Sweets in Portland

Yummy fresh mint flake and banana cream pie ice cream from Ruby Jewel

You don’t think I would miss out on sweets during my trip to Portland, OR, do you? I need a separate post on all the ones I tried.

As a foodie city, Portland has great dessert options, especially on the vegan front. Like savories, some of the most interesting sweets are from food carts.

Along Mississippi Avenue I found Flavorspot, a long-standing waffle sandwich cart. I ordered a sweet cream and jam waffle. Because the waffle was made on the spot, it was warm and crisp. The fillings were not cloyingly sweet. It was a simple yet satisfying sandwich.

Flavorspot “food cart,” though it’s really a stand

Freshly made sweet cream and jam waffle

In the Hawthorne cart pod, Perierra Crêperie offers a wide variety of savory and sweet crêpes. I got something simple here too: a lemon and sugar crêpe. The girl who took my order zested the lemons, poured the batter onto the crêpe pan, then finished the crêpe in a couple of minutes.

A taste of France: Perierra Crêperie

My lemon and sugar crêpe

The crêpe was fresh (half of what makes a good crêpe) but bland-tasting. Luckily, the vibe of the cart made up for it. The two girls running the cart wore retro-style aprons and played French-sounding songs in the background. They were cheerful, full of energy, and having fun. It’d be a stretch to say I felt I were in Paris, but they put me in a groovy mood.

Portland was hot when I was there, so ice cream immediately came to mind. I read a Portland Monthly Magazine article on the best ice cream in Portland, and managed to try one of the places featured. Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty on Mississippi Avenue (yes, this street has a lot of great food) is a pizzeria that also sells house-made ice cream. I tried the cherry and salted caramel flavors. Both were rich and intense and I even bit into chunks of cherries. It certainly didn’t skimp on ingredients.

Excellent cherry and salted caramel ice cream from Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty

Just a couple blocks down from Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty is Ruby Jewel, a local ice cream producer known for its ice cream sandwiches. The store is a cavernous space with a nostalgic, diner-style décor meant for people to linger. It has a larger menu than Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty, and even several vegan flavors. However, the vegan blueberry lavender flavor I tasted didn’t impress me, so I went with fresh mint flake and banana cream pie.

Welcoming Ruby Jewel ice cream store

The ice cream was excellent. As American-style ice cream, it was almost as good as San Francisco’s favorite Bi-Rite Creamery. But I liked the lighter, gelato-like variant at Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty better.

Well, I had dessert for breakfast too. The vegan Black Sheep Bakery has a stand in the mainstream PSU Farmers' Market – another proof that Portland is vegan haven. My huge apple-spice crumb cake was wonderfully moist, and didn’t have the off-taste often found in vegan cakes that contain no eggs.

Black Sheep Bakery’s apple-spice crumb cake

The best dessert that I had? A slice of vegan hazelnut cake with strawberry frosting from the vegan Back to Eden Bakery in the Alberta Arts District.  My cake was perfect, especially its slightly coarse texture due to the ground hazelnuts in the batter. The frosting was at just the right level of sweetness.

Perfect vegan hazelnut cake with strawberry frosting

All-vegan Back to Eden Bakery

I also spoke to the two owners of the bakery. They were young, charming, or even innocent-looking. The bakery’s website says it is committed to “a love for the animals, and a love for this planet,” and this is evident from the artwork lining the walls and the carefully picked green merchandise. They really put their heart into the store.

Perhaps this is the best part of Portland: young people following their ideals and trying out ideas, be they a food cart or vegan bakery, which might otherwise be impossible in more expensive cities such as New York and San Francisco.

Sweetpea Baking Company in Portland’s “vegan mall” complex

I was disappointed with Sweetpea Baking Company though - the vegan bakery supposed to represent Portland’s vegan scene. I might have gone there too late in the afternoon; there wasn’t much to buy. Maybe the staff were being laid-back, but they seemed too hip or busy with whatever they were doing to talk to me.

Redwoods in Portland’s beautiful Hoyt Arboretum

Portland’s International Rose Test Garden in full bloom

With its beautiful outdoors, youthful spirit, offbeat yet authentic character, Portland is a great place to visit, whether you’re vegan or not. I left Portland with a full stomach and hoped I would soon return.

Veg and hip: not SF

Yes, you read right.

Portland, Oregon consistently ranks as one of the most vegetarian-friendly cities in the U.S, even ahead of San Francisco. It’s also known for being hip and progressive. During my stay there over Labor Day weekend, I experienced all these and more.

Bustling Portland Saturday Farmers’ Market

Nowhere I’ve been takes vegetarians and vegans more seriously than Portland. I rarely have problems finding things to eat at restaurants in the U.S., but in many cases I need to ask whether a dish contains meat. In Portland, restaurants indicate vegetarian and vegan options clearly, not to mention the large number of vegetarian spots, given Portland’s small size. You won’t draw a blank look if you tell people you’re a vegan.

Vegetarian food in Portland is not only abundant, but also creative and affordable. This is most evident from its 500+ food cart scene. While some carts serve regular fast food, many pride themselves on artisan/gourmet/one-of-a-kind offerings normally found (or not found) in restaurants. My most interesting meals in Portland were all from the carts.

The carts are clustered in “pods” scattered across the city. There is usually a communal dining area with picnic tables in each pod. I checked out various pods, and liked the two in the residential area where I stayed in northeastern Portland the most.

In the Mississippi Marketplace pod, I tried the chickpea sandwich ($6.5) from the Garden State cart. The made-t0-order sandwich consisted of a fried chickpea patty, shredded carrots, radishes, lettuces, and lemon aioli layered between ciabatta bread. The sandwich had a great bite, the fillings were warm and crunchy, and the crispy bread soaked up the creamy aioli sauce. It was the first thing I ate in Portland and I was blown away.

Garden State food cart

Warm, made-to-order chickpea sandwich

Then I had the quinoa pancake ($4.5) from the organic, all-vegan Ruby Dragon cart. The cart owner wore a thick beard and dreadlocks – probably what a visitor expects Portland’s hippies to look like. But Ruby Dragon puts out seriously good food. The “Tiger’s Paw” pancake is made from fresh ground quinoa flour and hempseeds, with blueberries and walnuts mixed into the batter.  Also made-to-order then topped with maple syrup, it had a fragrant, nutty flavor and complex texture. One of the best pancakes I’ve ever had.

Ruby Dragon food cart

One of the best I’ve ever had: quinoa and hempseed pancake

For dinner, how about a Venezuelan platter from the Fuego de Lotus (literally fire of lotus) food cart in the Alberta Arts District? This was the first time I had Venezuelan food and I loved it. The “Revolutionaries Plate” ($7) included arepas (masa cakes), cilantro rice, black beans topped with cotija (a sharp, white cheese of Mexican origin), and cabbage salad. The warm, homey food was the perfect antidote to a breezy night.

Venezuelan “Revolutionaries Plate”

Another upside of this pod: diners eat under a cabana-like structure with decorative light strings dangling over the beams. It felt DIY yet elegant. I could see the sky and a few lonesome stars when I ate. With music blaring in the background, this would be a wonderful date spot.

Fuego de Lotus food cart

The other night I got a slice of vegan pizza ($3.5) at Bella Faccia Pizzeria on Alberta Street. The pizza was decent: tempeh crumbles, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes on top of a “cashew/roasted pepper/tomato base” and thin crust. A very small but growing number of pizzerias now offer vegan pizzas, but you usually have to order an entire pie. I was impressed that Bella Faccia had vegan slices readily available.

Vegan pizza slice from Bella Faccia Pizzeria

But there were misses too. One was the vegan poutine ($4.5) from the popular Potato Champion cart in the offbeat Hawthorne District. Poutine is a classic Quebec dish of Belgian frites and cheese curds doused in gravy. Maybe I should have tried the regular version, but the gravy smothering the frites and tofu (instead of cheese) in my vegan version was too thick. I could almost taste the cornstarch in it.

Potato Champion food cart specializing in fried potato

Vegan poutine from Potato Champion

Most food carts in Portland are run by young people about my age. I wondered whether they did this as a career, or a stepping stone to something else, like becoming a chef at a restaurant. I felt it’s the former.

Running a food cart is tough – almost like running an outdoor restaurant – but the cart owners seemed content with it. They chatted with one another in the pod over cigarettes and beer during downtime. Their life looked carefree to an outsider. Is this what being a hippie in Portland means?

My best food experience in Portland, however, didn’t require psychoanalysis and was strikingly simple. I came across Freddy Guys Hazelnuts at the Portland State University Saturday Market, the city’s flagship farmers’ market. The dry roasted hazelnuts ($5) I bought there were heaven.

Best of Portland: farm-fresh dry roasted hazelnuts

The hazelnuts had a fresh, intense, slightly sweet flavor, and were super-crunchy after they were roasted. Salt was unnecessary. After I opened the package, I couldn’t stop eating. (Well, this happens whenever I eat nuts.) California produces top-quality almonds and walnuts – but no hazelnuts. I will probably order from Freddy Guys in the future.

Stay tuned for my second post on my trip to Portland. You might have noticed that a whole category of food is conspicuously missing from this post…