The September Hit List: Bamboo Sushi, Voysey, Canard, and More

Bamboo Sushi, Portland’s wonderfully ubiquitous, completely sustainable sushi restaurant, is a great option for those nights when time gets away from you. The TikTok-inspired crispy rice rolls headline the menu, here topped with spicy tuna, spicy salmon, albacore, or yuzu avocado. Daily changing hand roll specials, poke and signature rolls make up the rest. The green machine, filled out with tempura-fried green beans, is a particular favorite, and can be boosted with albacore, salmon, and crab. Purists, who might find tempura-fried Philly rolls drizzled in eel sauce and shrimp tempura and crab-stuffed rolls encased in tempura crunchies to be too rich (not us), can also find streamlined maki, simply filled with tuna, salmon and avocado. 

This past summer, Oregon native and Michelin-starred chef Ian Muntzert (Commonwealth, San Francisco) opened Brasa Haya, a Spanish restaurant in the former Beech Street Parlor space. Much of the menu is dedicated to those tapas bar classics, tortilla española (one of Muntzert’s specialities), patatas bravas, salt cod croquettes, coca bread with tomato confit, and more. But there’s plenty that heads down to a road less traveled: coal-roasted cabbage with garum butter, crispy tripe with harissa and creme fraiche, squid with pork belly, poached egg and salsa verde, and a tinned fish menu for good measure. Enjoy these cooler evenings with dinner on the patio. 

Call 503-288-3499 for reservations.

Canard, the former all-day diner-meets-bistro sister to James Beard Award-winning chef Gabriel Rucker’s Le Pigeon, has adjusted its hours to dinner only, but don’t think that means all your menu favorites aren’t still around. The most important dishes on the menu—the oeufs en mayonnaise, duck stack, and steam burger—still play proudly and are definitely still worth ordering. Other standards and seasonal dishes, like cucumbers and peaches with pumpernickel chili crunch and the ever-Instagrammable corn ribs, fill out the rest. Dessert, too, feels like coming home after a long trip, with a Paris brest, currently layered with chamomile cream, peaches and sticky pecans, a duo of fun parfaits, vanilla soft serve (best enjoyed in the $2 peanut butter fun cone), and the festive funfetti pancakes. 

Early into the pandemic, Division Street’s Ava Gene’s (and its Submarine Hospitality brethren Tusk and Cicoria) harnessed the power of takeout, with a system of online ordering and contactless trunk drop-offs. Now, more than a year later ,after various shutdowns and mandates and alleged abuse by celebrity chef Joshua McFadden, the ever-busy takeout machine has stalled, with each restaurant in the family breaking back out on their own. The newest of the bunch, wood-fired, party-cut pizza joint Cicoria, offers a new-age menu of checkered tablecloth-style dishes, ranging from calamari and calabrian chicken wings to chicken milanese and seasonal-inspired antipasti. Pizzas are square cut and “very share-y,” arriving simply topped with pomodoro, pepperoncini, pepperoni, clams and more. Drinks, for dining in only, include a lengthy menu of cocktails, beer, wine, root beer and sodas. Unfortunately, according to the website, the slushie machine has yet to arrive. 

Find remixed Chinese-Indonesian dishes at Northeast Portland’s popular Gado Gado. With national award nods, reservations (with a vaccine card) or takeout are the only way to go here. Start with the roti paratha, served alongside blistered tomato curry, and poached shrimp and melon ball salad tossed in a spicy tamarind dressing before diving into the aromatic beef rendang or charcoal-grilled pork cap. Close out dinner with the classic Indonesian kaya cake, here made with condensed milk, coconut custard, pandan and peach jam. 

For the past year, the internet’s favorite “it” dish has been birria de res, tacos filled with a meaty, brick red, Jaliscan stew of braised beef and served with a cup of consomme for dipping. At Sahuayo, inside Glisan convenience store J&T Market, Adrian Flores has been making birria de chivo, what’s often considered the dish’s original, and in Portland, more difficult-to-find, version. From morning until night, visitors pack the convenience store in search of that goat stew, fresh tortillas, carnitas, an impossibly long burrito and taco menu, and a handful of Michoacán specialties like morisqueta and chavindeca hailing from Flores’ hometown Sahuayo. Make sure to get here early to snag a few tacos de chivo since wait times can creep up with only Flores behind the counter and an influx of nurses and hospital staff from Providence across the street. 

Remember moody cocktail bars? Voysey, ChefStable’s design-heavy basement lounge behind Loyal Legion, is here to remind you. Designed by the Elk Collective, the team behind downtown cocktail haven Multnomah Whiskey Lounge, Voysey is open three nights a week for the cocktail connoisseurs in you. Drinks are shaken and stirred by an all-star, all-female bartending staff: Jamie King, Katie Stipe, and Alison Taylor DeGrazzio, whose resumes include Michelin-starred restaurants and famous bars across San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York. Voysey’s 10-deep drink list — rounded out by a trio of bottled cocktails for two — features less-seen classics like jungle birds, Jack roses and Atholl broses alongside signature house cocktails, beer and wine. 

Get your clicking finger ready by 9 a.m. every Saturday morning because you’re going to need to be fast to snag one of these pies. Each week, Chicago tavern-style pizza wizard Jerry Benedetto releases a week’s worth of pre-order slots for his cracker-thin, square-cut pizza (any Palermo or La Villa stans out there? Let’s get an RC at Jerry’s sometime). Pies come with a variety of toppings, ranging from the classic cheese and pepperoni to hot giardiniera and Jerry’s special topoped with pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, and cheese. Those who are lucky enough to snag a pre-order slot for a pie will need to head to Brooklyn’s Bear Paw Inn for pick-up, where, rumor has it, you can also order a fried calzone on a walk-in basis, no lucky pre-ordering required. 

This fluorescent teal food cart in Southwest Portland has been selling out almost daily since it opened in February. The menu from chef-owner Anthony La Pietra, is short but sweet, with most of the spotlight shining on the eponymous taquitos and tacos. The golden, fried taquitos are stuffed with pillowy potatoes drizzled with an avocado salsa, and rest beneath a shroud of “toppings,” which here include cabbage, cilantro, crema, queso fresco, and pickled onions. Though the taquitos are filling enough on their own, you can add additional proteins or veggies — like birria, grilled shrimp, and most recently, a garbanzo al pastor — which do double duty as taco fillings, piled high into thick, toasted corn tortillas. Don’t sleep on the other salsas, either: arbol, verde, and tomato, fully punch up and brighten your meal.

Division’s Mexican standby Xico has added indoor and outdoor dining back to its “on the fly” and family meal options. Family meals continue to change weekly, with options like spinach, mushroom, and sun-dried tomato enchiladas with poblano cream sauce, while “on the fly” dishes range from taco plates, burritos, and bowls to larger entrees like rotisserie chicken and Yucatan smoked pork. But for those itching to finally not make their own margarita can snag one at the bar or on the patio (with a reservation). At the restaurant, expanded offerings are back, pulling some dishes off the “on the fly” menu and adding in more sides, salads and plates, like wild Oregon ceviche, cauliflower en pipian, and the beloved Mayan dip, sikil p’ak.