Tasty n Alder

Even though I am mainly on a mission to eat a healthy salad at Whole Foods every night, that can certainly get boring. During 4th of July week, I decided to take myself out to dinner at Tasty n Alder, a restaurant that I pass every day on the way to my hotel. I've previously visited its sister restaurant, Tasty n Sons, for brunch, so I knew to expect good things.

Photo credit: tastyntasty.com

Photo credit: eater.com

The restaurant was packed, but I was lucky enough to grab a seat at the bar. I started by ordering an iced tea. I really liked that the bartender gave me a whole little pitcher of tea for myself!

My own carafe of tea

 I started with a salad. This salad was huge! It came in a bowl about 10" in diameter, and had lots of good things like radishes, fennel, carrots, and arugula.

My salad

 I ordered the cowboy skirt steak. I didn't know what to expect, because the menu wasn't descriptive, but it came with a pinto bean mixture, and grilled tortillas! The steak was very nicely cooked, and perfectly seasoned.

Cowboy skirt steak

 The skirt steak also came with the BIGGEST FORK EVER. Here it is next to a normal-sized fork... I honestly didn't know what to do with the giant fork. I used it for a couple of bites of the steak, but then felt ridiculous and switched to the normal fork :)

A fork for giants!

 I also ordered a side of grilled broccolini, to get more veggies in!I really enjoyed these, even though they were smothered in Parmesan. Or maybe that's why I enjoyed them ;)

Grilled broccolini

Overall, I really enjoyed my meal. I think the menu certainly could have been more descriptive so I would have known that the steak came with sides (maybe I would have picked something else had the sides appealed to me more?) but I have no complaints about the quality of the food or the preparation. Everything was very flavorful, and very fresh.

Next time I'll try a cocktail or two, I hear they're known for them!

Tasty n Alder
580 SW 12th St, Portland OR

St Jack

I know it's been a long time since I've last posted. Basically, I realized that I was treating my traveling to Portland every week like an extended vacation. When you're on vacation, you eat out all the time, try great food, and your waistline pays for it. But if your vacation turns into a 6-month (or longer) time frame, then that kind of lifestyle just isn't realistic long-term. So I limited my culinary adventure to going to Whole Foods every night for a salad. So adventurous!

However, there are still nights every other week or so that I go out with coworkers to new restaurants, so there will still be posts, just less often!  A few weeks ago, I went to St Jack with a coworker, and we had a fantastic meal!  It was part of Portland Dining Month in June, so we had our 3-course prix fixe dinner, which was great. St Jack is a little french restaurant with great light inside the restaurant, but was nice and cozy - a little bistro feel.

St Jack - photo credit: portland monthly mag

One of the neat things was the candles on the bar. They had tons of wax dripping down, from weeks (years?) of use! I thought they were pretty cool.

Candle wax on the bar - photo credit: portland monthly mag

For dining month, Betsy and I got a roasted beet salad, a half chicken, and St Jack's special house-made madelines.

Dining month menu

We also started the meal with a cheese plate: one cow, one sheep, one goat. I really liked the cow and goat cheeses, but didn't care for the sheep one. I wish I knew the names of the cheeses... but they were good!

Cheese plate

Our next course was a roasted beet salad with chèvre, arugula, toasted walnuts and red wine-Dijon vinaigrette. I really liked this salad. I'm not normally a huge fan of beets, but they were very nice here. Not too earthy (like beets can be), and were roasted until they were sweet. The chevre and arugula were very refreshing and paired nicely with the beets. I also liked the cute plates used at St Jack!

Roasted beet salad

You can tell that we went for dinner because the light is fading for my photos with my phone's camera. Our main course was a roasted half chicken with tomatoes over polenta (or as the menu said: Poulet Basquaise – bell peppers, olives, tomato, white wine, chilies and fresh herbs with soft polenta). This chicken was FANTASTIC. It was so moist, and the sauce was delicious. The polenta soaked up all of the juices from the tomatoes and wine, and it was really a great pairing. I would definitely recommend this!

Half chicken with polenta

Finally, we had St Jack's famous madelines for dessert. They bake them in house, and they were delivered to us hot from the oven! We each got our own little bowl of mini-madelines... and I definitely ate them all (vacation mode, remember?). They were light, spongey, and the perfect size to continually pop in your mouth until they're all gone!

Madelines - baked to order

I really enjoyed St Jack, and will definitely be going back.

St Jack
2039 SE Clinton St, Portland, OR