted for the more conventional coconut on chocolate work of art to the left there.

A Voodoo Dozen gives you 13 random pieces picked by the person helping behind the counter for $8.50. As you can see here we got everything from a boring glazed donut to the perfectly purple powdered ”Grape Ape” at the bottom.

I think this place might be more suited to a Saturday night than a Sunday morning. The doughnuts are great and you will find variety like no other spot I’ve ever heard of. I encourage you to click on the links to see the menu and descriptions, they have a great website. You can’t even compare them to a Krispy Kreme because it’s like comparing apples…and a circus.

Location: 1501 NE Davis, Portland, OR 97232

March 22, 2009 “Darcy’s Restaurant, Bar & Lottery”, North Portland

Darcy’s is a fine example of a place that I never would have bothered to enter before Oregon’s Non Smoking law went into effect. In the past, if you saw a lottery sign on the door, that meant you could cut through the air to see the person on the other side of the table. This place featured lottery as part of it’s business name.

We actually drove clear out to North Portland in search of the Little Red Bike Cafe. LRBC doesn’t have a waiting list, but chooses to have you arm wrestle other patrons to see who gets to sit at one of two tables. Since we also happened to be a party of four this morning, we considered other options. Darcy’s is directly across the street.

The interior is exactly what you might expect. Typical bar with some booth tables and plenty of machines to gamble your spare cash while waiting for breakfast. Our waitress was very attentive since we were one of two tables with people seated. It’s funny that the standing room only place on the other side of the street was so crowded when Darcy’s has open seating, great food, and no line…. just because the front looks like a dive.

Since the competition is known for the Sunday only French toast, I will start with Tilly and John’s choice of the Apple Cinnamon French Toast. Tilly opted to have hers slathered in the apple pie goodness while John had the fruit on the side. It looked pretty good since they start with apple cinnamon bread before they even start cooking it. It might have been even better because we half expected a bloody mary and toast to be the only things available on the menu!

Teri had a simple veggie omelette with hashbrowns and wheat toast. Nothing spectacular here, but a cheap decent meal with no complaints. I just noticed that my menu link does not show all of the current items so its possible they recently changed cooks, management or both. We like the guy in the kitchen today!

Continuing with the trend of ordering the most unique item I can find on a menu, this was called the “Darcy’s Cure”. The first top down picture doesn’t do it justice. This is skillet potatoes, link sausage, bacon, onions, cheese, salsa, topped with 3 eggs and served with toast for good measure.

Here is a cutaway view to give you an idea of what is hiding under the egg layer. I gave it my best shot to finish the plate, but didn’t quite get there. I don’t know if the name of this plate is supposed to cure you from a hangover or cure you from walking the rest of the day. The food was absolutely delicious, but I probably had at least two link sausages left on the plate when I was finished. I double dog dare someone to finish this in a sitting.

If you find yourself in North Portland you could do alot worse than Darcy’s. The prices are great, the food is good, and it’s something of a secret apparently since we had the place to ourselves. I never expected to have a truly worthy breakfast in this bar\restaurant and was pleasantly surprised.

Location: 4804 N Lombard St, Portland, OR 97203

March 15, 2009 “Beaterville Cafe” North Portland

We didn’t actually find Beaterville Cafe on our own. This was a friends suggestion and he is now considered a good friend since the place turned out to be GREAT!

The theme of this small cafe is the clever use of old car parts as seen in the picture of a large planter box. The inside of the restaurant is adorned with hub caps, grills, license plates, whatever. Some of the benches outside were built with the front end of an old wreck.

Beaterville is literally standing room only on Sunday, but people waiting outside don’t care. Why? Because some genius decided to allow people to serve themselves coffee from the front area to sip on while they waited. Why doesn’t every restaurant with a line do this in the morning? Once a coffee drinker has a warm cup in hand, they really don’t care if it takes 30 minutes to get a table anymore.

The menu here is cute, click on one of the pictures to see it. I was surprised by our two person table in the back and decided to snap a picture. They don’t want to waste time with bringing individual things to tables, so they plant every possible item there from the start. We have salt, pepper, two kinds of Tabasco, ketchup, cream, sugar, hawaiian sugar, strawberry jam and maple syrup. We had half of the table real estate to use for actual eating. I was really amused by this when Tilly received her pancake later. The waitress asked if she wanted fake maple or real maple syrup. Tilly was surprised by the question, shrugged and said real maple. After all this table effort, an individual trip was made to replace that syrup bottle anyway. Penny pinchers take note, that real maple will cost you a buck and a quarter.

Feeling a bit guilty about last weeks boring breakfast choice, I ordered the Zephyr Scrambler. The eggs had spinach, broccoli, mushrooms and a great curry flavor mixed in. Curry and breakfast…. wonderful stuff! This was rounded out by home fries and a croissant. The menu actually showed toast options were free of wonder bread. I can avoid sourdough, even the cracked wheat sourdough, if I know the score going in! Is plain white toast that bad or is it going the way of cigarettes? White toast is rare lately!

Tilly went simple today with the 1 + 1 + 2. A pancake, a scrambled egg, 2 pieces of bacon. It is what it is, no surprises here.

We really do recommend this spot if you aren’t in a huge hurry. Depending on your timing, you might be waiting outside for a bit. Wonderful service, wonderful food!

Location: 2201 N Killingsworth St, Portland, OR

March 8, 2009 “Davidson’s Casual Dining” Tigard, OR

Our vacation went from Saturday to Saturday. I will admit the Davidson’s choice was a comfortable standby and a place we have been to many times. They haven’t been mentioned in the blog yet, so we decided to save ourselves some research after waking up late and adjusting to the loss of an extra hour.

This little restaurant is close to home and we haven’t had a bad experience here in over a year of visits. The staff is always smiling and friendly, even when the place is crammed full of people. The real trick to a Sunday morning Davidson’s visit is to get there well before 10:00 am. After that, a rather large church located just behind them finishes services and the restaurant fills to capacity.

After a solid day of airport and airplane food the day before, I was keeping it simple and my choice here is a bit uninspired. Bacon? check. Eggs? check. Not pictured, the sour dough toast. I think I have a toast curse. A few posts back I had some issue with toast. This time I asked for white toast and was given sourdough (which I really don’t like for some reason). I have never had anyone in Davidson’s ever get an order wrong until the day we are there intent on blogging. This was a new waitress, and lets face it…it’s just toast. I’m not one to complain to a busy waitress, so I ate it and moved on.

Tilly apologizes for this picture. Tired from the trip, she was on autopilot and knocked into that whip cream stack on the strawberry waffles before realizing I needed to snap a photo. She assures me that strawberry waffles taste perfect regardless of the position of the third whip cream stack. I believe her.

If you happen to be in the Tigard area, you really can’t go wrong with a Davidson’s breakfast. It’s great food (if simple) and unlike some of the other places in town, plenty of comfortable seating.

Location: 12830 SW Pacific Hwy, Tigard, OR 97223

March 1, 2009 “Kountry Kitchen” Kapaa, HI

I will admit my original breakfast plan for vacation was to find some elaborate brunch with an ocean view, just so I could post it here. As it turns out, the island of Kauai has plenty of ocean front dining, but it starts at the lunch and dinner hours. I could have put some more effort into finding a place with the ocean view, but since we flew in Saturday night, we decided to just drive up the road and stop at the first obvious breakfast spot. The first obvious spot was a Mcdonalds. We kept driving!

This is Kountry Kitchen, a roadside restaurant with some decent food and a long wait. The weather was actually bad that morning so people were cramming into the tiny waiting area to keep out of the rain showers. With plenty of time to browse the menu, you can choose which massive calorie meal you would like before you are seated.

My choice was chocolate chip pancakes. These were really, really, really good. The only fault I could find is that they are a moisture sponge. Nothing will make you more thirsty than a chocolate chip pancake. This is not an issue as long as the staff has enough time to keep a water glass full. A very busy Sunday morning is not a good time to expect that.

Kountry Kitchen doesn’t have a website that I can link to a menu because they don’t need one! There was a line when we arrived and a line when we left. With a constant stream of tourists and real estate on one of the only major roads, they don’t need to waste time with advertising.

Tilly went for the unique menu choice this weekend with Coconut French Toast. You can tell by the picture it was a great breakfast idea. Each table is stocked with maple and coconut syrup in case you want to drown your coconut in coconut. She had no complaints.

Overall the restaurant is worth a visit, although I wouldn’t suggest doing it on a Sunday. The staff has trouble keeping up with capacity crowd. Later in the week we also tried “Eggberts” restaurant and found banana and macadamia nut pancakes. Either place will make sure you are fed and ready for whatever vacation days hold for you.

Location: 1485 Kuhio Hwy, Kapaa, Kauai, HI 96746

February 22, 2009 “Cafe Du Berry” SW Portland

“Is this another Bertie Lou’s?” This was my first thought when we went through the doors of Cafe Du Berry this morning. It looked like another tiny place with a couple of tables, a register and a kitchen. This place had another floor upstairs where most of the seating was hiding.

Speaking of hiding, when you drive down Macadam Ave looking for this restaurant, you really need to know the address because there is no sign on the main road. The building looks like it shared with a mechanic and the only sign is on a side street, nowhere near the front door.

Before we left the house, we actually found the menu online…sort of. Clicking on the picture there will take you to a web site, but the prices on the site aren’t even really close to the prices on the menu when you get there. Most items are actually $10.00.  Beyond that little issue, the menu I did hold in the restaurant told me the waffle would arrive with “hashbrowns, toast and fruit”. Our waiter arrived and I ordered white toast. He shook his head at me and said it doesn’t come with toast. I pointed to it on his menu and he just shook his head again and said “No toast”.

Ok, so no toast this morning.

This is my toastless waffle plate. Pretty standard waffle, no big deal, accompanied by almost-but-not-quite-ripe strawberries and a brick of hashbrowns that was wet when you cut through it. The banana was great, in fact a highlight of the meal.

Tilly ordered a standard two egg breakfast. The funny thing about her meal is that it came with both hashbrowns and (wait for it…) toast!

Toast does exist here.  She was treated to the same strawberry/banana/hashbrown brick and overall was ok with her meal. This plate also happened to be one that was less than $10.

It didn’t take long to work through these plates but it did take quite awhile to receive a bill. We finally made it downstairs and were greeted by the cook/cashier. He looked at my bill and informed me that I should have tried the french toast. That would have been good information to have before the meal but I understand this was an attempt at marketing so we might return for future french toast. He went on to declare that one of the best plates they had was the “Steak and Eggs”. I informed him that I didn’t see steak and eggs on his menu because I might have considered ordering that sort of thing. Our new friend reached for the menu and pointed it out..right in the middle of the LUNCH menu. If you happen to be one of the 10 people on the planet that reads this besides us AND happens to make a living publishing menus… please find this guy.

In conclusion, some helpful tips from someone that knows nothing about running a restaurant:

1) Place the sign so the main road (Macadam) might see it. The customer eating breakfast in the window happened to be cute, otherwise there was no way to tell you were serving breakfast instead of tires.

2) Serve fully edible fruit or don’t bother. Nobody likes half of a dry strawberry.

3) If you have stuff that’s as good as the exit speech, please put it on the menu and highlight it because the waiter isn’t helping your cause.

4) A McDonalds hashbrown is a better product. Harsh, but very true.

Location: 6439 SW Macadam Ave, Portland  OR 97239

February 15, 2009 “Bertie Lou’s Cafe” – Sellwood

Sometimes the simple cup of coffee is the best cup of coffee. This is an interesting dining experience.

From the moment you walk in the door, it is standing room only.

Space is at a premium here since the square footage is equal to a small 1 bedroom apartment. Its a testament to the great food when you find people waiting for however long it takes, maybe even outside in the cold, to get a meal at Bertie Lou’s. You don’t have to wonder what the food might be like. Before you see a menu (from the moment you sign your name on a wait list) you can look over the counter and watch the cooks on the other side slinging plates while working shoulder to shoulder. The entire kitchen operation is right there in plain view.  Just beyond is a single room that seats two dozen people, TOTAL. The staff works this place like a perfect little jigsaw puzzle, moving people and food at a good pace.

The menu is amusing with the first item being a Sellwood Breakfast that is available to residents for just under 8 dollars, but anyone else is subject to a 50% upcharge and an 80% handling fee. Sadly, we did not qualify as Sellwood residents.

We had a late start this morning so I was plenty hungry by the time we sat down. I am trying to justify my choice of “The Works” plate. I’m pretty certain this meal shortened my lifespan by 6 months, and I would probably do it again. Works starts off with a bed of home fried potatoes. This is surrounded by 2 eggs, biscuits and some of the best gravy you will ever sample. Then they top it with bacon and link sausage. If you happened to read last weeks disappointment with gigantic Portuguese sausage, THIS is what link sausage should be. This breakfast was so good I might have to find an excuse to visit on a different day of the week. I have no idea what coffee they serve, but it was the perfect complement to this heart attack helper.

Perhaps Tilly was trying to make up for last week as well. She went for the “Cinnamon French Toast” and loved it. I know this because not only was it all gone, but I was never offered a bite in between!

Find a way to go to this place. Bring a healthy appetite and only one friend. We were seated much sooner than most simply because there were only two of us. This little spot is cramped, quirky and I’m pretty sure every staff member has more than one tattoo. They know what they are doing and will serve you a wonderful meal, smiling even though they could use another 2000 sq ft to work in.

Location: 8051 SE 17th Ave, Portland, OR 97202

February 8, 2009 – Cafe Sintra, SunRiver, OR

Tilly and I found ourselves outside of Portland this weekend for a trip to SunRiver. While the restaurant choices in that area are limited, this one fit perfectly into our Sunday plan (other than the “not being in Portland” part).

Cafe Sintra offers breakfast with a Portuguese twist. The interior feels like a large coffee shop and you place your orders at the counter before seating.

I always find that approach weird when I pay with a credit card. Do I tip them before they serve me later? What is the proper protocol there? They do bring the meal to the table, but you fend for yourself when you want water or anything else. Odd.

On to the food!

Tilly ordered French toast. Ordering French toast in a portuguese cafe apparently results in sour dough bread dipped in vanilla custard with a dash of sugar. She liked the taste of this combination but was surprised by the rather hard crust shell around it. A sure sign of this was her “pancake raid” at the end of my meal. I usually steal her food, not the other way around!

My order was the “Pancake Trio” which was advertised as pancakes, eggs, and link sausage. But wait..that was Italian link sausage which apparently means it is the size of a bratwurst. This shouldn’t bother me. I’m sure it tastes fine. My stomach was prepared for a brown and serve size sausage and this was a bit of a surprise.

The pancakes were great. They had a cornbread taste to them, not a typical bisquick mix going on here. Let’s face it, scrambled eggs are scrambled eggs anywhere you go. If they aren’t runny, you are probably in good shape. These were good.

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This spot has unique real estate that could take advantage of people that didn’t want to drive 15 minutes into the next town. Thankfully, the prices were decent, the food was good (even if not what we expected) and the people were friendly. Worth a visit if you happen to be in the village!

Location: 4 N Ponderosa Rd, Sunriver, OR