When your job is to winnow the wheat from the chaff, to advise the dining public on where to get their 'za, Bangkok street snacks, and Chinese wok-fried crab, people inevitably want superlatives. What's the very best? Who's the current reigning champ...of hot wings? Tea leaf salad? Panna cotta? Pizza pie?
More than a few dishes floating around the city are well worth seeking out on their own. While assembling this year's list of our top 50 restaurants in Portland, we asked our critics to name a few, to make a fictional meal of them. This is what they came up with.
Regular contributor Jordan Michelman went on a different surf-and-turf journey. Bellwether Bar's herby green salad is the perfect preamble to a split order of 1st Street Pocha's Korean fried wings. A Star beer from Akadi... transitions not to Excellent Cuisine's dim sum but to its wok-fried crab-no doubt with a side of house special rice.
Associate editor Matthew Trueherz put Scottie's Pizza Parlor's plain Jane pepperoni front and center (because there's nothing plain about it). It appears alongside Rangoon Bistro's crunchy cabbage tea leaf salad, deliciously filling the meal's vegetable quotient.
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