Portland Restaurant: Breken Kitchen

What: Breken Kitchen
Where: 1800 NW 16th Ave
When: Monday - Friday 7am - 5pm
Honeys Heart: Breken Draper Chicken Bowl

I started a job at Children's Cancer Association about a month ago and along with new office digs comes the critical task of finding new coffee shops and lunch spots in close range. Coffee spot? Check. Ovation on NW Overton and 9th serves up a good latte and chai tea. Lunch spot? Check. In addition to Lovejoy Bakery and pretty much everything else closer to Naito in the Pearl, I have a new option! This took a little longer to find due to my initial lofty goal of packing lunch daily to be healthy and save money, but I was finally introduced to Breken Kitchen by some co-workers.

The menu breaks down pretty simply. Soups, sandwiches, bowls, and a lasagna of the day. Clearly I was initially tempted by the cheesy carb-loaded lasagna option, but per a recommendation and a slight obligation to my lunch-time goals I ordered the Breken Draper Chicken Bowl ($9.95) with brown or Jasmine rice, black beans, corn, pickled onions, cherry tomatoes, avocados, chimichurri and house made salsa.



The bowl is simple, but tasty and filling. Something that I could easily recreate, but it's definitely the kind of thing that tastes better when someone else makes it... and puts chimichurri sauce on it.

In my subsequent visit I tried the Albacore Tuna Melt ($9.50) with a simple green salad. The tuna is super simple and the sandwich only includes Tillamook Cheddar, so the star of this show is really Grand Central's fluffy Big Country Bread. It's really very simple comfort food, so maybe $9.50 is a stretch. I think at a future visit the Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup ($6.95) will still provide the benefit of that delicious bread, but for a slightly better deal.



Breken Kitchen also serves breakfast (yet to try) and sports a decent beverage menu. I ordered a latte made with Water Avenue Coffee and later saw that they have wine, cava, and beer. Drinking lunch anyone? Obviously only on Fridays when I work a half day...

Cute vibe, wifi, good food - simple, but satisfying - and multiple drink options. Probably best I didn't know about this when I was working from home. 

Portland Restaurant: Milk Glass Mrkt

What: Milk Glass Mrkt
Where: 2150 N. Killingsworth Street
When: Tuesday-Sunday 9am-7pm
Honeys Heart: The cuteness

Before I started my new job, Katie and I decided we needed to take advantage of the last few days of my flexible schedule with a lunch date at Milk Glass Mrkt.

Milk Glass Mrkt is half market, half cafe. The menu features breakfast, brunch, small plates, beer, wine and "cocktails".

Everything was so cute. Now I know how to use our empty Bulleit bottles.

It was the last day of work before our holiday breaks so a "cocktail lunch" was in order. We opted for the Cava Special Cocktail ($7) with cava and a touch of quince syrup.

The lunch menu isn't very extensive but even so, we were having a hard time deciding what to order so we agreed to split a sandwich and a salad.
 

Here's the Moroccan Salad ($8) with kale, carrots, and chickpeas in harissa vinaigrette. The flavors here were good, but those pieces of raw kale were really big and kind of difficult to cut/chew. We don't love salad enough to feel good about putting that much effort into eating it, so this dish left us feeling a bit meh.

We also ordered The Swell sandwich ($9) with a fried egg, proscuitto, roasted red peppers, provolone and fresh basil on ciabatta. This had a lot going on, both flavor-wise and mess-wise, but we both liked it better than the salad.

Our total bill came to $15.50 each, definitely a pricier lunch date for us (don't tell Adam and Doug!), especially when we weren't particularly overwhelmed by the food. However, the place is seriously so cute and those cava cocktails had produced a nice little midday buzz, so I don't think either of us really cared.

Portland Restaurant: Boke Bowl

What: Boke Bowl

Where: 1028 SE Water Ave

When: 10 am - 3 pm Mon - Sat

Honeys Heart: Fried Pears

Katie and I were introduced to Boke Bowl over the summer at a World Forestry Center fundraiser. Their food was awesome and we have been anxious for them to find a permanent location. Having heard nothing but rave reviews about Boke Bowl's recently opened restaurant on SE Water Ave, and getting a tweet from Boke Bowl saying "bring it ladies" it was definitely time to hit up this hot spot.

We know this is the darling of the Portland food scene right now and we know we might upset some people by saying this... but we weren't so impressed. Now, before you go getting all defensive, let us explain why: 

After placing our order at the counter, we found a spot by the kitchen and began our lunch with Pork Steam Buns ($6). The pork was tender, the buns were warm and soft, and the pickles, though kind of surprising, added a nice flavor.

So no complaints there really. And $2 per bun seems pretty fair. Moving on.

Due to our convenient location, or the generosity of the chef, we were given some complimentary Fried Pears ($2.50) which were probably our favorite part of the meal. The sweetness of the pears, combined with the tart flavor of the vinegar was really delicious.

But then came the ramen. Katie chose the Pork and Chicken ($9), and so did I... I thought. But I was served the Seafood Miso ($10), which ended up being okay with me. Katie's meat-filled ramen was heartier, with a darker broth. The flavor was subtle and lacking the complexity we expected after the pork buns and the pears. A bit of a letdown for sure.

The seafood ramen, made with boiled shrimp, was lighter and we thought more flavorful. You might expect garnishes such as greens, braised bamboo or water chestnuts in a ramen, but we thought the butternut squash in these was a nice addition.

So what didn't we like about the place? Though our bowls were good, and despite the fact that Boke Bowl is competitively priced with other popular ramen places in town including Wafu, Biwa, and Mirakutei, we both felt slightly unsatisfied.

Perhaps we did it all wrong and we should have added some of the sauces on the table or Pork Belly ($1.50) or Buttermilk Fried Chicken ($3) off the menu, but then our bowls of ramen would have been $11 to $13, and that just seems sort of crazy for a bowl of soup (which, come on, is what ramen really is).

Or maybe we just played into the hype too much and set our expectations higher than they should have been. (But really, have you been on Twitter lately? @Bokebowl is blowing up.)

Or maybe we just aren't huge ramen fans to begin with.
 
Anyway, the point is, we probably won't be going back soon. Which means two more spots open at the lunch table for the rest of you. You're welcome...?

Oh, and we also decided to try one of Boke Bowl's Miso Butterscotch Twinkies ($1.5) for dessert, which we enjoyed because we liked that it wasn't overly sweet. But would we order it again? Probably not.

But hey, Boke Bowl also does a Korean Fried Chicken Night on Thursdays from 5 to 9:30pm so perhaps we should try that?