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PS: I'm going to be in Portland in the next 2 weeks. Would you recommend any good restaurants for me and a friend who is moving there? Apparently there is this wing place called Fire Mountain or something, and I love wings, so anything of that sort would be awesome. Oh, and whatever Portland is known for.
Sure... Fire on the Mountain is a good place for wings and they've got like three locations on the Eastside(and their own brewery now. They've got like 12 different homemade hot sauces--fun place to go to, but can be a bit crowded as they're pretty popular. For really good sandwiches, Bunk Sandwiches is right across the river from downtown, and is a fun bar as well. Best BBQ in town is Podnah's pit on NE Killingsworth--excellent Texas-style brisket.
What is Portland known for? Food carts for one... Just go to one of the downtown "pods"--my favorite area is around SW Alder in between 9th and 10th. One cool thing is that while Portland isn't diverse in term of ethnicity--you can find a lot of different ethnic food styles run by immigrants. I mean Portland might not have a lot of Indonesian people, but we've got multiple Indonesian food carts. A few of my favorites are Nong's Khao Man Gai(good Thai chicken), Tabor(huge fried schinztelwich sandwich and good Eastern European food cooked by a Czech family), Brunch Box has good burgers,Byblos has the best gyros, Viking Soul Food on SE Belmont has good Scandinavian food. Walk around downtown, or on the SE strips like Hawthorne and Belmont and you'll see plenty of food carts serving crepes, sausages, Thai, Ethiopian, Cuban, Caribbean, Mexican, Eastern European, Hawaiian, Cambodian, Canadian poutine, and so on.
This site has all the info you'll need about the ever changing food cart scene and where they're at.Food Carts Portland
What else does Portland do well? Vietnamese and Thai(Pok Pok, Pho Van, and Silk--and Ping down in Chinatown) are good here as are some of the Japanese Izakayas(Biwa and Tanuki), El Toro Bravo and Tasty 'N Sons are excellent for tapas/small plate style food up in North Portland. Ken's Pizza is good, Kenny and Zukes for Jewish deli stuff. There's the old school expensive steakhouse/seafood places like Jake's Crawfish, Jake's Grill, and Ringside(real classic old steakhouse downtown but expensive). I won't bother recommending any Chinese or Mexican since while there's some better offerings these days, if you're coming from LA, it's not worth checking out for the most part. There's also a lot of good ice cream places or bakeries though that's not really my specialty. Farmers markets will have good food to try as well--and there's a lot of local places specializing in local stuff like salmon, wine, and locally grown produce. In general Portland is more eclectic recently in terms of food offerings--and you can pretty much find a good example of a lot of different cuisines-though we might not have the numbers to compare a bigger city.
you can't compare INO to 5 guys. 5 guys is a better burger but also 3 times as expensive. For eating out on a consistent basis, INO. For a slightly tastier (jucier) and more filling experience, 5 guys.
Five Guys is greasier, but I wouldn't put it above In-N-Out still.
-And you'd be wrong. All things being equal (and they are, don't even kid yourself with this best of the breed stuff), the closer a city is to an agricultural monster (which CA most certainly is), the better the food will be. Did you know that there are many foodies (on websites like Chowhound) who rate Fresno as the best region for food in the country? Why do you think top chefs spare no expense to get quality ingredients flown in, for maximum freshness? They obviously have great skill, yet freshness is of upmost importance to them. Many even have gardens adjacent to their restaurants. Freshness of ingredients is vitally important.
-New York does not have a great burger scene either. If it did, these guys would have never felt compelled to prank Manhattanites with the promise of an In-N-Out:
-My list wasn't meant to be comprehensive, merely a sample of some of the heavy hitting cuisines New York does not win "hands down" in. Having the best Burmese food doesn't make up mediocre Mexican fare IMO. I'm not trying to knock New York (ok, maybe a little ), but the knee jerk reaction that it MUST have the best food in the country is totally unfounded.
Um, all things being equal? If you think all chefs are equal footing, then i guess thats your opinion, but i disagree and im sure others would too. And i've never argued that freshness is not important. It is. However, to me the technique and skills of the chef will easily trump any preceived "freshness" or "quality" of ingredient. I believe a highly skilled chef with sub-par ingredients will put out better food than a sub-par chef with high "quality" ingredients.
But looking back at your original post, its seems the frustrations are around NYC 'way-above', and I would agree to that, since good food can be found in many areas of the US than ever before, and the gap separating the NYC and say the #5 city is not as wide as some believe
NYC's food is dense, walkable and has good public transit!
Even in delis, a NYC forte, it has to scratch and claw to rate with L.A. (and don't scoff; L.A. has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country).
Deli food isn't Jewish food. It's American food. It's like saying Mexican food is Tex-Mex style burritos and the like.
The huge Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens barely have any delis, because they're totally inauthentic. Jewish food tends to be Mediterranean/Israeli (kibbe, falafel, schnitzel, etc.)
I would be very surprised if NYC didn't have the best Jewish food on earth outside of Israel. And I'm not talking pastrami.
And I would be very surprised if you were correct re. Chinese food. NYC has more Chinese than either LA or SF. I can't imagine that its food wouldn't be at least as good. Flushing is incredible, with restaurants from every obscure corner of China.
And I would be very surprised if you were correct re. Chinese food. NYC has more Chinese than either LA or SF. I can't imagine that its food wouldn't be at least as good. Flushing is incredible, with restaurants from every obscure corner of China.
This debate has a separate thread and all, but... have you ever eaten Chinese in LA or SF before? Or been to any Chinese or Asian nabes? NYC totally takes a backseat to LA and SF in this regard. I won't argue that NYC has better Italian (though Boston's is better imho), but as far as Chinese? No.
This debate has a separate thread and all, but... have you ever eaten Chinese in LA or SF before? Or been to any Chinese or Asian nabes? NYC totally takes a backseat to LA and SF in this regard. I won't argue that NYC has better Italian (though Boston's is better imho), but as far as Chinese? No.
Though NYC's Chinese population is booming, so I think it's possible to make that argument in recent years (or in the near future).
This debate has a separate thread and all, but... have you ever eaten Chinese in LA or SF before? Or been to any Chinese or Asian nabes?
Yes, I have been all over the SGV (Monterey Park area) and it doesn't have better Chinese than Flushing.
They're pretty similar, though Flushing is much more urban, somewhat more Northern Chinese and slightly less Taiwanese than the SGV.
It doesn't really seem logical that a metro area with a huge Chinese population would have inferior Chinese food than a metro with a smaller Chinese population. It is, of course, possible, but not very likely.
Yes, I have been all over the SGV (Monterey Park area) and it doesn't have better Chinese than Flushing.
They're pretty similar, though Flushing is much more urban, somewhat more Northern Chinese and slightly less Taiwanese than the SGV.
It doesn't really seem logical that a metro area with a huge Chinese population would have inferior Chinese food than a metro with a smaller Chinese population. It is, of course, possible, but not very likely.
Well, one thing I like about the SGV is the amount of fresh Chinese ingredients and products they have available. I have relatives that are involved in the food industry there with the actual products themselves as well as some agriculture for things (like the chinese celery that is way different from American celery) which are not easy to find and usually substituted. I think the Chinese community being traditionally larger on the west coast (and more affluent) has given them time and capital to set up these supply chains, but given how big NYC's chinese community is and how incredibly well second generation Chinese-Americans do economically, I'm guessing that NYC is pretty close or already there overall with these supply chains. I actually bought some locally made shrimp egg dry noodles and salt zongzi in Sunset Park the other day and they were made in New Jersey.
You also brought an interesting point to mind: how much of the rather large Taiwanese population (especially in southern California) lists itself as Taiwanese and not Chinese in the census? I wonder what the stats are on that. In addition to that, what about Chinese from Vietnam (who were booted after the war) and other parts of Southeast Asia (large component of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia)? I know that minorities and relatively affluent (which would be the Chinese in Southeast Asia) are traditionally the first to emigrate when things hit the fan, so what do they get listed as? I knew a large number of Chinese from Southeast Asia in socal, but I never really thought about how they would list themselves in the census.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 08-01-2012 at 10:35 AM..
Yes, I have been all over the SGV (Monterey Park area) and it doesn't have better Chinese than Flushing.
No. Just, no.
We could debate it to death, and I'm not going to, because at the end of the day, taste is subjective, but the SGV still wins.
Quote:
It doesn't really seem logical that a metro area with a huge Chinese population would have inferior Chinese food than a metro with a smaller Chinese population. It is, of course, possible, but not very likely.
It's not like LA only has a few thousand Chinese people in Chinatown and nothing else. LA's Chinese population isn't far off; it has more Asians of other ethnicities; it has more ethnic Chinese of other nationalities; and, it has better, cheaper, and more plentiful access to fresh produce - there are many Asian-owned farms in California that specialize in Asian produce, as OyCrumbler noted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
You also brought an interesting point to mind: how much of the rather large Taiwanese population (especially in southern California) lists itself as Taiwanese and not Chinese in the census? I wonder what the stats are on that. In addition to that, what about Chinese from Vietnam (who were booted after the war) and other parts of Southeast Asia (large component of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia)? I know that minorities and relatively affluent (which would be the Chinese in Southeast Asia) are traditionally the first to emigrate when things hit the fan, so what do they get listed as? I knew a large number of Chinese from Southeast Asia in socal, but I never really thought about how they would list themselves in the census.
The girl I'm dating is ethnically Chinese, but her parents were born in Thailand. They speak both Thai and Chinese at home. I also dated a Vietnamese-Chinese gal, same deal. They refer to themselves as alternately Chinese or Thai/Vietnamese depending on the circumstance, and would have been counted as incoming immigrants from Thailand or Vietnam regardless of their ethnicity.
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), but the knee jerk reaction that it MUST have the best food in the country is totally unfounded.
I don't see it coming for a long time, if ever.
