The 10 Restaurants That Defined Portland Dining in 2025
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We asked our contributors to the Resy Hit List to share their top dining experiences in their cities this year — to choose 10 restaurants that define the state of great dining right now. Welcome back our Best of The Hit List for 2025.
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For Portland, 2025 marked the first time since the pandemic that the city’s restaurant projects and openings started to look more like how they used to be: headlined with fun, off-the-cuff collaborations, buzzy pop-ups, and national attention and concepts that Portland hasn’t seen over the last few years. We, in many ways, went back to our roots this year, focusing on the foods we love to eat, make, and gather around. Passion projects, homages (perhaps most notably L’Échelle, honoring the late Naomi Pomeroy), and old favorites shone, showing there’s a reason Portland is the food destination it is.
With that, here are 10 restaurants that, for us, defined dining in Portland in 2025.
1. Kann Southeast Portland
Few restaurants over the past decade have brought national buzz to Portland the way Kann has. Three years in, it remains one of the best, showcasing the ingenuity and tenacity of Portland chefs, and helping launch their careers elsewhere across the country, too. Completely gluten- and dairy-free (unbeknownst to many), Kann proudly focuses on chef Gregory Gourdet’s Haitian heritage, and even as he has expanded with projects like New York’s Maison Passerelle, Kann remains his north star. Signature dishes — the bread (formerly a plantain brioche, now sweet potato paired with berbere spice butter) and the griyo twice-cooked pork — are must-orders, as are as any number of plates emerging from the wood-fired hearth. Sample smoked beets with creamy garlic coconut, glazed Creole smoked duck with passion fruit, or the centerpiece coffee-rubbed NY strip. Even now it can be hard to find tables, so snag a spot when you see it.
2. L'Échelle Richmond
The final project of restaurant titan Naomi Pomeroy was in its toddler-hood when the beloved chef tragically died last summer. As an homage to her impact and presence on the city’s food scene — really, there’s no chef more pivotal Portland as a culinary destination today — the rest of her team forged ahead in her honor. Now over a year since her passing, this French bistro has become, in many ways, a love letter to her influence and spirit: a bright and warmhearted space that feels like the perfect blend of yesterday and tomorrow. The restaurant’s previously black-rimmed windows now shine an alluring cobalt blue and a short but expansive bistro menu offers all the hallmarks of French classics with signature PNW flair. With dishes like pillowy eggs as large as snowballs buried in an airy, lemony aioli and a cozy French onion soup, browned to perfection with the elbow of a crouton sticking through the cheese, it’s easy to see why this is among the buzziest restaurants in town.
3. The Paper Bridge Central Eastside
This stands out even in a city with some of the best Vietnamese food in the Pacific Northwest. The restaurant’s “excessively detailed” menu (really, a manual) about the dishes it serves remains one of the biggest draws here, especially when paired with rare-to-Portland dishes hailing from northern Vietnam. For every menu item, the restaurant offers a miniature history lesson and glossary entry, often noting the dish’s origins, regional significance, and geography alongside ingredient and cooking descriptions. It’s worth taking the time to flip between the menu and its descriptions before ordering dishes like stir-fried morning glory with three types of garlic, duck rolled pho noodles, sapa-style skewers, Hanoi signature bún chả Hanoi, and the addictive, piping-hot Hai Phong-style breadsticks with pâté.
4. 3 Doors Down Cafe & Lounge Se Portland
This longstanding Portland vanguard briefly shuttered last year, but to the joy of many old (and new!) Portlanders, it’s back with much of the same simple Italian-inspired classics that’s made it a neighborhood favorite since 1994. Little has changed at 3 Doors Down — so named because the restaurant was literally three doors down from Hawthorne Boulevard when it opened more than 30 years ago — and we’re glad for it. The short and sweet menu begins with straightforward Italian-inspired options like steamer clams, arancini, and eggplant rollatini before a handful of pastas, available in half or full portions, and a few proteins, like Alaskan halibut and chicken breast. Guests will see some familiar faces throughout the space, including the original owner Dave Marth back in charge, much of the same kitchen staff, and yes, the vodka sauce, too.
5. Jacqueline Clinton
One of the city’s few seafood-centric spots, Jacqueline is known for its wildly popular $1 oyster happy hour (harvested and delivered the same day!) and a seasonal menu of mostly fish and shellfish-focused fare. Earlier this year, the oyster depot moved down the street into Clinton Street’s former mussels house La Moule, but the only change was the address. Guests line up six days a week for oysters, fish-focused small plates, seasonal veggie salads, and fishy large-format dishes. This time of year, the menu shifts decidedly cozier, with miso butter-roasted scallops with maitakes, smoked black cod in coconut tom kha, and mussels simmered in Cameron’s cider with fennel, potatoes, and Belgian ale sausage.
6. Terra Mae Alberta
Showcasing Portland’s allure for national dining and tourist attention, Terra Mae blends Portuguese and Japanese cuisine from its women-led kitchen staff in one of the city’s most anticipated hotel openings: inside the social media darling and subterranean spa Cascada. While the cuisine collab might seem unusual at first, it has roots as far back as the 1500s, when a Portuguese ship was blown off course to Japan. Here, the time-honored culinary history also takes a trip through the bounty of the Pacific Northwest and arrives as milk bread buns paired with spreads like burnt onion butter and duck skin butter, linguica-studded dumplings with peri-peri chili crisp, and a fisherman’s stew, outfitted in Oregon black cod and shellfish in a miso and red palm coconut seafood broth.
7. Lil’ Barbecue Dekum
Over the summer, word got out that the Michelin-starred Austin, Texas BBQ joint La Barbecue was eyeing a Portland outpost. They’re not the first national (or international for that matter) restaurant to head to the city and they likely won’t be the last. Partnering with the team behind The Old Gold, Paydirt, and Holy Ghost, la Barbecue’s “far West outpost” will take over the kitchen at Northeast Dekum’s Tough Luck bar, spearheaded by general manager and pitmaster Ben Vaughan. The menu boasts all the classics of Texas BBQ, from brisket and pork ribs to snappy sausages and pulled pork, plus classic sides, “sausage dawgs,” and fun bar snacks. Special to Portland, though, are the “beet ends,” Lil’s smoky vegan option.
Find more info here.
8. The Bitterroot Club Buckman
Pop-ups remained a Portland restaurant mainstay in 2025, with chefs in our fairly tight-knit community constantly finding new iterations and formats to work together creatively. With chef-brewer, husband-wife duo Doug Adams and Whitney Burnside, the collab is sort of already built in and on display at Bitterroot Club, behind their Stark Street Grand Fir Brewery. Menus change frequently here, with large chunks of reservation blocks opening every quarter or so. For now, the fall menu goes all-in on autumn, with a butternut squash soup with duck confit and a pork chop and smoked coppa “pork supper,” paired with IPA honey mustard and green chile fonduta twice-baked cast iron potatoes. Dinners are $115/person and include beer, with wine and non-alcoholic drinks available for additional purchase.
Book now on Tock.
9. Metlapil Kerns
One of the most captivating spots from Portland’s summer of mariscos pop-ups, projects, and menu specials across the city was Metlapil, from former República chef Jose “Lalo” Camarena and his partner and pastry chef Kautia Camarena. Now a few months settled into its new-ish Northeast Glisan and I-84 digs, Metlapil hand-grinds masa for two tasting menu services a week — on Saturdays and Sundays — alongside a tempting late-night mariscos menu Sunday nights from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. It’s hard to know what to expect inside the bright and almost beachy space, as the menu shifts constantly save for that masa, which is served pressed into pillowy tortillas, fried into tostadas, and wrapped around tender fillings. But recent ephemeral menu sightings have highlighted whole fried bay shrimp with chile morita mayo, pickled oysters with lime granita and chipotle salsa, and Oregon albacore aguachile with cucumber and pickled sungolds.
Book now on Tock.
10. Jade Rabbit Buckman
You know, of course, that Portland has an all-vegan dim sum restaurant. (Save your comments.) A former pop-up from chef Cyrus Ichiza turned brick-and-mortar at the beginning of the year, Jade Rabbit offers deceivingly good vegan variations of many popular pan-Asian and dim sum dishes. Purse-like chili oil wontons arrive stuffed with vegan beef and spring onion, springy siu mai are filled with vegan pork and shiitake mushrooms topped with tapioca “roe,” and larger dishes like the spicy darkside noodles — Jade’s take on dan dan — toss bouncy alkaline noodles with vegan pork, pickled mustard greens, and black sesame sauce. Note: diners must order their entire meal at the same time and all items are delivered together once ready, so expect a sometimes longer wait time for food.
