Eating My Way Through Portland, OR (Part 4 of 5)

There are certain days, even having only visited Portland a few short weeks ago, that I yearn to return to the city for a long weekend and enjoy the city's culture...and food of course.

Oh, hello there dear Readers! Welcome back. Just musing to myself here.

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, and family members headed to the West Coast for a visit, I was thinking about one of the sandwiches I had in Portland that is perfect for leftovers.

One night while walking back to the hotel, we stopped at Kenny and Zuke's, a delicatessen near The Pearl. Scanning their expansive menu, I noticed a sandwich titled A Day After Thanksgiving and my mind was made up for my evening sandwiching.

The sandwich was packed with chunks of roast turkey, sausage and mushroom stuffing, gravy and cranberry between two slices of thick grilled white bread.  The savory turkey, stuffing and gravy were given a sharp contrast with the slightly sweet and tart cranberry spread, and made my tongue jump back and forth between numerous taste sensations.

Luckily we arrived at this place right before closing. I would have been real disappointed had I missed out on this one.

I've made my own Thanksgiving sandwiches before, but something about this sandwich really blew me away. This will definitely be a stop I'll be making the next time I visit Portland.

And so ends the fourth week writing about my trip to Portland, one sandwich left to go to close out the 31st state I've visited.

Until next week readers...

Why don't you all leave a comment below telling me about your favorite sandwich while travelling.



A Day After Thanksgiving
**** Stars
Kenny and Zuke's Delicatessen
1038 SW Stark Street
Portland, OR 97205
www.kennyandzukes.com

Eating My Way Through Portland, OR (Part 3 of 5)

Hello again, dear Readers!

I realized while I was organizing the photos for this post, that Portland will be the second most reviewed city on the blog here, besides Los Angeles of course. which is pretty impressive as we slowly march on towards the 100th sandwich entry.

I'm hoping that as the next few months come along, I'll be able to branch out again from Los Angeles and visit New York, DC and maybe even revisit Seattle as I was last there before my journey to find The Danger Sandwich began.

But back to Portland...

Besides visiting Portland for its incredible eats, I was also hoping to visit one of the numerous breweries in town. For being such a small town, Portland is home to more breweries than any other city in the world.

Impressive right?

Besides hitting Rogue (which was excellent), I made a stop at Deschutes Brewery, of which I had heard much about, specifically their Black Butte Porter.

Black Butte is this incredibly rich, dark porter that has notes of coffee and chocolate. The flavor just stays with you long after you've finished the last sip, and now I can admit that I am thoroughly hooked on their beer (luckily a distributor nearby stacks up on Black Butte). Their other beers were also top notch and some of the best local brewed beers I have ever sampled.

With this delicious porter in mind, I decided to order the Black Butte Porter Burger for my sandwich sampling. This medium-rare burger was made with seared Coleman Ranch beef, Black Butte Porter Worcestershire sauce, asiago cheese, grilled red onions, seasonal mushrooms and Black Butte Porter mustard on a freshly baked bun.

This burger was excellent. The meat was cooked perfectly with a little bit of pink on the inside. The beef was tender, savory and with big flavor in every bite. The Worcestershire sauce and mustard made were excellent additions with their contrasting salty and spicy flavors. The addition of the porter to these two condiments tempered the flavors of each while adding a bit of the chocolate coffee flavor of the porter.

The grilled onions were freshly grilled with a bit of crunch and the seasonal mushrooms gave an excellent pop with every bite. Oh and that freshly baked roll? Delicious, fluffy, and held together until the end.

All in all, an excellent sandwich, but there was one more star of the show which we enjoyed during the beer tasting before dinner: the brewery pretzel. It wasn't just the pretzel that was a stand out winner, it was the dipping sauce, a mixture of white Tillamook cheddar, cream cheese and Black Butte Porter mustard.

Wow. We even had to use some of the leftover cheese dip for the fries, it was amazing.

And that is that for this week's Danger Sandwich. Week three of Portland has continued to wow me with the city's wonderful selection of food and beer. So far I know it's a place that I will have to return to again in order to sample more eats and beers, but will this feeling hold up through next week's review? Or will the next sandwich fail to live up to the Portland hype?

Only one way to find out.

Until next week, dear Readers...


Black Butte Porter Burger
**** Stars
210 NW 11th Avenue
Portland, OR
http://www.deschutesbrewery.com

Eating My Way Through Portland, OR (Part 2 of 5)

Welcome back, Dear Readers!

One of the things that stood out to me while in Portland (especially coming from Los Angeles) was the apparent lack of food trucks at first.

Here in LA, you can't go anywhere without seeing a handful of these trucks driving around, and so I thought with Portland having such excellent food, they ought to have some great food trucks, right?

Well imagine my surprise one night while wandering the city we found an entire parking lot (one square city block) that had food trucks lined all four sides.

Not on the street mind you, inside the parking lot so that you could peruse the food samplings without the trucks blocking traffic.

Excellent idea, but the problem became the fact that there were too many options now.

On my last day in Portland I wanted one last sandwich to really leave a lasting memory, and so while out on a walk we passed by one of the parking lots filled with trucks.  It took me about 20 minutes, and two laps around the perimeter of the lot but I finally decided to eat at a truck called "Eat This".

Simple enough.

What really drew me in was the lead sandwich on their menu: A flatbread sandwich filled with garlic mashed potatoes, Black Angus meatloaf and grilled Walla Walla onions. What could make this sandwich even better? Oh, maybe the fact that the flatbread was handmade to order.

one side of the food truck square

Each flatbread was rolled out when you ordered, and slightly grilled before being stuffed with the ingredients. The bread was fresh, soft, warm ad delicious and wrapped nicely around the ingredients.

The Black Angus meatloaf may have been the best part about any of the sandwiches out here. It was soft, tender but with a slightly grilled outside and a strong Black Angus beef flavor. Even this meat had to have been made in the morning. No day old ingredients at all. The onions were nice and crisp too even after being grilled.

If you haven't guessed by now, I devoured this sandwich. It was amazing and bursting with flavor. If I hadn't been stuffed, or eaten all weekend long, I might have gone back for another.

But for now, I'll just keep it in mind for my next weekend visit.

Join me again next week, for MORE PORTLAND.

Until then, Readers...



Handmade Flatbread with Braised Black Angus Meat Loaf with
Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Walla Walla Onions
**** 1/2 stars
Eat This!
On 9th Avenue between Washington and Alder
Portland, Oregon

Eating My Way Through Portland, OR (Part 1 of 5)

The coolest logo ever.

Hello, Readers!

This past weekend, I made a trip up to the northwest for the first time since my 2009 trip to Seattle. This time I stopped in the city of Portland, Oregon, which is a city I've always wanted to visit since I fell in love with the northwest on my last trip. Coincidentally, this trip was also my last state on the West Coast to visit (and 31st overall).

But what is one to do in the city of Portland? Besides visiting a few historical and sightseeing spots, Portland is well known for its food and beer. Breweries and restaurants are on every corner, and it made the selection of sandwiches for this blog so difficult.

This may be why it'll be a five part series.

Prior to my trip, I had planned out a few spots that I wanted to visit and review for the blog, but today's entry came from a chance wandering through the north part of the downtown area. Passing by an awesome sign with a sickle and a hand holding a sandwich (akin to the former USSR logo), I decided I had to stop into The People's Sandwich of Portland.

Being drawn in by the awesome logo and posters outside, the first challenge of the weekend came in choosing which sandwich to eat. Each with its own cool name, I decided to go with the Hammer & Pickle.

Why you ask? The Hammer & Pickle is a cubano sandwich, and we all know how I feel about cubanos.

I frequently reference the cubano at Porto's in Burbank as being the top sandwich I have eaten since starting this blog, so this sandwich from TPSP had a lot to live up to.

The sliced ham and pork loin were grilled and joined with melted Swiss cheese, crisp pickles, homemade mustard (all condiments are made in house) and mayo (made with organic eggs) and pressed in a french roll on the grill.

The ham and pork loin were tender and delicious. The Swiss was melted throughout the sandwich lending a delicious smoky/savory flavor. I think one of the best surpsises in the sandwich came from the homemade mustard which reminded me a bit of horseradish with that slight burning feeling at the back of your nose.

Note: I love the taste and feeling of horseradish. It is always a good compliment, and that mustard-y feeling is present here in all its delicious glory.

So you stack all of these delicious ingredients into a french roll that's pressed on a grill with a crispy, flaky and golden outside with soft and fresh insides and you have...

The best cubano I have ever eaten. Hands down. All of the flavors blended together incredibly well and were each prominent on their own, contributing their portion of deliciousness.

Oh yeah, and they even threw in a tiny tootsie roll for after your sandwich.

Sorry Porto's of Burbank, you had an excellent run as the top sandwich of the blog, but I will now find other reasons to visit Portland, just to have this sandwich again.

Part 1 of my trip to Portland ended on an incredibly high note, could my other stops live up to the hype?

Until next week...

Hammer & Pickle
***** Stars
The People's Sandwich of Portland
53 NW 1st Street
Portland, OR
sandwichofportland.com

Farewell Coffee Table, Farewell

Hey Readers.

I come to you this week to talk about the closing of a great local restaurant.

The Coffee Table in Silverlake closed its doors last week and the neighborhood will really miss this great little place that offered not only great breakfast foods, but coffee and of course, sandwiches.

Now, way back before my first post here on The Danger Sandwich, I visited The Coffee Table and ordered a Portobello Mushroom Burger that was supposed to be my first sandwich review. And it turns out I never used that sandwich for any review because I had started to visit so many other great places that I kept pushing The Coffee Table back into my "To Use If Necessary" file. Well now with the recent events, I figured why not use it?

I even scribbled down notes of the sandwich afterwards, just do I wouldn't forget when I finally got around to it.

For my first foray into the world of sandwich reviewing I decided to take the Portobello Mushroom sandwich for a ride and was pleasantly surprised. As I've noted in the past about the problems of cooking mushrooms, you can easily turn a delicious and perfectly ripe mushroom into mush with just a second too long on the grill, but this managed to do it just right.

Ah heck, enough about the sandwich.

The best part about this place is that it was an excellent local place to gather and enjoy the scenery and chat with friends. With a covered outdoor patio and a very cool indoor coffee shop vibe, this place had it all, and was in a very cool neighborhood.

It's always a shame to see a place like this go, and especially what it was going for.

Apparently the developers that will be working with the property plan to turn the area into a building of condos and a small retail area to accompany it.

What an odd addition to a neighborhood that is anything but condos and high profile retail centers.

Until next week, Readers! Leave me a comment telling me about your favorite local place to eat, drink or catch up with friends.

Portabella Mushroom Sandwich
*** Stars
The Coffee Table
2930 Rowena Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90039

Fair Food Is Fun Food

Hello Readers!

This past weekend, I ended up visiting one of my favorite places to spend an afternoon at the end of summer: The LA County Fair.

Besides walking around and enjoying my time at the fair, my favorite part  is the food. I will eat anything that a fair provides as long as it's fried or covered in some sort of chocolate or barbecue sauce. Which is practically everything.

So of course, after hearing about an incredible new treat making the rounds at SoCal fairs, the first thing that I ate was not a sandwich. It was Deep Fried Kool Aid.

I know what you're thinking: How do you deep fry a liquid? The Kool Aid powder is mixed with water and flour to make a thick pancake-like substance which is then scooped out and dropped into the deep fryer. The finished product is a slightly cherry flavored cake donut hole topped with powdered sugar. Delicious.

Now like I said, with so many different types of food available at the fair, it was hard to finally settle on a sandwich to eat, but eventually I decided on a BBQ beef sandwich from one of the wood fire grills located across from the race track.

The sandwich was delicious. The beef was roughly chopped and had an incredibly smoky flavor and had been smoked for so long that it just fell apart in my mouth.

The barbecue sauce that was layered on top of it was tangy, peppery and full of smoky barbecue flavor and was almost overwhelming, but paired with a cool refreshing coke, it was downright enjoyable.

Now the bread was just a standard roll, but let's give it a round of applause, because despite the pound of barbecued meat and gallon of sauces piled on top of it, this thing held together until the end without so much as threatening to fall apart.

All in all, I'd rule this fair visit a true success, and the real winner here is, well...not my stomach or cholesterol levels, but hey, that's why we can't go the fair every weekend.

Or can we....


BBQ Beef Sandwich
*** 1/2 Stars
LA County Fair

A Challenge To The Throne

deliciousness in a red basket

Welcome back this week Dear Readers!

This week I was back on the hunt for the best cheesesteak in Los Angeles and this time I was taken to the top competitor of my favorite cheesesteak in the city.

Heading towards Burbank one evening, I stopped in at Philly's Best on Olive Ave. The inside of the shop is plastered with photos of Philadelphia and plenty of sports paraphernalia including pennants for each of the four major sports teams in town.

But with all of the mementos of my home town, could the sandwich live up to the praise I've heard? Even more, could it live up to the standards I have set from eating at South Street Steaks (only a half mile away) so often?

I ordered the Philly's Best sandwich since that had cheese, mushrooms and sweet peppers piled high on top of the sandwich. My first concern hit me fairly quickly as when I received my sandwich and saw that the cheese was on the bottom.

Not again. Really? Here's another sandwich with a cold hunk of cheese in my mouth on top of hot steak.

But oddly enough, they fully melted the cheese before adding it to the sandwich. They must have cooked the cheese on top of the steak instead of simply adding cold sliced cheese to the roll before steak (looking right at you South Street Experience truck.)

With the cheese melted and the deliciously fresh, flaky and soft inside of a true Amoroso roll, It was time to critique the rest of the sandwich.

The mushrooms were perfectly cooked and popped in my mouth. Mushrooms can be truly difficult to cook right. One second too long and they're soft, mushy waste. But if you get it right, they're firm, juicy and pop when you bite into them. The sweet peppers were good, but didn't add as much flavor as the mushrooms.

Now the steak....the steak was delicious. Full of flavor, not dry, tender, and absolutely delicious.

This sandwich is a close runner to South Street, and truthfully may top that sandwich as the King of LA cheesesteaks for the moment. There is a big difference though between the two shops in that South Street has a lot more tvs for viewing Philly sports games, and tends to play all Phillies and Eagles game, while when I was at Philly's Best, the two tvs were playing Tim Burton's 'Batman' and a college football game.

An easily remedied problem.

If you hit up Philly's Best in Burbank one time, which I highly suggest, also make sure to look for my photo on their wall of Philly friends. I'm sure I'll be up there soon enough with how much I'll be frequenting this spot.

Until next week Readers....


Philly's Best Cheesesteak

**** 1/2 Stars

Philly's Best
1419 W. Olive Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91506