Portland’s Most Exciting New Restaurants in 2024

Portland food conversations now teeter between doom and delirium. It’s either “Winter is coming!” or “The Michelin Guide is coming?” Struggles are real. Pillars have crumbled. Anxious diners ask: Is Portland over? But never count Portland out. We don’t know who will survive or inspire the future. And between the cracks of worry, a quiet rebirth is percolating—scrappy but high-minded places serving their own food languages, soundtracks, and infectious pride. Four new spots make the case: Portland’s fire will not, cannot, be extinguished. 

Astera is refined and post-punk rock. Just don’t call it vegan.

For years, at his now-shuttered cult destination Farm Spirit, Aaron Adams searched for a radical definition of local eating, sans animals. It was kombucha-forward, probiotic-fizzing, provocative, and entertaining, even if I had to pound peanut butter cups afterward to restore my pH balance. 

Which is to say, I admired Farm Spirit. But I crave what it evolved into last January: Astera, a dinner party with animal rights, the Pixies, and French cookbooks. The mode is bold but more relatable, loose but serious, sometimes sublime, sometimes half-baked, and never boring. The best dishes could step into the ring with a Michelin contender’s amuse-bouche or a Paris baker’s patisserie. Bottom line: This is now compelling food, satisfying in deep, resonant ways. 

The setup: Twenty souls gather for a two-hour dinner in a room of Kinfolk cool and grand junk-store art. The night unfolds with soliloquies on regional
ingredients, love letters to local farmers, bad Dad jokes and curated post-punk soundtracks. Diners applaud for the engaged staff throughout. It’s no exaggeration to say this is one of America’s most original vegan destinations. 

Forget the wines. Fermented zero-proof drinks are the show here. They’re even better, confides star chef Gregory Gourdet—an Astera fan—than their counterparts at Denmark’s legendary Noma. 

Snacks usually include at least one mind-shredder, perhaps an onion stroopwafel
sandwich cookie filled with mushroom-walnut pâté. From there, the night might
veer into lobster mushroom cappelletti sauced like some great spicy enchilada, or a frenzy of berries, tomatoes, and herbs carefully arranged over sweet-tart cucumber ice. 

Desserts keep coming, conceptual excitements and little gems like corn cake madeleines, swooped up with honey made from kombucha. Peak moment: primo cashew ice cream, rolled boisterously in salty pepitas, puffed wild rice, and sunflower seeds, then planted on top of what can only be called liquid blueberry pie. 

Snorts a pork-loving friend: “I would come back here again tomorrow.”

1407 SE Belmont St

Vietnamese coffee, ube waffles, and good vibes at Mémoire Cà Phê. A cheat sheet. 

“Hey, hey, ow. LORD.” James Brown is wailing on the sound system. And who better to articulate the satisfying funk of Vietnamese American brunching—as imagined by three fun-loving friends? Mémoire Cà Phê, which opened in August, is a lit fuse of mom’s omelets, McDonald’s tributes, music, and hot sauce. The tiny space sizzles with T-shirted cooks, eclectic chatter, and heady Vietnamese coffee. Behind the counter: B-boy Richard Le, whose Matta food cart impressively remixed Vietnam and Americana; Portland Cà Phê founder Kim Dam; and baker and HeyDay Doughnuts owner Lisa Nguyen. “We ate as much fast food with our parents as home-cooked meals,” says Le. “This is our homage to our parents, to that shared experience.” It’s a work in progress, but the best dishes here are bucket-list level.

Salt coffee? Hard yes. Cà phê muoˆ’i, the rage in Hueˆ’, floats sweet-salted heavy cream, tasting like possessed marshmallow fluff, over Dam’s potent iced coffee. My brain busted a dance move.

The waffles rule. Think HeyDay mochi doughnut…reborn in a waffle iron, all supreme bounce and chew, in irresistible flavors. Black sesame veers bitter-earthy-toasty; the ube tastes, somehow, like savory Froot Loops. Pandan waffles get the royal “d˘a.c biê.t” treatment—Le’s celestial bacon, flying with fish sauce caramel, a fried egg, and a soak of Thai chile syrup. 

A classic shrimp omelet. It’s thin, big as a Frisbee, lumpy with fat shrimp and blistered tomatoes, full of sweet coconut milk perfume, and draped, lovingly, over jasmine rice. Vietnamese moms everywhere are smiling. 

One major breakfast sandwich. A glorious three-napkin mess: smashed pork patty, crisp hash browns, American cheese, heat-seeking mayo, and a drippy fried egg on Nguyen’s milk bun. My sandwich-fiend friend Pauline nails it: “If this doesn’t wake you up, you’re not human.”

1495 NE Alberta St

Portland’s best new bakery is a roving pastry case. Meet Babcia.

Word is spreading: Babcia’s pastries can make you drool. A day’s haul might
include two kinds of éclairs, chunky peach-rosemary galettes with mom’s all-butter pie crust, and a complex chocolate chunk cookie that makes your knees buckle. Everything is made, grown, fretted over, tight. 

What’s missing? An actual shop.

Tommy Celt and Jade Novarino pop up around Portland on random days in random places, building temporary communities wherever they land. Babcia, Polish for “grandma,” is their tribute to Celt’s long line of family bakers. It’s as much a state of mind as an artisan bakery. Blink and you miss it. Regulars dog the IG account and pray. 

Celt nerds out on locally milled flours; Novarino is a cofounder of Campo Collective, a no-till Hillsboro farm with a “beyond organic” ethos. Their baker-farmer synergy brings it all home: grain-tinged pastry meets radiant produce, offbeat herbal notes, and fresh jam action.

Throw a dart—it’s hard to miss. Savory Danishes are prized among the faithful,
butternut squash to asparagus. Fruit- driven anything is a dopamine-releaser. And watch for paczki doughnuts filled with euphoric plum jam. 

Babcia’s brick-and-mortar dream: a place for baking, art, music, and pay-it-forward pop-ups. If there’s a just world, let it be so.

Random but key observations about Bauman’s on Oak.

Bauman’s Cider Co. has more medals than a four-star general. In April, founder Christine Bauman Walter, craft cider oracle and a fifth-generation farmer, planted a flag on SE Oak Street with a glass list that reads seasonal, playful, erudite. But Bauman’s has bigger ideas, too, about how we eat, drink, and explore. 

Never cared about cider but I’m in.

Best summer hangout. Period. Cider nerds, food hounds, pizza theorists,
elders, moms, and dogs commune on the world’s most chill patio hidden
behind Bauman’s taproom.

Meet The Bear’s DIY cousin. Ponytailed, shorts-donning bread head Daniel
Green spearheads the food plan. He’s resourceful, pickle-mad, and a stickler for details. Just don’t call him chef. 

The employee handbook we all want. The unofficial house motto: “Whatever we want to do, whatever works, loose and flex.” 

Too humble to tell us. Everything—I mean every thing—is made, foraged, fermented, or fished by the small crew. 

Unpredictability rules. In the swirl so far: a pizza and DJ dance party, the rabid turnout for Wednesday-only Burger Nights, and loganberry barbecue ribs toting Green’s apple molasses and a savory syrup made from vegetable scraps.  

Dear god, the bread. I’d return just for Green’s enlightened sourdough, four slices per order, sided by fresh-churned butter in changing flavors, caramelized onion to matcha-tomato leaf. Every sandwich, bun, and loaded toast gets its own bread, potato to rye. Who does this? 

Next level sourcing. Oyster mushrooms are grown nearby in a friend’s driveway greenhouse. “We just want to support these people,” says Green. Amen, brother. Amen.  

The positivity. Happiness is the secret weapon here, down to dishes presented like photographs of kids on their first day of kindergarten. 

Bottom line: A keeper, by any measure.

930 SE Oak St