Portland

Opened in 2007, Beast is the fine-dining restaurant by Naomi Pomeroy, the 2014 James Beard Best Chef NW recipient, and like many Portland greats, it shows how a love for DIY everything can transform a humble space into something stunning, in this case a culinary theater. After recent updates, guests are greeted with sparkling wine, courses display a wider breadth of influence (especially more seasonal pastas and seafood), and brunch is honed to three focused courses for $35 (tip included) to trim the fat. Beast’s backbone remains unchanged, and it still serves that iconic foie gras bon bon and some of the prettiest platings in the city. It also accommodates dietary needs when possible. Just give it advanced notice when making a reservation.

Clyde Common

 Found next to downtown Portland’s Ace Hotel, Clyde Common is the first place many out-of-towners eat. Oddly, it’s also a restaurant that could exist in almost any hip city in America. Chef Carlo Lamagna offers a deliciously esoteric menu filled with less-common ingredients and some intriguing Filipino touches. If you’re looking for basic, look elsewhere. You can start simply enough with a bowl of marinated olives or some gnocchi, though the latter might include black garlic and morels. I’m always happy to see the crunchy pork-shiitake lumpia or pork cheek adobo ramped up with crisp pig ears. Clyde Common was an early adopter of large-format dishes (in other words, entrees big enough to share). Bring a few friends and work your way through a whole fish or a platter of grilled beef ribs with cornbread and celery beer jam. This is food exciting enough to pair with ace bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s cocktails.

One of Portland’s pioneering chefs, Greg Higgins was cultivating relationships between local chefs and farmers long before winning the James Beard Best Chef Northwest award in 2002. But today, Higgins is one of downtown’s best spots for a business lunch or a pre-show dinner, and the service is as close to fine dining as it gets in laid-back Portland. For a more relaxed but still old-school vibe, visit the wood-paneled bar for Totten Inlet mussels steamed in white wine and The Higgins burger of Carman Ranch grass-fed beef.

Two-time James Beard Award winner Gabe Rucker rocks his East Burnside hole-in-the-wall with an open kitchen, an always changing menu, and a firm handle on how to make inventive but mostly accessible food. This is where you’ll find unexpected treats like fennel in your tater tots and foie gras in your profiterole, balanced by impossibly comforting beef cheek bourguignon and twists on classic seared foie gras. If you’re looking for a “special occasion” meal, invest in the chef’s tasting menu. How many happy accidents had to converge to form Le Pigeon? Gabriel Rucker, the two-time James Beard Award winner, had to be looking for work after Gotham Building Tavern closed. The previous restaurant, Colleen’s Bistro, had to install the gorgeous copper hood that lends the space its warm glow. Andy Fortgang, the restaurant’s service guru, had to leave Tom Colicchio’s restaurant empire in New York and move to Portland. And, after nearly a decade in business, the restaurant had to be comfortable continuing to evolve. A meal in May showed Le Pigeon in its best light: cedar-plank trout scattered with plump morels; crisp slivers of goat in a marsh of basil and English peas; and an older dish, smoked and seared foie gras with sablefish and dill, which was the best bite of the evening. If not every dish hits the mark, that’s only because at 10 years old, Le Pigeon remains the city’s most exciting nightly high-wire act. Desserts have long been Le Pigeon’s secret weapon. Recently, those included the signature foie gras profiteroles, a mint-pistachio moon pie and a potpourri-like strawberry shortcake ice cream bar. The youth movement that took hold last year is moving on. Chef de cuisine Andrew Evan Mace and pastry chef Nora Antene left in May. Taking the reins? None other than Rucker himself.

Nong’s Khao Man Gai
This empire is built on a single dish – Hainanese-style poached chicken, supple rice and a gorgeous ginger sauce – that is common in Singapore but was almost impossible to find here before Nong Poonsukwattana opened her eponymous cart. If you’ve never been, I still recommend starting with the original cart downtown (1003 S.W. Alder St.). But for regulars, the brick-and-mortar shop has also earned a spot on this list, if only for the sometimes fickle machine by the counter that churns coconut-lemongrass soft serve. Like the cart near Portland State University (411 S.W. College St.), the restaurant adds to the menu Coca-Cola-braised pork and chicken and broccoli with peanut sauce. Both are fine – the pork especially – but you’re here for the khao man gai, preferably with a small bag of fried chicken skins for sprinkling over the top.

Featuring intensely regional food, wood-fired oven pizza, and a totally accessible menu, Cathy Whims’ Nostrana is a consistent, comforting presence in the local dining scene. The menu embraces a “neighborhood” vibe — Meatball Mondays! Gnocchi Thursdays! — and the space’s barrel-vaulted, exposed-wood ceiling, and tables of chatting guests add to the casual atmosphere. Nostrana straddles that line between “casual-ish” and upscale, and Whims has years of James Beard nominations to prove it. There’s a reason this gracious Southeast Portland restaurant has a wall filled with accolades, including a half-dozen James Beard Award nominations and The Oregonian’s 2006 Restaurant of the Year honors. Chef Cathy Whims and her team serve fine-tuned salads, beautifully blistered Neapolitan pizzas, wood-charred steaks and faithful Italian pastas inspired by Whims’ mentor, the late Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan. Order the Insalata Nostrana, which keeps the best attributes of a Caesar (the dressing, Parmesan and croutons) but ditches romaine in favor of bitter, spicy radicchio. It pairs well with a Negroni, the restaurant’s signature cocktail. Two recent pastas – fettuccine with Hazan’s tomato-butter sauce and snailshell-shaped lumache with a piquant sauce and crunchy pancetta – were remarkable in their distinction. The salt-crusted lamb, smoky rotisserie chicken and luscious porchetta all have their merits. But if you’re on a double date, the dry-aged, salt-crusted bistecca alla Fiorentina in rosemary-garlic oil makes for a night to remember.

This is the Balthazar of Portland, the place that manages to be creative, yet so classic. Whether you’re enjoying mussels frites, escargots, or really interesting Northwest takes on classic French-style cooking, head chef Vitaly Paley remains playful and inventive while never veering too far off the path. For those without the luxury of expense-account dining, a happy hour menu makes the restaurant more accessible with deals like $5 Old Fashioned or $2 oysters

This is one Portland food story that likely needs no introduction: Classically trained chef Andy Ricker moves to Thailand, learns to cook little-known Thai food, and serves up enough Vietnamese chicken wings, boar collar, and noodle soups to snag himself a James Beard Award for Best Chef Northwest. Ricker’s now a certified empire-builder, but it’s worth a trip to the mothership on SE Division if you want to never look at Thai food the same way again.

 RingSide Steakhouse is the Sophia Loren of Portland restaurants: It looks as good at 70 as it did at 35. There’s a clubby, Rat Pack-era charm to the dining room that was only enhanced by a loving 2010 remoedel. One of the city’s oldest family-owned restaurants, and still Portland’s best traditional steakhouse, you won’t find bavette steak, pork secreto or other cuts popular at modern meat houses here. Instead, RingSide stays on Main Street with juicy rib eyes, thick pork chops and fat lobster tails, all seared to order and delivered with a smile (and a fluffy baked potato). Lately, the kitchen has experimented with more ambitious desserts, including a deconstructed bananas Foster. It’s admirable, and well executed, like everything here. Given the ambiance, though, you might wish for something more traditional.