summer sandwiches: hello again to meat cheese bread, goodybe again to portland

1406 Southeast Stark Street, Portland, OR 97214

http://www.meatcheesebread.com/

Two trips to Portland in as many months and I still feel like there's a ton of places there left to explore.  Els and I wrapped up our trip with a quick stop at Meat, Cheese & Bread for some sandwiches for the drive home.  I was going to pick a cold sandwich because I figured that would keep better during the drive, but the guy behind the counter recommended the pulled pork, which is also what my pal Rob rated highly.  How could I say no?  "Pulled Pork: Roasted pork shoulder, grilled broccolini, salsa verde and aioli on a rustic baguette".  The broccolini was a great touch, adding some texture and a somewhat sour contrast to the mushy savoryness of the pulled pork.  The thing is, though, that this sandwich was so wet and greasy that it was pretty soaked through by the time I got around to eating it.  Not that it was a big problem, just that the physical integrity of the sandwich would likely be preserved by eating it soon after it was prepared.  Still tasty later on, just sloppy.  All in all, I got to try some great sandwiches during this visit- maybe not as many as my first trip- but a good number nonetheless.  I didn't go to any food carts, and wish that I had.  But then, I did try a number of non-sandwich options, including some reaaaaally good pizza from Sizzle Pie ("Steve Caballero: vegan pepperoni, seitan italian sausage, green peppers, white onion and shredded daiya mozzarella 'cheese'")  and Hammy's ("Cheeseburger Pizza: ground beef, bacon, tomatoes and onions, topped with yellow mustard"), not to mention the required stop at Voodoo Donuts:

Portland, I'll be back again soon!  Don't eat all the sandwiches before I get back.

summer sandwiches: fish sandwich and a scotch egg at horse brass in portland

 

 

4534 Southeast Belmont Street, Portland, OR

http://www.horsebrass.com/

It didn't even dawn on me until just now that this was the second "Brass" place Els and I went to in Portland.  We dropped into this British-styled pub for a late lunch with our hosts Nic and Andrew on Monday afternoon.  Looking now at their website, it seems like Horse Brass Pub takes their authentic presentation pretty seriously, but frankly I really wouldn't even know the difference between real and fake pubs.  This one certainly seemed pretty legit while we were there, and I was impressed with their (weekly?) rotating beer list.  The food wasn't bad either, although I definitely wasn't as blown away as I was at other Portland locales.  Maybe it's because Horse Brass focuses on authenticity and tradition, and so therefore their sandwiches are MEANT to be kinda plain and unadventurous.  At any rate, I didn't really have any problems with my fish sandwich, but I did try adding every sauce on the table to it in order to wrangle a little extra flavor out of my lunch.  And, I will add, that Horse Brass afforded me an opportunity to finally try a scotch egg, which I'd been wanting to try for years- actually the fact that Horse Brass has scotch eggs is the reason we went in the first place!  It was pretty interesting, but somehow drier and colder than I'd imagined scotch eggs would be.

summer sandwiches: breakfast at city state in portland

 

 

 

126 Northeast 28th Avenue, Portland, OR

http://citystatediner.com/

I am an idiot.  At this particular moment I'm ruminating on that fact because I believed all day that I was scheduled to work tonight, got all showered and dressed and caffeinated and ready to head out the door only to realize, with the slow burning onset of embarrassment, that I was wrong about today's date and in fact am not scheduled to work.  And I even turned down a coworker's request to cover his shift (which would have paid even better than my regular shift) cuz I thought I was working.  I am a man with some regrets.  Which makes it appropriate that this is the sandwich review I am writing now, because I have some regrets about this sandwich.  See that sandwich up top?  That's the "Cuban", a "flat grilled french baguette with ham, capicola, house pickles, swiss, strawberry jam, and garlic dijon mayo".  Sounds insane and delicious right???  That's not what I ordered.  I ordered the breakfast sausage sandwich, which was "house sausage, egg, muenster".  Don't get me wrong, it was for sure a tasty sandwich.  The house sausage was peppery and not too greasy and the muenster was a great and unexpected choice for a breakfast sandwich.  But for some reason I thought, since it was only breakfast time and I'd surely be eating more epic sandwiches later in the day (in my duties as a Sandwich Journalist of course), that I should take it easy on breakfast.  Get something not too crazy.  Something a little smaller (and this sandwich, served all on its lonesome, was indeed pretty small).  I let the waitress talk me out of getting eggs benedict with "pork belly, apricot jam and arugula".  WTF is wrong with me???  When my reckless devourment of sandwiches finally catches up with me and does me in, it's not the horribly unhealthy feasts that lead to my demise that I'll regret.  I will regret the times I went to an awesome restaurant in a city far away from where I live and ordered something more modest instead of going for the good stuff.  You'd think a dude would Carpe Diem in a place called City State.  Ah, but who ordered the Cuban then, you ask?  Actually in a funny twist of fate, both of my younger brothers happened to be passing through Portland at the same time Els and I were there!  So while I'm bummed that I missed out on the Cuban or Pork Belly Eggs Benedict (or "The Count -  hazelnut challah french toast, smoked turkey, prosciutto, havarti, brie, apricot jam", god why didn't I order that??), I am still gonna have fond memories of getting to have breakfast with my brothers and my special lady friend at a Portland diner with a wide and very appealing menu.  But maybe next time I'll order something as memorable as the occasion.  Maybe if I'm not an IDIOT, jeez.

summer sandwiches: ham sandwich from brass tacks

We got into Portland Saturday evening and met our pal Rob at the weird/run down/honestly kinda scary house he is subletting a room in.  It was being guarded by this cat which didn't seem all that friendly.  We had dinner at Ned Ludd around the corner, but we didn't eat any sandwiches there.  Not that it mattered, because the food was not very good for how much it cost to eat there.  Whatever.

This little fellow lives at the house where we crashed during our trip.  She noticed me eating a piece of bread and got curious.  Then she took a bite.  Then, seconds after this photo was taken, she clawed me and stole it!  I tell you there was something satanic about this cat.  Did I mention it uses the toilet?  Like, the human toilet?  IT USES THE TOILET.  UNNATURAL.

 

3535 N Vancouver Ave, Portland, OR

http://brasstackssandwichesllc.blogspot.com/

 

We were supposed to go to the river with our host and her friends on Sunday morning. but due to a breakdown in communication we would have had to skip out on coffee and our first meal of the day to do so.  "Nuts to that!" we said.  I didn't come Portland to eat snacks bought at Safeway en route to the river.  Els and I took off on our own and decided to check out a spot called Brass Tacks.  The sandwich gods clearly approved of our decision- their first sign of approval was that I recognized one of the owners of Brass Tacks was someone I knew from several years ago in San Francisco!  It was an unexpected and funny coincidence.  Our second sign from the sandwich gods came when we asked for iced coffees to start our hot sunny Portland day off right.  At first they were like "oh we don't serve iced coffee sorry" but THEN it was all "oh hey I guess we have actually exactly two cups of iced coffee that were sent to us as a sample".  So we got delicious, chocolately iced coffee and when the woman behind us in line was like "I'll have an iced coffee too" she got DENIED.  Bummer for her.  I decided to get a ham sandwich, because I reasoned that I frequently see pork sandwiches on offer, but rarely ham.  Few people want to attempt ham sandwiches.  I think ham sandwiches just aren't sexy enough.  Actually, ok, Rhea's has a pretty good ham sandwich and Tartine does those insane ham and gruyere melty things.  But all the same you'll see a dozen fancy turkey sandwiches for every ham sandwich you come across.  I liked this ham sandwich a lot, and what I liked about it was that it was so straight forward.  Maple-glazed ham, cheddar cheese, mayo, mustard, pickles, onions, something leafy and green on a fluffy... ciabatta or something.  It tasted like a ham sandwich and I like ham sandwiches.

What, was that a really boring description of a sandwich?  How about another crazy-ass Portland animal then?  This guy is named Dude, and he is a shy and sweet rescue dog, at least until anyone lights a fire or starts smoking around him.  For some reason Dude loves smoke and spent almost this entire time we were at this backyard BBQ jumping up in the air and biting at the smoke.  Portland animals are weird.

summer sandwiches: portland again! or in this case, grant's pass

1533 Northeast F Street, Grants Pass, OR
 http://parkwayvillagellc.com/gooseberries.php

I had so much fun the last time I was in Portland, I turned around and went straight back!  Actually, Els and I had been talking about going to Portland for a long, long time, and my last trip there was a hastily thrown together journey that didn't include Els.  It was a bro/road trip.  I wanted to say broad trip, but that doesn't quite work.  At any rate, it was time, once again, to drive through hours and hours of mountains to get to that rad city perched in the middle of the cultural desolation of Oregon.  Last time I went, I left San Francisco at something like seven in the morning in order to get to Portland before too late in the day (if you've never done it, the drive from SF to Portland is somewhere between 10 and 12 hours long..... be sure to stock up yr mp3 player before leaving...).  In order to make this drive a little less insane, we left Friday night and stayed in a hotel halfway.  Well it was supposed to be halfway, except Friday night traffic was gnarly and so we only got as far as Willows, which is only a few hours north of SF.   That meant a fair amount of driving left for Saturday, which actually ended up taking up most of the day.  We had a late breakfast (I had Burger King.... don't get the breakfast burrito there, it's awful and small and full of runny salsa, stick to the totally passable breakfast biscuit sandwich), so imagine my dismay when we passed signs indicating a MR PICKLES franchise just south of Shasta!  We were too full to stop already.  I blew it with my breakfast choice!  We would have to stop again for food before getting to Portland though, and by mid-afternoon we were deep in Oregon's mountains and our stomachs were grumbling. We got off the 5 at Hood River Grant's Pass and contemplated the assortment of fast food options, before spotting a grocery called Huckleberry's Natural Market Gooseberries Real Food & Deli (I couldn't remember the name of the market when I was writing this, just that it had berry in the name- hence my mistaken first assumption based on google results that we had stopped at a chain grocery called Huckleberry's).  Els, being a granola eating hippie, wanting to stop there for lunch, and I, being a junk-food loving carnivore who is smart enough to let his girlfriend get her way, acquiesced.  Reluctantly.  I steeled myself for a bland meal of fake meat products and foods advertising their lack of whatever we aren't supposed to be eating these days.  But inside we discovered a deli offering a variety of sandwiches, wraps, and burgers, and I'll be damned if they didn't actually sound pretty tasty (and pretty bad for you!! awww yeeaaaah).  I went with the "Huckleberry Gooseberry Special" or something like that, which was I think turkey, bacon, melted cheese (jack?) and honey mustard.  And pesto aioli, or avocado?  What's that green stuff up there?  I didn't write down the ingredients because I stupidly believed that a natural food store would have a modern website with a menu available.  Idiot.  Anyway whatever it was it was great and undoubtedly bad for me, which I appreciate, Huckleberry's Natural Market Gooseberries Natural Food & Deli.  Els got a wrap, which in my professional sandwich blogger opinion is not a sandwich, but we got photos of it anyway and here it is.  It was bacon, tomato, avocado, lettuce, dressing (caesar or thousand island?) and I'm pretty sure it had turkey or chicken.  Maybe Els remembers.  I'd ask her, but she's back in Portland!  Again!  We can't get enough of that city, apparently.  Also, she just sent me a text about a toothless man trying to trade weed for two machetes at a garage sale.  Oregon!

 

After filling our bodies with this horribly unhealthy food from the health market, we got back on the road and saw some RIDICULOUS clouds.  Look at these dang clouds!  It's hard to get a sense of scale, but this was a massive cloudbank with a really weird shape.  Good stuff, Oregon!