Portland Restaurant: Ken's Artisan Bakery

What: Ken's Artisan Bakery 
Where: 331 NW 21st Ave
When: Monday Night Pizza 5:30 - 9:30pm
Honeys Heart: Fennel Sausage and Onion Pizza (and free bread!)

A few weeks ago, Katie, Doug, Adam, and I checked out PREAM at Ned Ludd as our second Monday pizza night. Keeping this new tradition alive, last week we headed to Ken's Artisan Bakery's Monday Night Pizza.

Ken's Artisan Pizza on SE 28th serves up pizzas nightly, but pizza is only available at the 21st location on Mondays, making it fit perfectly with our "Monday night pizza" theme. We put our names on the list around 7pm and sipped some drinks down the street while we waited.

One theme for these pizza nights is waiting. We were seating around 7:50 and since we had already spent some time with the menu, we were ready to order. We started with a bottle of Cianti ($28) and a Caesar Salad ($8).

The salad was bigger and less bitter than PREAM's. It was definitely less adventurous, but sometimes a classic caesar hits the spot.

For pizzas we went with the Soppressata ($13), Fennel Sausage and Onions ($13), and the Butternut Squash ($12) which we added arugula on top of ($2).

The Fennel Sausage won first prize. It was nicely flavored and not to "fennel-y". Katie isn't typically a fennel fan, but she liked this one too!

The Butternut Squash was the runner up. The flavors were very "fall" and the arugula made this otherwise simple pie more interesting. Adam said he could have used a little more sauce, but I was pleased.

The Soppressata was our least favorite. Not bad, just really spicy. It did say spicy on the menu, but we all appreciate a little heat and weren't worried about it- but we should of have been. It was too hot to really enjoy.

We came for the pizza, but there were some additional perks of Ken's Artisan Bakery's pizza night. First they brought over little shortbread cookies with our bill that were pretty tasty!

They also offer up any of the leftover bread from the day for free, so we both left with a couple slices of leftover pizza and an entire baguette. Keep this in mind if you're looking to do some carb loading for some reason... or you just love bread (ahem, Adam).

How did Ken's compare to PREAM? The pizzas were good- Adam really liked the dough/crusts, and they were little cheaper, but also slightly smaller and more simple. Of our pizza nights so far, I would probably pick PREAM, but Ken's is still a great option and was closer to home.

We have an ongoing list of pizza places to try. Apizza Scholls, Pizza Maria, and Vincente's to name a few. What are your favorites? We'll need more ideas!

Portland Restaurant: Life of Pie

What: Life of Pie
Where: 3632 N. Williams Ave
When: 11am-10pm Sun-Wed, 11am-11pm Thurs-Sat
Honeys Heart: $5 Margherita Pizza on Happy Hour 11am-6pm daily (for now, this won't last forever!)

Katie and I walked into Life of Pie's media preview and were immediately welcomed with a glass of house red wine (only $3 on happy hour!) and a bar full of delicious looking arancini and kale salad. Now that's the way to start a tasting!

After doing the typical blogger tasks of excessive photo taking on cameras and phones then posting to Instagram and Twitter, we took plates of Arancini ($6) and Kale Salad ($7) to a two-person table by a wood pile and tried, what ended up being just the beginning, of a series of delicious plates.

Okay, back up, I'm sure the "table by the wood pile" sounds odd, but it worked and created a warm environment that is definitely family-friendly. Life of Pie owner, Jason, stopped by to introduce himself and said that he imagined the wood-fired pizza joint as a place that is casual enough to come on a whim but also offers great food and service. So far, it looks like he's achieved that vision!

Katie and I both loved the arancini and kale salad. The outside of the arancini was crispy with a soft, warm, and cheesy inside. The simplicity of the kale salad was a great accompaniment. Kale salads can sometimes be overly tart with lots of lemon, but this was really well balanced with honey.

First out of the wood-fired oven right behind the counter was a Margherita pizza, which is only $5 on happy hour. Basically I would recommend you quit reading this and go there now. What a deal! And also it was delicious.

Katie and I quickly realized we did not properly pace ourselves. The Margherita pizza was the first of three more that we were able to sample. Next up was Fennel Sausage and Mama Lil's Peppers ($11) which we both really enjoyed. The peppers are pickled which adds a unique tartness.

Following this was the Seasonal Mushrooms with Shaved Pecorino Roman and Truffle Oil ($12). I enjoyed this, but I'm kind of obsessed with mushrooms these days. This was rich though with the truffle oil and mushroom mix!

Okay, at this point we'd had two glasses of wine, arancini, kale salad, and three types of pizza. It was all great, but we surely couldn't eat more. Then the last pizza was walked over and we changed our minds. The special Bacon, Goat Cheese and Oven Roasted Leeks ($12) was last. We both thought we would love this, but it ended up not being our favorite. It was a little sweet and instead of arranging whole slices of bacon on the pizza I would have cut them up and spread it out more. Oh well, can't win them all!

In addition to the abundance of food, we were also impressed with the attentive service. Life of Pie is a counter-service spot, but the servers were very prompt about removing used plates and filling up glasses of wine, which is always appreciated.

Overall a fun night with great food and a very gracious host. Thank you so much for having us!

P.S. The little block of N. Williams that houses Life of Pie is now jam-packed with tasty destinations- you could make a whole night of it without leaving! We'll lay it out for you:

Date Night on N. Williams: 

Drinks at Tin Bucket
- This beer shop boasts state-of-the-art growler fillers but you can enjoy pints in-house too.
Dinner at Life of Pie
- See above 
Dessert at What's the Scoop
- Super creamy ice-cream frozen with liquid nitrogen. The Bourbon Toffee is crazy good.