Creative Mexican by Clandestino PDX

March 27, 2023 by Leave a Comment

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 PDX - Left Ceviche of yellowfin tuna, guava, avocado, lime on tostadita, Right Carne tartara - beef, yuzu kosho, serrano on tostadita Clandestino PDX - Quesadillas - carnitas, quesillo, guacachile

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.
Clandestino PDX - part of the Dame 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.

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Portland Pop-up: Serenade Spaghetti Western with Piccone’s Corner

January 24, 2020 by Leave a Comment

The last Portland pop-up I attended happened to be a possible preview of the changes coming up to Revelry and additions of Cambodian food to the PDX food scene. Recently, I attended another pop-up from a dining experience producer called Serenade working together with Chef Nic Marazit who is working on opening Piccone’s Corner. So this is a bit of a preview too perhaps of what might be on the Menu at the soon to be open bar and butcher spot in February.
Portland Pop-up: Serenade with Spaghetti Western. A spread of bites from Piccone's Corner alongside music from three time Grand National Fiddle champion Luke Price and Jonathan Trawick is a 3rd generation guitar picking Ozark musician. Portland Pop-up: Serenade with Spaghetti Western. A spread of bites from Piccone's Corner alongside music from three time Grand National Fiddle champion Luke Price and Jonathan Trawick is a 3rd generation guitar picking Ozark musician. Portland Pop-up: Serenade with Spaghetti Western. A spread of bites from Piccone's Corner alongside music from three time Grand National Fiddle champion Luke Price and Jonathan Trawick is a 3rd generation guitar picking Ozark musician.

A reservation and pre-payment of $89 bought you a ticket to the Tournant space. The Serenade concept for their pop ups are that each event brings together good food along with good music, with different chefs and musicians curated by the people behind Serenade. Here’s my perspective from this Spaghetti Western dinner theme, where the idea was old school Italian food and old school American folk music. Dinner included a welcome cocktail with appetizers, four courses, and a live musical performance.

Upon arrival for the first 45 minute reception time, guests first spotted the chefs still flame grilling the main course (at that point it had been almost 3 1/2 hours on the fire), a Wallow and Root Porchetta.
Portland Pop-up: Serenade with Spaghetti Western, a Wallow and Root Porchetta being prepared by Piccone's Corner Portland Pop-up: Serenade with Spaghetti Western, a Wallow and Root Porchetta being prepared by Piccone's Corner

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Portland Pop Up Restaurant List 2017

March 7, 2017 by 5 Comments

Updated August 1, 2017

It’s difficult to track pop-ups: they often change up when they are open and where they might appear. Depending on the season, they may close down for a while – and if you don’t pay attention to their social media you could miss when they come back from their sabbatical, while others move on to other ventures. All have limited capacity so if you don’t jump on reservations quickly you are out of luck until the next event.

That means following lots of things on social media or being on several mailing list to become informed immediately when an announcement for a meal event is made with the when, where, etc.  Despite the work, pop up restaurants are often your chance to try great cuisine and meet amazing chefs, as the lineage of pop ups alumni that have now settled into homes like Holdfast Dining, Nodoguro, Langbaan, Coquine, and Nomad PDX are proof.

Eater PDX has published my list of Best Portland Pop Ups and Supper Clubs and you can see it here: the only ones listed below are ones not on that published list or I have my own link so you can read my experience with it on a blog post as I removed those for the Eater article. [Read more…]

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