Portland popup Archives - Pechluck's Food Adventures

Creative Mexican by Clandestino PDX

March 27, 2023 by Pechluck 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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Filed Under: Food and Drink Tagged With: Beef Tartare, Carne Tartara, Carnitas Quesadilla, ceviche, Clandestino PDX, Mexican cuisine, PDX Wine, pdx wines, Pop up restaurant, pop up restaurants Portland, Pop-up, pop-up restaurant Portland, pop-ups in Portland, portland, Portland pop up restaurant, Portland pop-up, Portland popup, Portland popup restaurant, Portland Wine, Quesadilla, Quesadilla Carnitas, Whole Fish

Fimbul PDX Konudagur Dinner

February 15, 2019 by Pechluck 1 Comment

Earlier this week I attended an instantiation of the Nordic supper club Fimbul PDX popup, offering Icelandic Cuisine. The theme of the dinner on February 12th, 2019 was to celebrate Konudagur, Icelandic Women’s Day. This holiday, as explained by Fimbul, “has deep roots in ancient Viking midwinter feasts celebrating Góa, the wife of the Winter King Þorri. We will be awaiting the first signs of Spring and celebrating the feminine energy with our tasting menu.”
Fimbul PDX Konudagur Dinner

Besides the 7 course meal for $80, this dinner Fimbul PDX also offered a beverage pairing option that featured wine and spirits crafted by an all female lineup, and during the dinner a playlist of music of Icelandic female artists as we sailed through the tasting menu together.
Fimbul PDX Konudagur Dinner

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Filed Under: Food and Drink, Restaurant Review Tagged With: Fimbul PDX, Fimbul PDX Konudagur Dinner, Fimbul Portland, Hot Buttered Aquavit, Icelandic cuisine, Icelandic Woman's Day, Nordic supper club, PDX Popup, PDX popup restaurant, Portland popup

Gado Gado Portland Breakfast

February 6, 2019 by Pechluck Leave a Comment

I have been a fan of Gado Gado Portland, a PDX popup featuring Southeast Asian food, by Thomas and Mariah Thomas Pisha-Duffly over the past year. Their food menu has varied drawing inspiration from all over Asia but usually with nods towards Indonesia from which inspired their Portland popup name. I was thrilled that now they are working on a brick and mortar restaurant home in the Hollywood Neighborhood for spring. Until then they are still a pop-up and probably will be testing out what will go on the menu for their anticipated dinners and brunches. I think the recent Gado Gado Portland Breakfast at Guilder during the past MLK weekend was just the start of seeing what people have interest in.

Gado Gado Portland Breakfast pop up at Guilder during MLK weekend 2019

I’m always excited to see Asian breakfasts. I never thought that Portland would fall in love with Chinese breakfast – but Master Kong has brought congee and jian bing crepes into the common food vocabulary here in PDX so there’s a real chance to expand beyond our donuts or biscuits and gravy and into more types of international breakfast options. Having Gado Gado Portland Breakfast will be a popular standby for me when they open, whether or not the breakfast items I had a chance to try will all be there. The recent pop up included

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Filed Under: Food and Drink Tagged With: Bakso, Bubur Ayam, Gado Gado Portland, Hong Kong Style Scrambled Egg sandwich, Indonesian food, Indonesian street food, Pandan Egg Puff Waffle, PDX Pop up restaurant, PDX pop-up, PDX Popup, Portland pop up restaurant, Portland popup, Portland popup restaurant

A recap of Desayuno PDX popup

July 25, 2018 by Pechluck 4 Comments

Last week, I braved the heat to attend a special pop up at St Jack’s by Desayuno, Mexico City-inspired brunch pop-up with food by Ben Morris and cocktails by Justin Garcidiaz (both employees of St Jack’s). All proceeds at this Desayuno PDX popup benefited Pueblo Unido PDX, which whose mission is to empower and provide resources to Latinxs with vulnerable immigration status, including assisting those in need to hire attorneys to fight deportation, get released from detention, and return to their families, as well as organizing and rallying community engagement.

The word desayuno means breakfast in Spanish, although really this was more of a brunch pop up. The menu for this first event boasted an impressive five savory dishes, two desserts, and seven original craft cocktails including ones that featured mole spices, or masa, or mezcal worm!

Ok, so I wasn’t brave enough for the beverage with the mezcal worm, but I went for the beauty (I think everyone at the bar had this gorgeous cocktail – once you saw it you couldn’t resist getting it yourself) of the Polanco Margarita featuring pueblo viejo blanco, lime, cointreau, st. germain, rainbows, pink salt. Does it look like two different glasses? That’s because I totally had two of these.

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Filed Under: Food and Drink, Portland Highlights Tagged With: Aguacate with avocado, avocado stuffed with barbacoa, banana leaf sweet tamal, brunch pop up, brunch popup, Bunelos with star anise, cafe de olla, Chilango cocktail, chilaquiles, cocktail with mole spices, Desayuno, Desayuno PDX, Desayuno Portland, Eat for a Cause, lamb barbacoa, Mexico City inspired brunch, mole spiced cocktail, PDX pop-up, PDX Popup, Polanco Margarita, Pop up restaurant, popup restaurant, Portland pop-up, Portland popup, Tamal Dulce, whipped queso cotija

Aramsey Spiced Brunch

June 14, 2018 by Pechluck 3 Comments

I’ve been a fan of Ruchikala, the name of the food business of Kusama Rao, for years. Unfortunately with her time divided between Arizona and Portland we don’t get access to her food as nearly as much as I and many of her other fans would like given that was the main feedback from this meal (and pretty much all her others) from multiple guests. So, whenever you see an opportunity announced on her social media, be sure to jump at the opportunity!

For this particular popup she collaborated with another all female owned business, Public Provisions, who provided cocktails to go with the four courses for this Aramsey Spiced Brunch. Public Provisions which is a traveling bar service run by partners Melanely Schmidt and Malia Meyers. Lucky for all of us, Public Provisions is also opening a bar where you can reliably enjoy some of their creative and fun drinks – more on this at the end!
Aramsey Spiced Brunch with Ruchikala and Public Provisions

For now, let’s take a look at this special Aramsey Spiced Brunch I enjoyed with four courses and four paired cocktails.
Aramsey Spiced Brunch with Ruchikala and Public Provisions

Course 1

The Bengali Breakfast Sando, with Panch phoron maple sausage, habanero carrot halva butter, and Kumi’s house sourdough english muffin with all sorts of spices like nigella seed, fenugreek.
Aramsey Spiced Brunch with Ruchikala and Public Provisions: Bengali Breakfast Sando, with Panch phoron maple sausage, habanero carrot halva butter, and Kumi's house sourdough english muffin with all sorts of spices like nigella seed, fenugreek
This was paired with an Indian spiced Bloody Mary that included sarina pudi, carrot, lovage, blistered jalapeno, sesame oil, and more spices as picked out by Kumi included toasted cumin. Of all the courses, all were spectacular but this was probably my vote for favorite if I had to choose.
Aramsey Spiced Brunch with Ruchikala and Public Provisions: Indian spiced Bloody Mary that included sarina pudi, carrot, lovage, blistered jalapeno, sesame oil, and more spices as picked out by Kumi included toasted cumin