Apizza Scholls, Toki, Cully Central, and More: Portland Dining’s Best in 2021

In as robust a pizza town as Portland has become, are you surprised we didn’t stray far from the original? Apizza Scholls, long beloved for its 18” neo-Neapolitan pies cooked to perfection in an electric oven, is arguably the one that started it all. Originally opened on a Christmas tree farm in Scholls, Ore., Apizza Scholls has been sending out simply excellent pizza for more than 20 years now (though they opened on Hawthorne in 2005).

Like almost every restaurant, COVID disrupted the normal flow of everything, but it made getting your hands on one of Brian Spangler’s pies almost easier, where out-the-door lines were traded for takeout and delivery by phone. Starting at 3 p.m., you can pre-order 18” house and build-your-own pies, salads and desserts, alongside pop, beer (in cans, bottles and growlers), and wine for evening pickup daily. On Monday to Thursday, you can also find calzones on the menu. This is as true to Portland as you can get, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Located in nondescript gray building on a slice of Northeast Cully’s six-corner intersection between 60th and Prescott, Cully Central is the city’s go-to spot for Laotian street food. This kind-of corner, kind-of-not sports bar-turned-Lao-street-food spot, has been a constant during the pandemic, especially with shifting indoor/outdoor dining regulations. The expansive patio, decorated with hanging flowers, has transitioned from a cool summer hang to a slightly more cool patio warmed by propane heaters keeping the rainy chill away.

The wall-adhered, print-out menu remains the same, offering a range of snacks and larger dishes from fried meatballs (on a stick), and salt-and-pepper calamari with sweet chile sauce and fish sauce wings (a must), to the incredible nam khao kissed with zingy herbs and Lao sausage (another must), grilled brisket with oven-roasted tomato jaew, and chewy khao piek sen with shredded chicken and quail eggs. Spice-lovers will find solace here: most dishes pack some heat, some a lot of heat — and fiery roasted chile oil is available if it’s still hot enough. All that, and Cully’s great beer list and tight collection of cocktails makes this one of the best standbys in town.

Carlo Lamagna’s eponymous Filipino restaurant has taken many forms over the past two years. Early in the pandemic, it opened as a takeout, three-course prix-fixe model, with meals being matched and donated to frontline and essential workers. Then, over the winter, the restaurant went on hiatus while Lamagna and his team revamped and rebuilt the entire space, blowing out walls and redesigning the entire dining room while preparing and gaining steam for its most recent iteration, which only restarted toward the end of this summer.

Now, Magna has found its footing as among the greatest meals in town. This past summer, Lamagna was selected for a long-overdue Best New Chef accolade from Food & Wine while honing in Magna’s menu. These days, the menu is best enjoyed with a group. Come early and order a few skewers and cocktails to share before diving into the full menu of beautifully reimagined snacks and mains. Many of the old favorites are still here — the crispy, hot lumpia stuffed with bouncy pork and veggies; sisig, the sizzling pork bits and calamansi served gooey and rich with a fried egg and chiles; and the simply excellent chicken adobo — alongside new and sometimes large-format dishes like the duck leg dinuguan, served with an addictive blood salsa and puto calasiao; and the all-plates-on-deck crispy pata, large enough for table of six, with leftovers to spare. Simply put, Magna rocks.

Call (503) 395-8542 for more info.

This Clinton neighborhood oyster stalwart has returned, better than ever. Partway through lockdown, Jacqueline, the city’s seafood-centric restaurant known for $1 oyster happy hours and simple and seasonal seafood fare, quietly closed its doors, rearranged furniture and some decorations, and reopened as Fair Weather, serving great espresso drinks, treat-worthy breakfast baked goods, and brunch plates.

Now, Jacqueline is back, and beloved Fair Weather is here to stay, too. Alongside morning-hour coffee drinks and brunch dishes, the oyster happy hour and PNW-driven veggie and seafood menu best paired with a chilled bottle of wine fill out the evenings, five days a week. The menu has settled back into its snacks and larger format plates, including a large selection of cozy cold-weather dishes, like grilled beets with Asian pear and sorrel, rye spaetzle with all the mushrooms and fava tops, smoked black cod with crispy potatoes, and Dungeness crab toast with Calabrian chiles and pea tendrils.

Before the pandemic, Deadshot was one of the hottest tables in town. Helmed bar-side by Adam Robinson, who rose to cocktail fame by way of The Bent Brick (RIP) and Rum Club, Deadshot started as a Monday night food and drink collab between Holdfast chefs Will Preisch and Joel Stocks and Robinson. In its current iteration, Preisch and Stocks have moved on to other projects, but Robinson has partnered with PULU by Sunrice PDX, a Filipino pop-up serving solid and lightly chef-ified versions of classics like sisig, ginataan, and adobo, alongside snacks to share like an excellent smoked rockfish dip in coconut milk aioli and fries tossed in barbecue salt.

Call (503) 875-0527 for more info.

Throughout the pandemic, a host of restaurants dipped into the pantry goods and prepared foods world, hoping to capture a near-captive audience with home cooking time to burn. Laurelhurst Market, with its in-house butcher shop and packed-to-travel lunchtime sammies, was ready for the masses hoping to treat themselves to nice dinners and tasty treats to pass the time.

Nearly two years later, the butcher shop is still always packed. Outdoor dining on a covered and heated deck, alongside proof of vaccination for indoor dining, makes the steakhouse experience pandemic-friendly. Start with a classic, made-in-house charcuterie plate, deviled eggs, or steak tartare, before diving into a classic wedge salad, steak frites, the house rib eye with confit fingerling potatoes, and a steakhouse burger, layered with house ground beef, white cheddar, and grilled onions.

Mid-City SmashBurger has been one of the hottest carts in town since it opened, serving a straightforward menu of crispy-edged smash burgers (the real ones know to order two), crinkle-cut fries, and icy chocolate shakes. Burgers here are simple and cheap, but perfect, a golden ratio of lacy meat to American cheese and smash sauce (a mix of ketchup, mayo, pickles, onions, and more).

They’re also $5, which makes ordering two (or however many more!) not only affordable but pretty much a necessity. The fries, too, are straightforward, arriving crispy and plain or smothered in cheese and smash sauce (you can also go plain cheese fry if you’re like us). Open from noon until 6 p.m. Wednesday to Monday, it’s best to get here early to snag your order. Make sure to follow chef Mike Aldridge on Instagram, too. The burger memes sell themselves.

Langbaan, Portland’s formerly forever-sold-out back room Thai tasting menu restaurant, returned to its roots this past fall. After a long and lovely (and attainable!) stint as an a la carte, outdoors-only restaurant throughout the spring and summer, the restaurant has finally moved back indoors to its tiny-but-mighty dining room. Now in its second iteration already — when you see a menu you love, jump on it! — winter brings a tasting menu of dishes inspired by Bangkok Chinatown. Like always, and hopefully forever, it leads with two of the restaurant’s most iconic dishes: the cara cara orange and fish sauce caramel miang som, and the crispy, sweet, salty, coconutty kanom krok, made with Hokkaido scallop.

Call (971) 344-2564 for more info.

One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been the creative outdoor dining venues restaurants and bars across town have created. Montelupo’s is among the coolest: essentially private, one-table greenhouses covered enough to protect diners from the elements but airy enough for mid-pandemic reunions. Like many restaurants across town, Montelupo walks the line between a foodstuffs store and a place to have dinner after you’ve finished picking up food for the week.

There’s fresh pastas, soups, salads, and desserts available for takeout and delivery; cook-at-home meals, cocktails to go, a mini Italian-centric wine selection, pantry items like cheese, tomatoes, and rices; and luxury basics to glitz up your home cooking. Pastas, for those familiar with owner Adam Berger’s former 28th Avenue Italian restaurant Table, will see some familiar dishes here. There’s a cozy bucatini all’amatriciana simmered with pancetta and garlic; pappardelle sauced with creamy pork ragu and broccolini-basil pesto; and Berger’s classic tajarin tossed in truffle butter and served beneath a blizzard of Parm.

Now that Toki, the casual downtown restaurant sister to husband-wife duo Peter Cho and Sun Young Park’s beloved Han Oak, has fully settled into its new digs, the menu has only gotten more rad. Originally 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 KBBQ options, the newly expanded menu winds through brunch and lunch with more dishes than ever before.

There’s a doshirak with kabocha squash curry rice, Korean fried chicken or salted mackerel, alongside banchan, rice, and soup. Yubuchobap, the filled fried tofu skins, arrive with seared tuna, flaked salmon, or kimchi fried rice. If you’re lucky, the mentaiko bucatini will be on the menu, and that’s only lunch! At night, the menu stays closer to the classics, with still some surprises in between. A seaweed-centric riff on the TikTok tortilla hack trend makes gimbap a must-order and the absolute can’t-miss steamed burger bao, which fits a double patty with cheese into, yes, a steamed bao, is thankfully available at all hours of the day.