Portland Restaurant: Revelry

What: Revelry
Where: 210 SE MLK Blvd. 
Honeys Heart: Seaweed Noodles & Tuna Bowl

Doug and I celebrated his 30th bday with a trip to San Diego (don't get too jealous - it was rainy the whole time and he got the flu on our last full day), but it was obviously necessary to celebrate with friends when we got back too.

Doug's first pick was Mae, but the stars didn't align in our favor and we had to go with his second choice: Revelry.

I will admit, I had a little bit of attitude about Revelry prior to our dinner, mostly because I do not like kimchi and I was convinced that, being a Korean street food restaurant, they would put it in everything. This was an ignorant and incorrect assumption, and having tasted Revelry's crazy delicious food, I very much regret not giving it a try sooner.

Revelry's menu is divided up into "anytime", "pancake", "noodle", "rice bowl", and "sweets". With our server's help, we narrowed it down to the following dishes to split among 7 people. Here they are in order of favorite to least favorite, though it should be noted that even our least favorite was pretty tasty.

Our group's favorite dish was the Seaweed Noodles ($17) made with Dungeness crab, red curry, and creme fraiche. This was so, so good. The noodles were nice and chewy, and a great contrast to the creaminess of the crab. And while the flavors were more delicate than some of the other dishes, they worked very well together.

Right behind the seaweed noodles was Blackened Tuna Rice Bowl ($16) with cured yolk, koji asparagus, and zucchini. The tuna was seasoned perfectly and our group couldn't get over how tasty the zucchini was. They worked miracles with that squash, let me tell you.

We ordered Mrs. Yang's Fried Chicken ($14) in honor of our attempted meal at Mae and while there's no competing with Maya Lovelace's drumsticks, we all enjoyed this quite a bit. It had just the right kick of spice and the peanut brittle crumbled on top was an inspired addition.

We also tried the Dan Dan Noodles ($16) with chipotle pork and collard greens and while this was good, I'd definitely recommend the seaweed noodles first if you only want one noodle dish.

And in last place, the Short Rib Rice Bowl ($17) with cured yolk, herb tabbouleh, and charred spring onion. This was tasty, but on my next visit, I'll definitely skip this in favor of trying something new (that will not be the case with the seaweed noodles or tuna).

We also tried out a variety of cocktails including the gin & tonic. For whatever reason, people were not as jazzed about the drinks as they were about the food (I thought my G&T was good), but guess you can't win them all.

Doug and I are already plotting when we can go back. It's been over a week, so I think we've waited long enough. Eat you soon, seaweed noodles!

Portland Happy Hour: High Noon

What: High Noon
Where: 822 SW 2nd Ave
When: HH Mon-Fri, 3pm-7pm
Honeys Heart: Lots of happy hour food & drink options

Sometimes you just have to embrace being a #basicbitch and go see 50 Shades Darker with your girlfriends. If you saw the first 50 Shades movie, you know that a certain level of tipsiness is necessary to endure two hours of horrible dialogue and "kinky f***ery", so with that in mind, Kel, Dana, and I met for happy hour at High Noon before heading to the movie theater.

High Noon's slogan is "Southwest by Northwest" and their menu highlights Southwestern dishes like frybread, arepas, and nachos, all prepared with local ingredients. While the decor borders on gimmicky (at least they got rid of the John Wayne mural?), we were impressed with the number of food and drink items on the happy hour menu and the prices.

From the happy hour menu, we ordered the Nachos ($5), Hush Puppies ($4), and Street Corn ($3), plus Grapefruit Drops ($6).

The nachos were tasty and a decent-sized portion and the hush puppies were good too. I never say no to street corn and High Noon's version did not disappoint.

While my first Grapefruit Drop was on the weak side, a pet peeve of mine when it comes to happy hour drinks, the second seemed like a standard pour, making the $6 price tag feel like more of a steal.

Since none of us had tried frybread before, we also ordered a Sweet Pork Frybread with Roasted Pasilla Verde ($9) off the regular menu.

High Noon describes frybread as "southwest scones" which I don't think gives an accurate picture of this dish. Frybread is more like flatbread that has been fried... so exactly what it sounds like and not like a scone at all. Descriptions aside, it was flavorful and delicious, and worth the non-happy hour price.

I should also mention that the service was a bit touch and go, depending on what server was helping us.

However, overall, we left very satisfied with our happy hour experience at High Noon and I would recommend it as a great post-work spot for the downtown crowd.

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 Growler Station: Growlers Hawthorne Plus Brewvana and Zwickelmania

What: Growlers Hawthorne
Where: 3343 SE Hawthorne Blvd
When: Noon-8pm
Honeys Heart: Meet the Brewer Nights

Portland has quite a few growler stations (Tin Bucket is Doug's and my usual pick) with even Fred Meyer getting in on the act and adding growler stations at its Burlingame, Hawthorne and Hollywood locations.

However, what Portland didn't have until very recently was a dedicated, single-purpose growler fill station, a niche which has now been claimed by Growlers Hawthorne.

Just opened and offering 40 rotating taps, Growlers Hawthorne is unusual in that the store offers no on-premise consumption aside from tastings. This allows the store to bypass a lot of those pesky full on-premise liquor license laws (must serve food, etc), resulting in relatively competitive pricing starting at $10 for a 64oz growler fill.

When Doug and I popped in for opening night this past Tuesday, Fort George was hosting a "Meet the Brewers" night and doling out samples of their canned Vortex and Java beers. Growlers Hawthorne owner Jim Hillman told me that he plans to hold these nights often. In fact, in honor of the store's opening week, Oakshire Brewing will be stopping by on Thursday Feb 6, Firestone Walker on Friday Feb 7, and Pelican Pub & Brewery on Feb 8.

We also happened to run into the lovely Ashley from Brewvana brewery tours. I interviewed Ashley a year or so ago for About Face and it's been so fun to watch her business grow. Doug and I have yet to actually make it on a tour (soon though!), but we're pretty pumped that Brewvana is working with Zwickelmania to provide transportation for the weekend.

What's Zwickelmania you ask? Why, it's a free event that offers beer lovers the opportunity to tour various Oregon breweries, meet the brewers, and sample their favorite beers. This year's Zwickelmania will take place Saturday, Feb. 15 from 11am to 4pm. Check out participating breweries and bus schedules at OregonCraftBeer.org/events/zwickelmania. 

P.S. You guys, I did a bit of research about the OLCC's different types of liquor licenses to fact check my liquor law reference above (responsible journalism, yo), and their manual for newly licensed businesses is actually a pretty interesting read. Check it out here.  

Portland Bar: Ambonnay Champagne Bar

Portland Bar: Ambonnay
Where: 107 SE Washington Street
When: Mon-Thurs 5-10pm, Fri-Sat 5-11pm, Sun 1-7pm

Ambonnay takes up a small corner in an industrial office building in Southeast that is also home to Olympic Provisions east side location. The small bar feels grander with tall ceilings, concrete walls, copper accents, mirrors and dim lighting. Unfortunately my horrible phone photos in the dark bar aren't doing it justice. I promise, I will stop doing this! 

I love me a glass of champagne, so when Dana suggested we try Portland's first champagne bar that serves nothing but bubbly I thought it would be a great opportunity to have some girl time while expanding my palette. Cooks Brut for $5.99 at Fred Meyer might get me by for some casual mimosas or a French 75, but in general I don't have a lot of experience with champagne or other sparkling wines - with exception of some tasty Prosecco I have had with Rachel.

We went back and forth between splitting a bottle, of which they offer over 50 options, or just going for a glass and finally opted to each try a different type so we could explore more of the menu. At $12-14 a pop we were only going to be having one glass each.

We enjoyed all three that we tried. Dana's rose was a bit sweet for us, but still tasty, and the other two were crisp and light. Though we only had drinks this visit they do offer a cheese plate ($12), truffle popcorn ($4) and olives ($4) and on their website you can find information about events at Ambonnay and their sister business Red Slate Wine Co.

This would be a great place to kick off a celebratory night, but not a bar I could afford to frequent. If I had some extra bubbly money in my budget I would really love to spend some time sampling and learning about many more of these sparkling wines!