Portland: Voodoo Doughnut

Standing in line for a cereal or bacon-topped doughnut from Voodoo Doughnut in Portland as a tourist is, I'd imagine, like non-Philly natives lining up at Pat's or Geno's for a cheesesteak — a required check box for any culinary traveler to tick off, and also snickered about by the locals.



When I saw the line out the door and around the corner of Portland's newest (moved down the street into a larger space) Voodoo Doughnut location at 22 SW 3rd. Ave. (there is another location in Portland, as well as a mobile events truck, and a location in Eugene, OR), I walked right on past and didn't even consider waiting. About an hour later, when we passed the corner store again, the line was contained inside the building, so I decided to give it a go. Apparently, I and a bunch of other tourists are the only people who eat at Voodoo in the middle of the afternoon, because everyone in line had a camera out snapping photos of doughnuts, and the doughnut and death themed tchotchkes covering the bright pink and brick walls. The pack of enthusiastic shutterbugs was pretty comical. (This is where the locals snicker.) The line moved dreadfully slow. Perhaps it was the poorly designed setup of doughnuts displayed in a glass revolving carousel case with no identifiers, combined with a bunch of indecisive Voodoo-newbie tourists.

The small print chalkboard menu over the cashiers' heads was also hard to read until you got to the front on the line.



Before you get to the front of the line you bes' know that Voodoo Doughnut is a cash only business, that also does not take pennies! Oh, listening to the staff (who you know just hates the hoards of tourists) say this to everyone was just hilarious. Take pennies, and save yourselves the breath!Famous for possessing little patience, I decided to speed things up by requesting a reasonably priced $10.50 Voodoo Dozen, a mixed box of a dozen doughnuts chosen by the staff. I received a mix of cake and yeasted doughnuts with various toppings and glazes. I was really hoping for at least one or two filled doughnuts.



Note that a good selection of cake, yeasted, and devils food vegan doughnuts are also available.

Voodoo is known for putting quirky toppings on doughnuts like cereal and candy, and probably most famous for their maple glazed bar doughnut topped with bacon.



As fun as cereal on doughnuts sounds, by the time the doughnut actually gets to you, those once crispy cereal nugs have been exposed to air and moisture for quite some time, so are stale and lifeless.



Grape glazed and Tang dusted glazed doughnuts are just too sugary sweet.



We found Voodoo excelled in the plain doughnut flavors like chocolate glazed and cinnamon sugar. The crazy flavors and toppings are best left for children (we unloaded most of our dozen on our friend's six year old, to her great delight), and late night snacking (a box of stale doughnuts is best enjoyed at 1 am).



My tip to tourist who want to visit one of Voodoo's locations is to study their online menu, pick out two you want to try, then stick to your guns when ordering. You just can't go wrong with a couple of doughnuts!



Voodoo Doughnut

various locations in Portland and Eugene, OR

Portland: Food Carts

When most people think about Portland's food scene, they probably think of the city's plethora of food carts clustered together downtown and in surrounding neighborhood, wrapping around an entire block in some cases.



With about 20 or more in number, these Portland food cart "pods" (the name given to groups of food trucks) are wildly popular, even though they the locals are so over the hype. In fact, while we were in Portland this June, a local weekly rag, the Portland Mercury, could not help but have a cover story on Portland's food cart pods, even though they admitted that the entire city is tired of hearing about the subject.



Those who are looking for a good resource on Portland's food carts should check out the sites Food Carts Portland and Portland Food Cart Directory. I particularly found the Google Map made by Food Carts Portland very helpful (saved it to "my places" and accessed it through my phone) in locating pods.

The first pod we hit up was one of the larger pods downtown at 5th and Oak. The downtown pods cater to the downtown worker lunch crowd, and are disproportionately heavy on Asian and Mexican cuisine, compared to the pods in outlying neighborhoods which try to curate their food truck tenants to be more varied and "gourmet." First up in our food cart adventures was a Korean tofu taco from the Korean Twist - Boolkogi Taco cart at the 5th and Oak pod. Ugh, uncooked and unseasoned tofu! It doesn't matter how much slaw and spicy sauce you pile on bland tofu, it's just not tasty. Besides being bland, and also watery, this taco was instantly forgettable. Later, we heard from our friend that the burrito is the way to go. Oh, well. We then walked a few blocks over to the 9th and Alder pod, where I had my eye on Choza's Peruvian Food, because how often do you run across a food cart serving Peruvian street food?

I ordered the vegetarian Lomo Saltado, which is a classic Peruvian dish of sautéd vegetables, and French fries served over rice. Thank goodness for the garlicy green sauce in the little container to pour over this large container of mishmashed food, because there was nothing compelling about the sauteed vegetables (they were cooked well and fresh, though). The French fries were limp, soggy and grainy. Throw out the French fries (or top with good, crisp, handmade fries) and this dish would have been doable, but as it was, I only ate a few bites. I was saving room in my belly for banana pudding at A Little Bit of Smoke, a cart at 9th and Alder serving Carolina barbecue and sides.

Hot dang! We finally hit a winner. This was real-deal banana pudding made with homemade vanilla pudding, layers of banana slices and Nilla Wafers. Unfortunately, the whipped cream on the top was deflated by the time I was served this premade dessert, but A Little Bit of Smoke knew enough about banana pudding that you had to top it with Nilla Wafers right before serving so you can enjoy both soggy wafers (ones layered in the pudding) and crunchy wafers (ones on top). Couldn't have made it better myself!The next day, we did lunch north of the city at the Mississippi Marketplace food cart pod. This is one of the more carefully curated and "gourmet" pods with ten or so carts, which also happens to have a large tent (it often rains in Portland!) and dining area adjacent to the German pub, Prost!.One of the carts at the Mississippi Marketplace we decided to try was Garden State, a chrome trailer serving Sicilian-style street food.

Garden State's chickpea sandwich is a beast with a fried chickpea patty, roasted zucchini, lettuce, shredded carrots, and lemon aioli on a chewy ciabatta roll. The chickpea patty was too greasy for me, but this was the boy's meal and he could deal. Hot out of the fryer, the saffron risotto, mozzarella, and vegetable arancini was delectable. I had heard good things about Native Bowl, a cart at Mississippi Marketplace by blogger and cookbook author, Julie Hasson, that makes various types of vegan fusion rice bowls, so I knew I was eating here.

Oh man, am I a sucker for barbecue sauce and coleslaw! Native Bowl's Mississippi Bowl with barbecue Soy Curls, barbecue sauce, coleslaw, scallions and jasmine rice had my name written all over it. And I loved it! So much so, that when I got home I made a similar rice bowl.



You probably need a few years and some serious dedication to eat your way around Portland's food carts. I so dearly wanted to hit up Wiffies for their fried hand pies, as well as stop at the Potato Champion cart for their vegan poutine, and make it to one of the three FlavourSpot carts for a veggie sausage and maple syrup waffle sandwich. Unfortunately, I only had two days and a small stomach. Look's like I'll just have to visit Portland again!

Vacation: Portland

In the middle of our week in Seattle, we ducked down to Portland, Oregon, for two brief nights. Before heading south to Portland, though, we rented a car and took a little detour. We pointed our car north to get on the Kingston ferry, which took us over to the tippy-top of the Olympic Peninsula. It's not very populated on the Olympic Peninsula, so much of the drive looked like so, with tall evergreens and yellow ribbons of invasive Scotch Broom. Oh, and gorgeous, steely blue lakes. Forks, Washington, the small town and setting for the Twilight books happens to be on the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula, which you'll drive through to get where you're going.

What a depressing little town. Not nearly as romantic and quaint as I had imagined it to be from reading the book (I stopped at book one, unable to stomach Bella's dependency issues). Trust me, if you lived in Forks, and a sparkly vampire showed up, you too would want to jump his cold, cold bones. There's just simply nothing else to do there!

Edward will show you to the ladies' bathroom at Forks' Chinese restaurant!The whole reason we went hours and hours out of our way from Seattle to Portland was to hike around the Olympic National Forest. We chose to romp around the Hoh Rainforest. It's absolutely gorgeous! Lush and green every where you look. Massive spruces, firs, and hemlocks shoot above the fern and moss-covered ground. It also rains in the rain forest pretty regularly. Go figure.After hiking in the rain forest, we headed a bit south to our home for the night, Lake Quinault Resort, a little inn with ten or so rooms set on the north shore of Lake Quinault. This place was so freakin' cute with cabin-like rooms lined up along a long deck covered with wisteria and potted flowers.
It was raining and misting that evening (we were still pretty much in the rain forest), so at times the lake vanished before our eyes even though it was just on the other side of the foxglove covered ridge just steps beyond our room and deck. We enjoyed a dinner on the deck of cheap Washington wine and Doritos from the corner store down the road. Absolutely perfect!
On the way from Lake Quinalt to Portland the next morning, we saw a roadside stand for cherries, so we stopped to experience Washington cherries while actually in Washington. These weren't life changing.Our first stop in Portland was for lunch at some of the food cart pods in downtown. A post on food carts is coming!
And, yeah, we did Voodoo Doughnuts, too, like good tourists. A post on that is also in the works.
We stopped in Powell's Books, a gigantic independent book store that takes up an entire city block in downtown Portland. These types of places overwhelm me, and I can never think of what to look for, so I just wandered aimlessly. The sides of their carts for re-shelving books have different themes and doodles. Above is a kitty cart!

We didn't really have much of an agenda for our two nights in Portland, other than to just show up and spend some time with the boy's friend who lives in Portland, which we did by hanging in bars, restaurants, and back yards. We picked our friend up after work in downtown, then drove out to his house in a neighborhood north of Portland.
Portland is über-cute! Every house has a flower garden or vegetable garden out front, and is just so damn cute (like the random house above) that you could pinch it. Houses have porches! How I miss porches.You can also have backyard chickens in Portland. These are our friends' chickens. They also had a yard with a vegetable garden out front, and a vegetable garden in the back.

I was really digging the vibe of Portland. It's a city with a downtown large enough that you feel like you're in a real city, and has quaint neighborhoods of cute houses (with yards and porches!) anchored by retail and restaurant districts. Portland reminded me a lot of Austin, Texas, but obviously with a different climate.

Speaking of climate, in those two nights we were in Portland, the weather did get to me. Even though it didn't rain at all when we were there, it was cloudy and cold. The mornings were in the 50s, and didn't warm up to the low 70s until the afternoon. For me, that is just not acceptable in the summer. My hands were freezing, and I was grumpy. When I found a patch of sun, I'd stop and soak up as much of it as I could. I don't think I'd survive in Portland. We stopped by the Portland's famous International Rose Test Garden one chilly morning. I hate roses (I have to take care of them, and, it's true, every rose has its thorn!), but even I, a rose-hater, appreciated the over 8000 immaculately cared for roses in this free-to-the-public garden.
Right next to the rose garden, is the Portland Japanese Garden, a very nice traditional Japanese Garden that is worth the admission fee.

A bit down the road from the rose and Japanese garden is the Hoyt Arboretum, which is free to enter. Go here if you like strolling or running on wooded trails with botanical names tagged on trees.
Every last Thurday of the month there is a Last Thursday festival with artists, performers, and food vendors lined along, oh, maybe ten or more blocks of Alberta St. This event is huge. Thousands of people. Some serious freak flags flying! I might get tired of this event after a couple of visits, and certainly if I lived right off Alberta St. (thousands of people also need to park somewhere), but it was fun that once.

Above is a Prince tribute band at Last Thursday. The singer had the look and body size down, except he was Prince's not-quite-so-sexy cousin. I'd probably still do him.
The morning we woke up to head north for Seattle, the forecast was for "abundant sunshine" (that's what the news kept excitedly repeating), so we decided to take the hour detour off highway 5 up to Mount St. Helens. We were warned that on cloudy or rainy days the view of the volcano can be cruddy, but with "abundant sunshine, " the view was perfect!

I highly recommend you stop by the Johnston Observation Ridge, which is situated directly across from the side of Mount St. Helens that was blasted off in the 1980 volcano eruption. The Johnston Observation Ridge visitors center is very nice, with an engrossing movie (volcanologists were monitoring the volcano and knew of it's impending activity, so there is plenty of footage of the blast and subsequent destruction), and state-of-the-art exhibits relating tales of survival and tragedy. Amazing! Very glad we stopped.