I got married at the end of July of this year to my partner. I adore him for many reasons, including being an incredible and generous cook. I often say that I like to eat but I love to be fed, and so I like to think I conjured him.
But I say all that to give context around why I ended up in Oregon in late July and having the trajectory of my future reorientated.
Two days after our wedding we flew to Portland for our honeymoon after changing our minds initially on wanting to take a Sideways movie-inspired trip through California’s wine country. (I’ll get back to Sideways in a future post on why it is my favorite film of all time.) Napa, I’m sure is gorgeous and lovely, but also expensive as hell, and when we thought of how we wanted to spend nearly two weeks in wine country, the pace and cadence—and frankly the intrigue—of Oregon’s burgeoning Willamette Wine Valley region felt more accessible and like an off the beaten path gem.
Mike had been to Portland for work previously and planted the seed to go. But me, an older millennial whose entire early adulthood from 2008-2015 was spent falling in love with music like Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, Andrew Bird and watching episodes of Portlandia and Broad City while biking through the farmers markets of northeast D.C as a freelance writer for now-defunct Filter magazine with former boyfriends who knocked back D.C Brau, could not believe I had never been. Not one to ever fight the twinge of nostalgia or the promise of a new adventure, I was very much eager to go.
The Oregon trip as a whole deserves a much more dedicated appreciation post, but here I want to focus on a singular restaurant from the more than 20 we visited that was part of recalibrating our tastebuds and made us reevaluate where our own bar for good food stood: Le Pigeon. In short, Portland told us to comport ourselves correctly, because while mediocrity may be rampant, its excellence was a rare bird.
We arrived a few minutes early for our reservation at Le Pigeon, a seven-course chef’s tasting menu we were inspired to book after watching a YouTube series on Portland’s restaurant scene. We grabbed a couple of drinks at the restaurant next door, Canard, a cheeky ode to the main establishment. When the magic hour hit 5pm and our seats were ready at Le Pigeon we saddled up to the bar and observed the small cohort of fellow diners brimming with anticipation. Immediately, the cozy living room vibe of the interior made us settle in, with its shelves of plant pots and dangling pothos, brick wall and mirrors juxtaposed with wooden chairs and long u-shaped bar.
Two menus were floated our way by the very attentive staff: one for meat eaters and the other for vegetarians. It was wonderful to see the vegetarian menu its own imaginative selection and not just substitutions faintly reminiscent of the meat option.
Kicking off our dinner, an amuse bouche of smoked scallop to wet the palette.
Our second course that followed was a duo of shrimp toast, apricot, truffles and haricot vert, the succulent and flirtatious expression of the fruits of summer pronouncing itself against a dark plate and paired beautifully with a 2018 Francois and Julien Pinot Vouvray. It was at the point Mike and I turned to each other and knew we were leaving our souls in Portland.
Go on. Bite your lip.
The next four courses were a dance of salt and sweetness melding with soft and buttery seafood and game. Seared fois gras atop a spring bed of corn and pigeon pelmeni, curry and lime paired with Violin Chardonnay from the Willamette Valley brought a wistful, joyful tear to the corner of my eye. I don’t even have to close them to still taste the citrus-laden honey and sweet corn. Being cradled by the loving exchange of food and atmosphere like this felt like an invitation I was grateful was extended. Regardless if we paid for the invite ourselves ($338 price tag for both excluding the wine supplement), bearing witness to the skill and creativity of chef and his sous chef that night was a kind of salvation through food.
The roasted salmon with chanterelles (!), gnocchi and geoduck was a delightful exultation of fat and flavor. The Double Trouble—sirloin, merguez meatball (a sausage mixtures of lamb and beef of Algerian orgin) and a delicate cherry syrup with turnip made us thank our past selves for the good sense to book a reservation over a month in advance and snag the last two seats.
Dinner finished with not a whisper but a deep song to summer with a decadent strawberry pavlova laden with chamomile rice and elderflower. They took me back to my summers growing up there as a kid in the 80s, scarfing down German ice cream, which was inspired by Italian ice cream making.
A good friend of mine who is also a fantastic food and beverage photographer working between the Twin Cities and Portland—Roy Son—told me weeks before our trip that Portland punches above it’s weight with its food scene. The sheer volume of restaurants it has makes it one of the most restaurant-dense cities in the country. And of course as a person for whom dining out is a lifestyle, I’m very familiar with the lore of Portland’s phenomenal food scene. But to experience it for myself was a different level of knowing. Walking around its downtown and surrounding neighborhoods felt like falling in love with a city for the first time, a sensation I hadn’t experienced since I was a 24-year old living on my own in D.C.
Until the next time I get to breath in the aromas of Portland’s air—a cacophony of sea salt and spice and herb and apple—I will always fondly remember the experience as revelatory.