Three New Portland Restaurants to Try This Fall
Portland Cà Phê founder Kim Dam (left), Matta chef Richard Le, and HeyDay doughnuts founder Lisa Nguyen partnered to open the Vietnamese American breakfast spot Mémoire Cà Phê on NE Alberta.
If there’s a time to start paying attention to Portland’s newest culinary arrivals, it’s after Labor Day. Many restaurateurs who intend to open their projects in the summer serve their first plates in the fall, after navigating inevitable permit or construction roadblocks. Those that did open in summer ditch their training wheels come fall and expand menus and hours. And there’s also the sunny patio pop-ups who strike it big, turning into full-time residencies or full-blown restaurants. We’re still waiting on some anticipated “summer” openings (Ollini, Cafe Olli’s younger sibling, comes to mind), but until then, this quarter’s new kids include a dreamy wine bar pop-up, a long-awaited Vietnamese American breakfast gem, and a surprise Westmoreland stunner.
The menu at Mémoire Cà Phê blends Dam, Le, and Nguyen’s talents to riff on American and Vietnamese breakfast staples.
Mémoire Cà Phê
vernon
This Northeast Alberta café comes from a powerhouse trio of industry cool kids: Richard Le, the man behind cart-turned-pop-up Matta; Kim Dam, the Vietnamese coffee champion of Portland Cà Phê fame; and Lisa Nguyen, pastry maven of the rice flour doughnut shop, HeyDay. Together, they opened Mémoire as both a cheeky, creative counter service restaurant slinging Vietnamese remixes of American breakfast staples and as an homage to their parents. It’s a tricky balance to nail—earnest but laid-back, punctilious to heirloom recipes yet escaping tedium. Whether you have the backstory or not, dishes at Mémoire feel original and imaginative while remaining firmly attached to their tender roots. A thick slab of pork belly “bacon,” caramelized in a fish sauce glaze, lounges on a sweet and chewy pandan waffle. A rice bowl that eats like a smothered hash brown is a fish-sauce-gravy-drenched relic of Matta’s cart menu, once a Sunday brunch destination on Northeast Couch. The rice bowl, as well as a knockout breakfast burrito sporting avocado salsa and scrambled eggs, can come with that same pork belly, but the umami-rich roasted oyster mushrooms are just as satiating. Sip on an iced coffee fortified with salted sweet cream or topped with a rich egg cream while you wait. —Brooke Jackson-Glidden
Fallow’s Rest Wild is an enthusiastically farm- and field-to-table restaurant from the team behind the Southeast Portland café Bastion.
Fallow’s Rest Wild
Sellwood-moreland
Tucked away in Westmoreland, Fallows Rest Wild occupies a spot within a Mediterranean-vibed mansion off a leafy stretch of Southeast Milwaukie Avenue. From the team behind Bastion, the popular café just down the street (not to be confused with the coffee shop on Mississippi), Fallow’s intimate dining room already overflows onto the patio on weekend evenings. The restaurant’s emphasis on regeneratively farmed meats, wild caught fish, and Oregon-grown produce checks all the typical farm-to-table boxes. Hearty rye toast holds soft scrambled eggs studded with trout roe and tangy pickled ramps. Forbidden rice risotto is a vehicle for peak-season chanterelles and tendrils of crispy leeks. From the “Animal” portion of the menu, Alaskan salmon with crackly skin counters a silky vadouvan curry, classically paired with an apple-herb slaw for a high note. Summer echoes through some dishes, as well: Five spice–scented mushrooms and roasted shishito peppers, served over gingered coconut yogurt, get the fresh pop of pickled blueberries. Everything is gluten and dairy free, but no dish here feels like a compromise. —Daniel Barnett
The late chef Naomi Pomeroy’s final restaurant, L’Echelle, is operating as a counter-service wine bar until the adjacent restaurant space is ready.
L’Echelle
richmond
Calling this spot a new restaurant may be a stretch. L’Echelle, a bistro originally developed by restaurateur Luke Dirks and the late, legendary chef Naomi Pomeroy, is operating out of its pop-up space for the moment, down a stately brick hallway next to Pomeroy’s other legacy project, Cornet Custard. Eventually, it will move into permanent digs on the other side of the building, in the former Woodsman Tavern space. At present, it feels more like a wine bar: glasses of Champagne and assorted plates ordered from a small counter to sip and snack on in the high-ceilinged dining room or, if the weather behaves, in the garden out back. Pomeroy may be gone, but the dishes feel true to her culinary rigor and inventive take on French fare. Her emphasis on technique lives on in L’Echelle’s chickpea panisse, textbook blonde and crunchy outside and mashed potato luscious inside. At a recent dinner: gently poached albacore in a subtle tonnato, crowned with crunchy tuna skin cracklings. Duck confit, served over brothy braised beans, leaned French-Creole. Maybe it’s the cure on the confit duck, almost akin to tasso, or the yellow bell pepper and celery à la Cajun mirepoix (the Holy Trinity), or the muffaletta-esque green olive winking at New Orleans. Regardless, the dish is as clever as it is delicious. —BJG
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