Portland Restaurant: Olympia Oyster Bar

What: Olympia Oyster Bar 
Where: 4214 N Mississippi 
When: Tues-Thurs 4-9 pm, Fri & Sat 2-10 pm, Sun 2-9pm, HH open-6 pm Tues-Fri 
Honeys Heart: Natty and Shellfish Wednesday Special

My life really got a solid shake up in 2017 and as a result, my cousin Chase got an expected new roommate: yours truly! My new living situation means more than a few things have changed for me. For example:

• I drink good wine now (because I drink Chase's wine).
• I watch substantially more sports and boy movies, i.e. movies with Keanu Reeves.
• I have been exploring more of my new neighborhood, Mississippi St.
• I don't cook anymore because one of my roomies cooks, or I order food, or I meet up with friends.

In accordance with those last two bullet points, I think I have now been to every restaurant on Mississippi, my favs being Lovely's Fifty Fifty, Por Que No, and my #1, Olympia Oyster Bar.

(photo courtesy of Olympia's website)

Olympia Oyster Bar (can we just call it OOB because I'm typing this hungover and it's a long restaurant name?) is just the cutest neighborhood oyster and wine bar with dishes inspired by Chef Maylin's Mexican heritage and flavors influenced by Japan and the Mediterranean. It's where I like to go when I want to class it up a bit and balance out those nights of drinking beer at dive bars (because I do that now too).

The best discovery I made about OOB is their Wednesday night "Natty and Shellfish" special. It's a $20 bucket of mussels and clams and $20(ish) bottles of natural wines. The bucket is enough to share, but if I'm going to be drinking/eating alone (add that to the list), it feels better to do it somewhere nice.

On my recent solo visit, I did take home about half the mussels and clams and half the bottle of wine because Chase and I needed to watch The Voice. #priorities

I also probably didn't need to add oysters into the mix that night seeing as how I was a party of one, but I felt like trying their Raw Pomegranate ($13) preparation with pomegranate elixir, ginger amaranth, and blood orange oil. I mean, it was tasty but I would rather go on "Oyster Tuesday" and just get a $9 half dozen. 

Because I have become obsessed with this Wednesday night special, I try to go a lot. A friend I hadn't seen in six months wanted to grab happy hour and I knew the life update would need to be accompanied by plenty of wine - perfect opportunity for the OOB Wednesday night special!

Bottle one. Look at that funny dog...

Yes, we got the mussels and clams and yes, it was delicious again.

Bottle two. 

Two bottles in means more food, obvs. We tried to get bread and goat butter, but they were out of butter so instead we tried the Trout Conserva Toast ($7) off the happy hour menu. It was light, fresh, and delish.

There were a couple other things on their happy hour that looked tasty, so I'm open for Wednesday night dates (friend dates, come on...) with people so that I can try more things.

Bottle three. (Yes, you read that right. We had three bottles of wine and the best part is that for three bottles of wine, mussels and clams, and trout toast, I think our bill was only $96 aka $48 per person... um, that's a good deal for all that food and wine!)

In addition to great food and drink, the service at OOB has always been exceptional. Their staff is friendly and they offer recommendations, which is important for someone who lacks certain decision-making capabilities.

Even when I move out of the hood (I can't live with my cousin forever, I am a 30-year-old single lady, after all) OOB will bring me back. And probably I'll also swing by Chase's for some wine while I'm at it...

Portland Specialty Market: Providore Fine Foods

What: Providore Fine Foods
Where: 2340 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland
When: Daily 9 am - 7:30 pm 

When my parents come through town, we often hit up Elephants Deli off of West Burnside and grab a few salads from the deli case. It's close, tasty, and has lots of options. In the same spirit, we recently decided to meet them at Providore Fine Foods on their way through town. 

A food hall featuring Flying Fish, Arrosto, Little T Baker, Pasta Works, and Rubinette Produce Market, Providore Fine Foods offers a diverse selection of salads, sandwiches, chicken, pastas, and oysters. The four of us split a sampling of cauliflower salad, brussels, chickpea salad, and fritto misto in addition to a selection of sandwiches.

Oh yeah, and oysters. I don't know when I went from hating oysters to really liking them (maybe four years ago), but there's no turning back.

I would say that nothing was bad, but nothing stood out, and the oysters weren't a good enough deal to inspire us to drive across town. Basically if we lived closer maybe we would pop in, but I wouldn't go out of my way.

Brooklyn Restaurant: Maison Premiere

What: Maison Premiere 
Where: 298 Bedford Ave, Williamsburg 
When: Bar 4pm-2am (Thurs, Fri, Sat to 4am), Dinner 4pm-11pm (Fri/Sat to 12am), 
Honeys Heart: Cocktail, oysters, Portland bartender... what's not to love! 

Over the weekend Sarah and I borrowed a bike from a friend of hers and ventured all over Brooklyn. On Saturday we started our day at the Sit & Wonder coffee shop (they serve Stumptown!) in Prospect Heights before heading to Williamsburg for the Kara Walker exhibit A Subtlety, or the "Marvelous Sugar Baby" an "Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant." Highly recommend checking this out before it ends July 6th.

We timed our bike ride poorly as it began to pour rain with sideways wind shortly after we left and lasted until we locked our bikes up by the exhibit. We were absolutely soaked and it was a rough introduction to city bike riding, but the bonus was that the sun came out and there was an uncharacteristically small line for the exhibit!

You walk in and the smell of sugar, burnt sugar, surrounds you and the majestic 35 foot tall sculpture contrasted by the dark burnt walls of the sugar factory is just incredible. I could keep going but let's get to the food and drink.

After the exhibit we were on the search for $1 oyster happy hour and we found one at Miller's Tavern but it didn't start until 5pm and it was only 4pm, so we decided to head to Maison Premiere instead, famous for their absinthe and oysters.

We started with cocktails before looking over the oyster menu. Sarah went for a Vodka Martini, served with three olives (gotta love that!).

I selected the Carondelet ($13) from their cocktail menu with Beefeater, lime, lemon, blossom honey, vanilla, and sea salt. Not only did it taste great, but it smelled equally as delicious.

After spending some time with the oyster menu and asking our bartender, who grew up in Portland, for recommendations we settled on, from left to right in orders of two, the Hammersley from the Puget Sound (Woot!), Kumamoto ($3.35 ea) from Humboldt Bay California, another one that neither of us can remember..., the Naked Cowboy ($2.75 ea) from Long Island Sound, and the Holy Grail ($2.55) from Tar Bay Maryland.

The Holy Grail won out for the #1 spot closely followed by the Hammersley. The Naked Cowboy made it on the list because Sarah said she prefers creamy oysters and our advisor did warn that they were on the bigger side... but seriously, check this out! So big. Sarah had to take that one on. I had the smaller, but still big, one to the side. It was a memorable feat and Sarah drew our adventure on her blog, RockCraftRun, on June 8th. Check it out!

The oysters were excellent, but next time we need to hit the Oyster Happy Hour Monday through Friday 4-7pm and Saturday and Sunday 11am-1pm. Warning: its a popular place and I'm sure during the happy hour it is even more packed!

Sarah moved on to a gin martini, that girl knows how to keep it classy, while I asked our bartender for a recommendation from their absinthe cocktail menu.

To compliment the oysters he suggested the Django Bird ($12) with Kubler, Ron del Barrilito, Cocchi Americano, lemon, pineapple, and cucumber. This stuck with the citrus flavors from the previous drink and was a little lighter than some of the other options.

(Our bartender from Portland!)

While eating our oysters and sipping our cocktails we noticed that multiple people around the horseshoe shaped bar had the bread and butter ($4) so we had to get it. Especially since Sarah loves butter probably more than anyone I know. The assortment of olive bread, baguette, and wheat bread were served with a seaweed butter. Not what we were expecting. Still good, but we would have been happy with something more herbal versus seaweed-y. 

The entire Williamburg adventure was great. We followed this with a bike ride over to Cobble Hill Cinema to see the movie Chef, which was a sweet and funny story of a father and his son, his family, his passion, and their future together. Basically our day was full of things I would highly recommend!