Coba-Yakko-San - Cobaya Dinner with Chef Hiro-San

There is no restaurant I have eaten at more often than Hiro's Yakko-San. I literally can not count the times: for the past five years we've been there probably an average of once a month, but often as frequently as weekly, with Sunday dinner at Yakko-San being something of a family tradition. So yeah, I kind of like it.

Our kids grew up on their chicken katsu and kurobuta pork sausages, later finding their own favorites among the more than 100 items on the menu (for Little Miss F: kimchi tofu, octopus ceviche, seabass miso, lotus root kimpira; for Frod Jr., edamame, salmon onigiri, yakiniku don, shoyu ramen). For years Yakko-San was located in a hole-in-the-wall on Dixie Highway where the waits for tables often flowed out the front door. Recently they moved to a bigger, fancier location on 163rd Street Causeway which has more than enough room for everyone. It also has room to set aside a space for 30 guinea pigs, giving us an opportunity to do a Cobaya dinner there.

The Cobaya "mission statement" is pretty much parallel to what the Japanese call "omakase," or "It's up to you, chef." That's what we told Chef Hiro-san, and he prepared a seven-course meal, many of which had multiple components. I will be candid in saying that I was hoping it might be more adventurous - this was more crowd-pleaser stuff - but especially for those who had never been to the restaurant before, it was a good introduction to Yakko-San's" izakaya-style (often called "Japanese tapas") repertoire.

You can see all my pictures from the dinner in this CobaYakkoSan flickr set. Here is the menu, with further descriptions and pictures below:

Chamame Edamame

Plum Wine

Tuna, Salmon Sashimi Salad

Crispy Fish Onion Salad

Nigori Sake

Shrimp Spicy Mayo, Fried Oyster

Hitosuji Junmai Sake

Kalbee Yakiniku and Spinach Butter

Akita Junmai Ginjo Sake

Seabass Miso Yaki

Kikuizumi Dai Ginjo Sake

Uni Garlic Pasta

Assorted Maki

Iki na Ona Dai Ginjo

Green Tea and Orange Mochi Ice Cream, Strawberry with Mint Cream

Dessert Pear Sake

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Tasty n Sons - Portland, Oregon

I love breakfast. For some, the first meal of the day is more about sustenance than savor, but I firmly believe that breakfast is every bit as deserving of attention, every bit as capable of greatness, as any other meal. Generally I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so I don't get overexcited about pancakes or waffles drenched in syrup, but you can stick an egg on just about anything and I'll eat it before noon - or pretty much any other time, for that matter.^[1]

The folks at Tasty n Sons are clearly of the same mind. This funky spot in northeast Portland serves up a brunch menu six days a week till 2:30 in the afternoon, and even when they shift to dinner service, they still keep a few "breakfast for dinner" items on the menu. Even the shortened happy hour menu filling the gap in between is still pretty brunch-y. I like their style.

Speaking of style, Tasty - the second restaurant from Chef John Gorham, who opened the well-regarded tapas restaurant Toro Bravo in 2007 - abides by an aesthetic that we saw plenty of in Portland: bare bones construction with plenty of exposed elements, polished concrete floors, blocky wood tables, open kitchen. It's a look and feel that's simultaneously rough and comforting, and it goes well with beards and tattoos. The restaurant is one of several tenants in a renovated warehouse building that was originally an Oregon Food Bank storehouse, and its layout curiously reminded me of Cuines Santa Caterina in Barcelona, with a bar area in front (looking out through a windowed garage door) and counter seating all along the length of the long open kitchen.

There's much to choose from on the menu: more than 30 items are listed as either "smaller plates" or "larger plates," as well a short selection of "sweets." But this is far from just the multiple choice of ingredients for your omelet or waffle that you'll find in a typical diner. Rather, dishes range from chocolate potato doughnuts with creme anglaise to Burmese red pork stew with short grain rice and eggs two ways. With most of those dishes coming in smaller packages, and at very reasonable prices, you can have at least a couple (well I did, anyway) for a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style breakfast.

 

You can start, for instance, with sweet biscuits with fresh berries. The biscuits are soft and tender, more doughy than flaky, and soak up the juices from fresh, lightly macerated local berries. A dollop of thick whipped cream never hurts.

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Grüner - Portland, Oregon

"New Alpine Cuisine" - is that a "thing" yet? If it's not, maybe it should be.^[1]

With the meteoric rise of Noma to prominence among most lists of the world's greatest restaurants, there has been plenty of talk of the "New Nordic Cuisine." No doubt, the ultra-local and ultra-seasonal cooking at Noma is far more radical and ambitious than what's going on at Grüner, Chef Christopher Israel's restaurant in downtown Portland, Oregon. But Grüner makes a good argument that "Alpine Cuisine" deserves greater attention.

What Grüner calls "Alpine Cuisine" is the foods of a stretch of Europe including Germany, Austria, Hungary and Romania starting in the Alps, and meandering along the Danube River out to the Black Sea - an area which Chef Israel claims, with only some poetic license, bears a resemblance to the geography of the Pacific Northwest. This is fare that typically is more hearty than haute. While the food at Grüner is not exactly precious, and still retains the gutsiness of its inspiration, it is done with a skilled hand; it is not so much Alpine food "reinvented" as it is "refined."

The look of the restaurant is more bauhaus than bierhaus: black-stained wood and glass frame the exterior and interior, while bare maplewood tables lighten things up a bit. The menu is simlarly modern: it offers a selection of small "snacks" (many of which are also available on a bar menu at some very friendly happy hour prices), roughly a dozen options for appetizers and salads, with a shorter list of about a half-dozen entrées, all of which stay more or less faithful to the theme.

Dinner starts with a pretzel twist and some rough-textured seeded bread. Both had their charms, but the clear favorite was the pretzel - dense, chewy, crusty and salty (recipe here).

Both were welcome vehicles for this "snack" of liptauer cheese, a creamy, light-textured house-made product punched up with paprika, caraway, shallots and herbs, which was equally good on fresh crisp radishes and celery. Right here was evidence of how this cuisine paints with a different spice and herb palette than much of the rest of Europe, to great effect.

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