The October Hit List: Miss Delta, Fish & Rice, Verdigris, and More

Toki, the casual downtown restaurant sister to husband-wife duo Peter Cho and Sun Young Park’s beloved Han Oak, has been chugging along since it opened at the beginning of the year. The menu here is built from an assortment of greatest hits from Han Oak, like the fried chicken with “ramen essence” and the pudgy pork mandu, alongside a refreshed take on classics like bibimbap, noodles, and more traditional Korean barbeque options.

Elsewhere, the menu diverts into good, clean fun, with a seaweed-centric riff on the suddenly ubiquitous TikTok tortilla hack trend and the absolute must-order steamed burger bao, which fits a double patty with cheese into a steamed bao bun. Weekend brunch is equally fun, with cheesy breakfast sandwiches, Korean doughnuts, smoothies, and caffeine-fueled dalgona coffees. 

Burmese food is a relative rarity in Portland, with only a handful of restaurants cooking the Southeast Asian cuisine across the metro area. Much of what does exist is thanks in large part to Kalvin and Poe Myint, who own Northwest Portland’s and Beaverton’s Top Burmese. This summer, the duo added another restaurant to the family: Burma Joy, dedicated to the Chinese-inspired recipes that don’t see a lot of screen time at Top Burmese (the menus here focus on the Indian influences in Burmese cuisine). Find dishes like kyay oh, a vermicelli dish with meatballs and quail eggs; tea leaf chicken curry; punn thay, the noodle “crossroad where Burmese, Chinese, and Indian cultures meet” with wheat noodles in a five-spiced bay leaf curry; tamarind-spiked chickpea pearl salad; and more. 

With each restaurant opening, “Top Chef” alum Gabe Pascuzzi’s menus seem to get a little bit healthier. After an indulgent sandwich shop and a grilled chicken restaurant, his latest is a brick-and-mortar version of his grain bowl pop-up Feel Good. Here, cauliflower rice, red quinoa, mixed greens, or brown rice can be topped with an assortment of charred, raw, and pickled veggies, Ota tofu or Mary’s chicken, crispy grains, crunchy seeds, zippy sauces, and zingy dressings. Don’t miss out on the Smokey Roots, an assemblage of smoked beets, charred onion, sautéed kale, and roasted carrot tossed with dill, mint, pickled mustard seed, and bee pollen, with a garlic-sumac yogurt. 

Best known for its American standards and an excellent local beer list, Grain & Gristle has been a go-to lunch, dinner and brunch spot for sandwiches, salads, and their housemade charcuterie since opening in 2010. Brunch and dinner menus have expanded back to pre-pandemic size, and offer a playfully-named range of dishes like “Professor Plum…in the Kitchen,” which arrives as a half roasted chicken with a plum glaze, grilled radicchio, fresh plums, pecorino, and herbs. Brunch, too, mimics the levity of the dinner menu, with cozy classics — the blackberry-filled brioche donuts in a blackberry sage syrup are particularly swoon-worthy — to help start the weekend right. 

Fish & Rice is the kawaii, straight-to-the-point sushi and poke restaurant Portland diners have been waiting for. Menu options at this aptly-named spot center on simple, high-quality sushi, poke, chirashi and nigiri. Start with simple classics like miso soup, sunomono, dumplings, and marinated salads before delving into one of the seven poke options, which range from tuna and tofu to scallop and salmon. A short menu of “simple” rolls is perfect for purists or easy eating, while the “special” rolls explore fun combinations and less traditional ingredients, like the Crouching Tiger with shrimp, cream cheese, and crab salad topped with shrimp, avocado, scallion, sweet potato, and a trio of sauces, and the Kauai, which features a pineapple salad atop shrimp, mango, and yellowtail.   

A nonprofit market supporting the Center for Study & Preservation of Palestine, Jerusalem Rose is Ramzy Farouki and his mother Mervat’s market that celebrates the foods they made together when Ramzy was a child. Inside the compact storefront, find hummus and wonderful labneh, housemade pickles, grains, and pantry staples like olive oils, honey, breads, and sweets, alongside locally sourced produce from a number of local farms. Though small, the space is home to many more difficult-to-find ingredients and foods that are perfect for home cooking or quick lunch on the go. 

Over the summer, Lotus Cafe owners Alvin Wang, Phumitas Kaewklang, and Raymond Chau branched out with their second restaurant, Lúa, located along North Williams’ busy restaurant row inside Southeast 82nd’s Hong Phat. The menu is an assortment of many of the ideas they came up with at Lotus Cafe, and features Vietnamese street food dishes like skewers, fish sauce chicken drummies, and egg rolls; classics like banh mi and salad rolls; as well as rice plates and banh hoi. The menu, which the owners say will expand to include noodle soups and eventually cocktails, also features juices, rich avocado smoothies with condensed milk, Vietnamese coffee and teas, and boba.

We’re back to comfort food season in Portland. Luckily it’s always that season at Miss Delta, where a lengthy menu features Southern comfort food staples for brunch, dinner or “by the pound” to enjoy at home. Mornings are ideal for classics like biscuits and gravy, country fried steak, chicken and waffles, and massive fried chicken and pepper bacon-topped Southern stacks. In the afternoons and evenings, the menu expands impossibly larger, with po’ boys of all stripes, fried appetizers, “trashy” mac ‘n’ cheeses, barbecue plates and more. 

Relish in the joys of a $40, three-course prix fixe at Northeast Portland’s Verdigris. Choose from a range of contemporary French classics, like French onion soup, smoked ham and white bean cassoulet, coq au vin, steak frites, and chocolate soufflé cake, as well as dine-in-only $1 oysters (takeout oysters are $3/each). With their new digs in the former Daisy Bar space, there’s expanded patio seating and open-air tables, too, for dining in or waiting for your dinner to go.

Yakuza Izakaya, now known as Yakuza Ghost, has gone through several iterations since the pandemic began. Most recently, it exists as a “ghost kitchen,” offering a short menu of Japanese-inspired sides, salads and raw fish dishes, paired of course, with the much-beloved burger. Options range from simple maki and hand rolls stuffed with spicy tuna, tempura shrimp, crab, and salmon, to dressed up raw and nigiri option. Those in search of nostalgia can order the burger as is, or as a bowl, over rice or arugula.