Portland’s Best and Most Iconic Restaurant Dishes

Portland has had its share of flash-in-the-pan food fads and one-ingredient wonders, but seemingly just as often, a bar or restaurant slots something onto its menu that’s destined for culinary immortality. This city is teeming with legendary restaurateurs, inventive chefs, and adventurous eaters, and the result is a vibrant mix of traditional heavy hitters and irreverent new upstarts.

What’s Portland’s signature dish? Hard to say. Folks here are as likely to recommend a local dive with a reliable fryer as to point you toward the current critical darling. Sometimes a local hit breaks containment and makes national news, but that’s rarely the best barometer of where people actually like to eat (to quote former editor Brooke Jackson-Glidden, “ask any Portlander the last time they went out and bought themselves a bacon maple bar”). But that means there’s no shortage of corners to explore. No one quality defines every point on this map, except that each one sticks the landing in a way that has endeared them to locals and visitors alike in a competitive and often unforgiving food scene.

Read More