On Monday – Wednesday you can find creative Mexican plates and glasses of intriguing wines from Clandestino PDX, a pop-up now in residence at Lil Dame by Dame Collective (in the old Beast/Ripe Cooperative space). If you haven’t had an opportunity to visit, make a date for these weekdays to treat yourself to a cozy dinner and a food and wine mini adventure.
Clandestino joined the collective to start serving up Mexican inspired dishes in December to rave review by tastemaker and written word wrangler Karen Brooks of Portland Monthly who called Clandestino Portland’s Best New Mexican Restaurant. Try to make reservations as the space in inclement weather is very cozy and with recent media coverage may even be full for the night, even on a Monday. You can see how small the open kitchen is, so they also can only realistically do only so many covers per evening. As spring and summer weather open up the outdoor seating and they dial in their menu they’ll have more capacity.
Be sure to try several half glass pours during your visit! You can trust and after selecting your dishes let the staff pour their recommended pairings – you can even ask for a different pairing per person like we did for each dish. Not only are the selections carefully curated to be all winners with the food and diverse in provenance and flavor profile, but that helps support both sides of the collective.
The way it works is the food sales are kept by the chef, Dame keeps the beverage, and overhead and staff costs are split by both resident chef and Dame. So patronize both with your check! I’ve always been a fan of the pop-up model (I even used to cover pop-ups for Eater PDX) – restaurant industry life is hard in terms of long hours and margins in balancing inventory with limited shelf life. Pop-ups allow for some reasonable work time boundaries with more control of when open for business and taking breaks, and an ability to get some work life balance. It’s great business sense for the brick and mortar owners and visiting chefs and part of PDX’s supportive hospitality community.
The menu at Clandestino rotates often so not sure if all these dishes will be available but on my visit we enjoyed 
Carne tartara – beef, yuzu kosho, serrano, tostaditas. Beef tartare with those bites of serrano heat were a fun upgrade to traditional preparation. A half glass of The Marigny ‘Sur Lie’ Willamette Valley, OR 2021, Pinot Gris was like a tart lemonade to balance the tingle.
Ceviche of yellowfin tuna, guava, avocado, lime. We were intrigued with the guava and the dish tastes as bright as it looks. I enjoyed a crisp Monteleone Etna Biano Palermo, IT 2020, Carricante that offered layers of citrus acidity and minerality with a long finish.
A unique layering of flavors and textures makes the Crudo of kanpachi, citrus, totomoxtle, peanut a standout starter.
Empanaditas comes two or four to an order stuffed with either tuna confit as shown here or with mushrooms in corn masa, served with fresh salsa de tomatillo and peanut morita, with a shower of queso fresco.
Quesadillas come with quesillo and guacachile alone, or additionally options of a version with huitlacoche or our choice, carnitas. The carnitas were so juicy, and a good opportunity to pair with a wine from the Skin Contact/Orange section next. They deserve their spot in Michael Russell of the Oregonian list of best dishes he ate in 2022.
PARA COMPARTIR section of the menu are dishes to share among 2-4. Hongos al Carbon or mushrooms offer a vegetarian option and for omnivores there was Pork Cochinita or Beef Steak Asada. But I still miss the fantastic fish from when I first met Chef Lauro Romero at King Tide and you’ll always find a version of Whole Fish here (often dorado). All these shared larger dishes are accompanied with frijolitos de la olla, salsitas, lime, escabeche, and tortillas. I made my own selection here of a Sierra de Toloño, Rioja, ES 2020, Tempranillo – the slight spice notes are lovely and not too much tannin that added to the beans and didn’t overwhelm the flaky juicy seasoned fish.
Your plan should be to get lots of half pours of wine and trust that all the food and wine here are part of a food and wine adventure ride that you haven’t experienced before and you will enjoy. Even as I left I felt regretful that I didn’t have the stomach capacity to try more dishes and glasses… Guess I will have to keep coming back!
It’s not often you find huitlacoche so those quesadillas with huitlacoche are in my list for the next visit. What would you like to try?
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