Urdaneta for Portland Dining Month

Earlier this week, I had a chance to enjoy Urdaneta for Portland Dining Month. I will also be back to Urdaneta shortly for their Basque Supper Club. If you haven’t heard, on Sunday April 8th at 6PM Basque Supper Club will be doing the only Portland screening of the film “The Txoko Experience: The Secret Culinary Space of the Basques”. Basically, Txoko is the Basque version of a supper club. This Basque Supper Clubevent, with tickets already sold out, includes watching the movie, a Q&A with the scriptwriter  and a Txoko inspired 6 course dinner by Urdaneta. Chef Javier was inspired to create Urdaneta and Basque Supper Club based on his own childhood experiences with his grandfather’s txoko so I am super excited to learn more about Txoko and get a personal take story-wise and food-wise from Urdaneta.

I’ll recap that experience and meal later, but for now I can’t emphasize enough that you have 2 meals left to get over there for Portland Dining Month. Fortunately, some of the dishes are also on their regular menu, so even if you can’t make it today and tomorrow you can still enjoy some of these dishes.

This is not part of the Portland Dining Month, menu, but it is impossible to resist ordering some pintxos every time I come here whether I am only coming here for Dumpling Week or for Portland Dining Month. Go ahead and give in and get a few starter bites after browsing the menu with the marinated olives. A sherry flight or sangria or Basque cider (sidra) would also be great choices to wash down your pinxto bites.

The Urdaneta pinxtos you see are the

  • Sobrasada, a soft chorizo in fry bread with grilled halloumi and truffle honey;
  • Albondiga, a lamb meatball with house tater tot, spicy brava sauce, apple, sofrito aioli;
  • Camarón, grilled shrimp al ajillo with tomato conserva, ajo dulce, chili, dill, and toasted bread;
  • Morcilla, a grilled blood sausage with dad’s marinated peppers, piquillo jam, piparra, and toasted bread
    Urdaneta olives Urdaneta flight of sherry Urdaneta pinxtos, skewers of bites to go with your libations Urdaneta pinxtos, skewers of bites to go with your libations

Now onto the Portland Dining Month options…

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Pinxtos at Urdaneta PDX

Recently, I visited Urdaneta, located on NE Alberta, for the first time. It has been on my list for a while from when Chef and Owner Javier Canteras with Ryan Spragg was running the Basque Supper Club as a pop up (and which he plans to still do) and then won funding from Restaurant Startup to open Urdaneta. It’s always hard to balance my wishlist with the reality of a reasonable amount of dining out and when some restaurants are literally on the opposite side of town from me (I live in SW Portland). Finally though I made it – and then all I could think about is why did I wait so long and when could I come again? What really stood out was having such unique and strong flavors, so small bites go a long way.

Sherry cocktails at Urdaneta

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