Not so common eating

I'll just start by saying that there are some pretty fantastic restaurants in Portland, Oregon, and last night we went out to one of best - Clyde Common. It's called "common" because the diners share long common tables but the experience is anything but common!

The atmosphere is so totally Portland. It has an open kitchen with hipster-looking guys cooking up the amazing food. One of them was wearing a paperboy cap and neck tie underneath his apron, another was wearing a red bandana in his hair and big black frame glasses. The room has modern decor and a very tall ceiling, which is beautiful but it makes the room very loud and not so good for conversation.

Another reason I could tell I was in a Portland restaurant was that they had an extensive beer, wine, cocktail, and spirits list. That in itself is not so unique but it is special that a significant percentage of the list is all locally made - including 5 types of locally made gin! The food also was "farm-to-table" style with lots of winter/spring ingredients. We had some fun with the menu because there were so many ingredients we didn't know. Luckily, Kevin has an iPhone so he was able to look some of the items up for us! Do you know what a "dorade" is? Click here to find out!

For dinner I had a salad(-ish) plate with a deep fried whole egg on top. The egg was perfectly done so that the white part was cooked and the center of the egg was still runny. I also got french fries with harissa and creme fraiche for dipping. To drink I started with Fentimen's Ginger Beer, which was recommended on Slate.com's Gabfest podcast. It lived up to it's high praise - it was intensely gingery without being too sweet! The restaurant has definitely jumped on the "meat is the new vegetarian" bandwagon and so there were no (even remotely) vegan options for one of our party. Too bad.

We were out late last night so I'm pretty tired today but I'm gearing up for our last night in Portland and our last chance (for now) to eat yummy Portland food! Sorry I don't have any pictures- I forgot my camera, so you'll just have to take my word for how good it was, or visit yourself! Happy eating.