The August Hit List: Alouette, Kann, Street Disco, and More

Alouette, Northwest Portland’s modern French bistro with Vietnamese flair, hails from Stem Wine Bar owner and somm Wei-En Tan and partner Trang Nguyen (Friendship Kitchen). The fairly standard bistro menu — oysters on the half shell, house salad, steamed mussels — distinguishes itself with a subtle Southeast Asian flair. Those oysters add nuoc mam to the traditional mignonette and lemon accents, while the house salad tosses little gems with apples, and radishes with peanuts, and a citrus turmeric dressing for brightness. Larger options, like the mussels, sub out the traditional wine and cream for coconut milk and lemongrass.

The Portland pizza party never ends. Back, in new and improved digs, is Gracie’s Apizza, among the city’s most fantastic pizzerias, pairing naturally leavened pies with housemade mozzarella, local veg, and housemade cold cuts. The menu is short n’ sweet here, with only a couple (literally) of small and shareable things — like marinated olive and a shaved and pickled veggie salad with maple mustard vinaigrette — before delving into the main event. With only a half-dozen pies, there’s room for pizzaiolo Craig Melillo to flex. Pizza runs from traditional-plus, like the tomato pie boosted with green garlic, and the mozz, which gets an added kick from aged Gouda and aleppo, to creative types like the calzone, which features a “shaved prosciutto side sauce for dunking,” and the pesto pie with cured zucchini and Calabrian chile honey.

Find more info here.

Before opening a brick-and-mortar along one of downtown Beaverton’s main drags, Hapa Pizza was making and selling pizza at the farmers market. These days, they’re making and selling their pan-Asian, Neapolitan-style ‘zas only a few blocks away from their original stomping grounds. Pizzas here are unlike anything most have seen, with the two best sellers — the banh mi and pho — channeling two pillars of the Vietnamese food canon. The banh mi is topped with barbecue pork, pickled radish, carrots, and cilantro, while the pho uses pho broth to braise the slow-cooked brisket on top and as a key ingredient of the sauce, before a shower of onion, mozzarella, cilantro, green onions, bean sprouts, hoisin, and sriracha aioli. Alongside banh mi and pho, also find massaman curry and tom yum pizzas, as well as the more classical margherita and pepperoni.

Find more info here.

Portland finally brought home the gold. For the first time ever, a Portland restaurant clinched the coveted best new restaurant award from the James Beards. And Kann, from “Top Chef” darling Gregory Gourdet, is a worthy winner. A blow-out space (by Portland standards), with a gold-brushed ceiling, quartzite counters, cushy chairs, and like Gourdet’s bright home, accented with trellising plants, is a sort of homecoming for Gourdet, who spent years in kitchens cooking other peoples’ food until now. Kann, and the subterranean sister bar Sousòl just below, in many ways is a new beginning for Gourdet, who finally has a space to call his own and brings all of Gourdet’s influences, experiences, and worldview under one roof. The restaurant — completely gluten- and dairy-free, unbeknownst to many — proudly focuses on his Haitian heritage alongside a heavy non-alcoholic bar presence, a beacon for others who may be on their own journey of sobriety.

A glimpse at the current menu brings immediate excitement, kicking off with a phenomenal gluten-free plantain brioche with epis butter (you’ll want to make sure everyone gets their own baby brioche) and griyo twice-cooked pork with pikliz — among the signature dishes — before heading to the fiery hearth. The heart of the menu earns a kiss of wood-fired flame, from red cabbage with smoked herring and African pepper sauce to shimmering glazed duck breast and leg, lacquered with cane syrup and snappy pineapple. The only problem you’ll have here is getting in the door.

The location that kicked off the Sesame Collective empire (Shalom Y’all, Dolly Olive), Mediterranean Exploration Company has been serving its Levantine-inspired menu since 2014. Since the pandemic, the restaurant has expanded into the street and now offers substantial outdoor dining to make the most of the luxurious summer nights. Start with the radicchio salad, which will be nostalgic for fans of the now-closed Tasty n Sons, and a handful of mezze like the falafel and beef bacon-wrapped dates. While there’s no shortage of dishes worth ordering from the piato, grill, and oven sections (the lamb chops and the grilled octopus are classics), we love everything in the mezze with pita section. Don’t miss the housemade labneh and the many variations on hummus, particularly the fried artichoke and crispy lamb iterations.

Taking over the former Yonder space, Norma Jean’s Soul Cuisine marries soul food standards like red beans and rice, smoked turkey legs with baked mac ‘n’ cheese, and smothered oxtails, braised until buttery, with some surf and turf favorites like whole Dungeness crab doused in garlic butter and 28-day-aged rib eyes dusted in Cajun seasoning. As the restaurant settles into its new brick-and-mortar digs — it’s barely a month into its tenure — expect to see more appetizers like fried shrimp, Cajun oysters Rockefeller, and even alligator tail on the menu.

Find more info on Instagram.

Former Dame pop-up-turned-brick-and-mortar Street Disco is bringing moody green interiors, deceivingly simple plates, and tasty natural wine and cocktails to Southeast’s burgeoning Foster-Powell neighborhood. The menu starts small, with snacks like buffalo milk burrata, here paired with cherry tomatoes and berries, and bluefin tuna crudo, layered with fermented tomato water jellies and white tamari. Plates grow larger as the menu moves on, with more veg-focused salad-y types in the middle and more substantial options at the bottom. Though not particularly large, the Kauai head-on shrimp are a must, served lacquered in a punchy aperitivo sauce and whipped ‘ndjua butter.

The second summer iteration from Paradise Mariscos chef Adán Fausto looks more like a roadside taco stand than the built-out high-end seafood pop-up from last year. Here, Fausto is channeling the (housemade) flour tortilla-wrapped taquerias and asaderos in the Northern reaches of Mexico, with chuck tail flap seared over mesquite coals, local pinto beans cooked simply, melted queso Oaxaca, housemade salsa roja, and a punchy zucchini-infused Baja-style green sauce. Alongside the steak, find a chicken asado or a potato confit with charred poblano and carrot. Tacos Con Onda is popping up at Hungry Heart Bakery on Thursdays and Fridays from 4 p.m. until sold out and from 1 p.m. until gone on Saturdays at Woodsman Tavern.

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This popular fluorescent teal food cart in Southwest Portland has finally made the jump over the hills. Now in a Swan Island brick-and-mortar — though not particularly convenient to those who don’t work on the industrial spit along the river — the buzzy cart’s Three Sisters Nixtamal tortillas have never been closer. The menu, built by chef-owner Anthony La Pietra, is short but sweet, with most of the spotlight shining on the eponymous hand-rolled taquitos and tacos. Golden, fried taquitos arrive stuffed with pillowy potatoes beneath a blizzard of toppings, including avocado salsa, cabbage, cilantro, crema, queso fresco, and pickled onions. If classic potatoes don’t sound filling enough, you can add additional proteins or veggies — like citrus pork, mushroom, or grilled shrimp — which can also be made into tacos, nestled high into thick, handmade corn tortillas. The tacos come filled with your choice of much of the same add-ons as the taquitos, like shredded cabbage and queso fresco, and your choice from a quartet of punchy salsas–avocado, chile de arbol, chile verde, and habanero.

Find more info on Instagram.

Southeast Division’s moody, wood-lined whiskey bar, sporting an impressive collection of framed pictures of Mount Hood (compliments of Stumptown owner Duane Sorenson) has been quietly bringing the heat since it reopened a year and a half ago. Once a seminal restaurant that attracted the early restaurant award crowds in 2011, Woodsman traded its refined spin on Southern-ish food with a heavy presence of Benton ham and oysters shucked along its horseshoe bar for a slightly more casual energy. Meals here always started with raw oysters and do again, with cooked seafood like shrimp cocktail and Lowcountry smoked mussels to pair. The menu continues through nostalgic appetizers like fried oysters and crudites, a wedge salad, shrimp Louie, and a fisherman’s stew before landing on charcoal grilled meats and veggies. The weekend brunch, which kicks off on Friday mornings — one of only a handful in town — is another worthy option.