Portland Pop-up: Mae

What: Mae
When: Monday and Wednesday Nights
Where: Old Salt Marketplace

If there's one "foodie" thing I just don't really get, it's fried chicken. I feel terrible about it, but it's true. Poor Doug. He never got to go to Son of a Biscuit, I had trouble properly sympathizing when Muscadine was out of fried chicken during our one and only visit, and, even though you know I love me some Dougie PDX, his fried chicken at Imperial was not my favorite dish on the table.

But, I think I might be starting to see the appeal, and that's all thanks to Mae.

Mae is a southern Appalachian-focused pop-up run by Maya Lovelace, an alumna of Beast and Husk. Maya's cooking is inspired by her grandmother Mae, for whom the pop-up is named.

Mae's family-style feasts are served out of the back room of Old Salt Marketplace and you have two options for dinners (so far): Monday Meat & Three ($35 per person) or a 10-course Southern Bacchanalia on Wednesdays ($65 per person).

Kelly, Adam, Doug, and I opted for the Monday Meat & Three option, mostly because it was more cost efficient and we still got to try Mae's fried chicken.

Monday Meat & Threes are BYOB so before Doug and I headed to Old Salt, we grabbed some German-style beers since Doug read that they go well with fried food (who knew?).

We were the first to arrive, and after a friendly greeting, Maya directed us to our assigned seats at Mae's communal tables.

Before each course, Maya stopped by each table and explained the dishes as well as her emotional connection to them. Elements like that are something I just love about pop-ups. The meal already feels special but it's made that much more so by the personal interactions you get to have with the chef.

Our meal started with Sassafras Sweet Tea and Cornbread with sorghum butter and pimento cheese with ham.

Up next was Buttermilk Salad with iceberg lettuce, buttermilk dressing, and bacon. Adam LOVED this, and for good reason. It was very simple, but very good. Too bad our tablemates got a little greedy and didn't leave enough for our half of the table to have seconds too...

And then it was time for the big show: Mae's Fried Chicken, which is brined in buttermilk and fried in lard, bacon fat, AND chicken fat. The chicken was juicy with a perfectly crispy crust and not greasy at all. Plus, Maya doesn't skimp- our table's large patter included two pieces for each of us plus Maya offered a second round, which we were quick to take her up on.

Along with the fried chicken came Collard Greens (tasty) and Pimento Mac & Cheese topped with potato chips (OMG so good).

For dessert, Maya served a cheery Lemon Pound Cake with whipped cream. Since we were fairly stuffed at that point, its lightness was the ideal end to our meal.

Before we left, Kel and I stopped by the prep station to thank Maya and to ask her if she had any recommendations for our upcoming trip to Nashville. She gamely wrote down more than a few options for us- so sweet!

So, how do you partake in one of Mae's feasts? Join Mae's mailing list here. You'll get email updates about upcoming dinners including information about how to register. Cheers!

Portland Pop-Up: Langbaan

What: Langbaan
Where: 6 SE 28th Ave (backroom of PaaDee)
When: Two seatings per night Thursday-Sunday
Honeys Heart: Everything

Back in February of last year, chef Akkapong "Earl" Ninsom started serving tasting menu dinners based on 100-year-old royal Thai recipes in the back room of PaaDee, a Thai restaurant he co-founded in 2011. Ninsom was born and raised in Bangkok, is professionally trained in Thai cooking, and his family owns Thai Cottage in St. Johns, so he knows just a bit about making Thai food- but I doubt that even he expected Langbaan to take off quite like it has.

Thai for "back of the house," Langbaan was the first restaurant to receive 4 stars under the Oregonian's new rating system, it was named as one of GQ's Best Restaurants in America for 2015, and it was a semifinalist for the 2015 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. Oh yeah, and if you want to book a reservation, you better hop on over to their website ASAP because the first available seating is months and months from now.

Lucky for me, Doug is on top of it and booked reservations for an April dinner back in January. After all the press that Langbaan has received and having eaten some very good food in Thailand fairly recently, we went into our dinner with high expectations. I'm happy to report that those expectations were more than met.

Langbaan offers two seatings per night Thursday through Sunday. We were booked for the 8:30pm seating on a Friday and had to wait about 20 minutes for the 6:00pm seating to clear out before we were escorted through the hidden bookcase door (obvs, love that detail) from PaaDee into Langbaan.

Langbaan's fixed tasting menu is $65 per person with an optional $30 wine pairing. We were more than happy with our Chang beers, so no wine pairing for us. The menu changes monthly and our April menu was inspired by the Minburi district, a Muslim neighborhood in Bangkok.

Our meal kicked off with three snacks: Miang som-O made with shrimp, pomelo (a citrus), shallots, chili, lime, ginger in roasted coconut sauce, and a betel leaf; Kanom Krok, a crispy rice cup filled with a scallop and coconut cream with galangal (part of the ginger family); and Mataba Puu, a Dungeness crab Thai-Muslim style pancake with cucumber relish.

As soon as we took our first bite of the shrimp, it was like we were instantly transported back to Thailand. The flavors were so bright and perfectly paired. Langbaan's chefs have definitely nailed the Thai balancing act of layering spicy heat with refreshing herbs and cooling coconut.

I also loved how the traditional Thai flavors and ingredients being used were re-imagined in less traditional ways, specifically with the scallop rice cup. It tasted just like Thailand but in a new, exciting package.

Following the snack plates was Soup Hang Wuar, an oxtail soup with purple potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, onions, shallots, celery, and wagyu beef. Delicious!

Next up was the salad course which started with Yum Ped Yang Mamuang made with Peking duck, ripe mango, spring broccoli, easter radish, mint, heirloom tomato, Thai basil, and fava leaf. I'm not always a fan of duck, but this salad was so refreshing that I didn't mind it at all.

Our second salad was Yum Plaa Tod Kamin Rom Kwan with smoked turmeric halibut, asparagus, star fruit, verpa morel, blood orange, and kaffir lime leaf.

This was one of my favorite plates of the night. The smokey, savory halibut was amazing with the bright starfruit and blood orange. So pretty and so good!

The four main course plates were served all at once. We had Og Gai Ob Chan Aoi, a roasted chicken breast Gai Yang Hah Daw-style with green chili dipping sauce; Gang Gae, a lamb curry with morel, potatoes, onions, shallots, and sunchoke chips; Nahm Prik Hed, a chili relish of oyster mushrooms with fresh greens; and Khao Mok, Thai-Muslim curry rice.

The chicken was moist and delicious and the lamb curry, rich and homey. Those oyster mushrooms though... Those took me back to a larb that Doug ordered in Bangkok that we tried our best to eat, but it was just too darn hot. Langbaan provided plenty of herbs to offset the heat those mushrooms were giving off but we just couldn't do it. But hey, that dish was true to our experience in Thailand too so I guess we can't really complain!

Even though we were bordering on stuffed by this point in the meal, my sweet-loving self was happy to see two desserts on the menu. The first was Duck Egg Coconut Ice Cream with rhubarb, sweet potato, coconut, corn, peanuts, and strawberries. A strange combination of ingredients for sure, but very tasty nonetheless.

But that dessert didn't hold a candle to what turned out to be my very favorite dish of the night, the Kanom Tua Islam, a mung bean dumpling with coconut cream. 

Doesn't look like much, but trust me, it was amazing. Weird, but amazing. The mung bean dumpling was warm and savory so when you took a bite of the hot dumpling with the cool, sweet coconut cream, there was a crazy collision of temperatures and flavors. It was very unexpected but so satisfying. And the perfect end to our meal.

Admittedly, $65 per person is quite the hefty price tag for dinner for our crowd, but in this case, we thought it was well worth it. Dinner at Langbaan will definitely be a once-a-year treat for us- but with the waitlist how it's looking, we probably couldn't make it there more frequently even if we wanted to!

Portland Pop-Up: PREAM at Ned Ludd

What: PREAM at Ned Ludd
Where: 3925 NE MLK Blvd
When: Monday Nights
Honeys Heart: All the pizza

When Doug and I got married a few weeks ago, Kelly and Adam did us the huge favor of hosting our rehearsal dinner at their house.

To help say thank you (because we seriously owe them big time), we offered to take them out to dinner at the place of their choice. If you haven't noticed, Kel and especially Adam are huge sushi lovers (see here, here, and here), so we were a little surprised to end up at PREAM, Ned Ludd's Monday night pizza and hip hop pop-up. It did seem fitting though given that our rehearsal dinner had been a pizza night too!

There were already a few names on the list when we arrived, so we grabbed a spot outside. A server had told us that he would come out to take our drink order- but after awhile we wised up and just headed to the bar. Kel and I decided to split a $25 bottle of syrah, while Doug went with a beer. Adam chose the Craig & Cola ($10) with bourbon and haus cola and later the Cock & Bull Special ($10) with bourbon, benedictine, cognac, combier, and bitters.

About an hour later (no surprise in Portlandia), we headed to our table inside Ned Ludd's quirky little space.

We started things off with a Chicory Caeser Salad with breadcrumbs and ricotta salata. Adam and I both found the chicory a little bitter for our tastes but we forged ahead anyway (aka, we just ate all the ricotta).

Following our salad, we ordered three pizzas to share:

1) Smoked Pork Pizza with treviso, celeriac bechamel & pickled peppers

2) Sausage Pizza with gremolata, bechamel, chile & breadcrumbs

3) Weekly Special Pizza with eggplant and a bunch of other good stuff...

We were banking on having some leftovers but no such luck! And we all had a different favorite too which I think is always a good sign.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend checking out PREAM. The pizzas were crazy delicious and there was a fun informality to the night that made it seem like we were all just there to hang out, eat good food, and have a good time. Just be prepared to wait- especially if you have a group of 4 or more- and make sure you get there before 8pm. The last couple of groups that were seated didn't have a choice about what pizzas they got- they just had to be fine with whatever was left.

Now that Kelly, Adam, Doug, and I are on a weekly pizza kick (we also made homemade pizzas on Kelly and Adam's BBQ the week before), we're going to keep the pizza train rolling and try out Ken's Artisan Bakery's Monday pizza night next week. We'll let you know how it goes!

Portland Pop-Up: Morgan St Theater

What: Morgan St Theater
When: Monthly
Honeys Heart: Watermelon sorbet, feta, basil oil & cherry tomato confit sundae

If you follow the Portland restaurant scene closely, you know that pop-ups are the next big thing. And if you follow this blog, you probably guessed that I would be all about that ish too (such a restaurant lemming... sorry not sorry).

I've been on Morgan St Theater's mailing list since I read about them in The Oregonian's pop-up roundup last June. Morgan St Theatre is a pop-up dessert club run by Jared Goodman that specializes in combining flights of nontraditional ice cream sundaes with storytelling and live music. Intriguing, right?

Each "performance" has a different theme and our night's was "It's My Party and I'll Make What I Want To"- essentially a compilation of Jared's favorite sundaes that he's made in the year since starting Morgan St Theater.

When we arrived at that night's venue, din din, we were greeted with a communal table set for 20, a live jazz duo, and a half dozen or so other guests who all already seemed to know each other. Let's just say it was not Doug's ideal scenario...

However, we were quickly made to feel more welcome by Jared who came over to introduce himself and explain a bit more about the night's proceedings. We would be served three different courses of ice cream sundaes with optional cocktail pairings. Jared would start each course with a short story that would provide some context for the dessert we would be trying. Mingling was encouraged as was taking the bartender up on his offer for a pre-dinner cocktail.

After choosing our seats and chatting with the other guests, it was finally time to get our ice cream sundae on. First up: Put a Bird on It made with wild huckleberry ice cream, buttermilk raspberry biscuit, lemon honey sauce, and huckleberry shrub. Everything on the plate was delicious but the lemon honey sauce was my favorite element. It was the perfect combination of tangy and sweet and if you force-fed me spoonfuls of it I wouldn't try to stop you.

That was paired with a Tennessee Orchard cocktail made with bourbon, campari, oregon cherry shrub, and soda. Yum.

Next up was Sofia made with watermelon sorbet, feta, basil oil, and cherry tomato confit. Doug and I agreed that this was hands down the most impressive dish of the night. It was very simple and refreshing,  and all the flavors paired perfectly together. Plus the cherry tomato confit was so rich and homey- you could just tell this sundae was made with lots of care and love.

Paired with Sofia was The Yakuza made with gin, garden herbs, ginger beer reduction, lemon, and honey.

Last up was Alma Mater, a peanut butter ice cream pie with chili chocolate brownie crust and cream. This was definitely the most traditional of the dishes we tried, but it still had that unique touch thanks to the chili in the brownie crust. Jared explained that it was inspired by Alma Chocolate's Thai peanut butter cups and I obviously need to try those immediately since Jared's take on them was so good.

That came with the Mucho Gusto made with rum, lemongrass-chili syrup, lime, "Don's mix", and Aztec chocolate bitters. The tiki feel of this cocktail paired well with the heat of the brownie crust.

We ended the night by paying by check and leaving a note in the comment box that was passed around.

Overall, we had an amazing time. The sundaes and cocktails were tasty and unique and the storytelling and live jazz added some extra pizzazz to the evening. And while chatting with strangers has never been Doug's or my strong suit and we definitely kept to ourselves more than some of the other guests, it was fun to be part of a communal experience.

Here's what Morgan St Theater has coming up in the next month:

Sunday, Oct 12- Sukkot: A Jewish Year in Ice Cream Sundaes

Thursday, Oct 23- A Night at the Opera

And if you want to join their mailing list, you can do that here.