Pdx3
Woke up lazily, Tim brought me stumptown, knitted and drank coffee in bed. Walked to brunchbox food cart and got greasy breakfast sandwiches. Eventually made it out to yarn store and powells, browsed and bought some cards to send and some Madeline Tosh, which is my current yarn of choice. Met John and Cecilia, headed to food carts:
Noodle house - chewy homemade Asian noodles stir fried with chili sauce, curry, veggies and chicken. Classic asian comfort food. Flavors could have been a little more exciting, but good overall.
Nong's Khao Man Gai - the only thing they sell is hainnanese chicken and rice, and they had the longest line of any food truck. This stuff has been featured in a number of magazines. It was as good as I could have imagined it, simple, well proportioned rce to chicken to sauce. I could eat it all the time. Might get more today - seems perfect for this rainy day.
Took a brief detour to hotel, booked travel to Princeton, picked up coat. Took bus to SE. Stopped at Bermongers and admired their well thought out collection of bottles, all of which you could enjoy there or buy to go. Got tim a sour brown and a spike and jeromes collaboration ale, and myself a sweet cider. Walked up to Potato Champion and had really good fries - thin, hand cut, crispy and brown on the outside, moist on the inside, with accompanying sauces - rosemary truffle ketchup, garlic anchovy mayo and satay. So good, especially when my fry consumption has been fairly low this trip. Another bus to Upright Brewing Company, a fairly small craft beer maker in the basement of a random building. Met up with tim and some math people, drank beers, met up with carl, played scrabble.
Last stop of the night was Pok Pok, a super popular Thai place, where winter also joined our group. Its so popular that, after the wait to get in started to get unmanageable, the management established a bar across the street where you could order drinks and appetizers. The restaurant calls the bar when your table is ready and you transition from one to the other. This is brilliant - customers basically pay the restaurant to wait for 2 hours by sitting in the bar eating and drinking. Tims math group split from our scrabble group so we wouldnt have to wait for a table for nine. We had a bunch of appetizers and played fry your brain (a scrabble variation). I won on AAIITV (everyone was stumped when the next letter was an I, though there are four letter steals - I might have gotten some without the time limit for guessing and also without being exhausted from the long day), and EILOVWZ (another E came out of the bag and the only possibilities were words that had been used already). time went pretty fast, and soon we were across the street eating amazing Thai food:
Kai Yaang - rotisserie chicken
Khao Soi - curry noodle soup with freshly pressed coconut milk
Muu Paa Kham Waan - spicy boar collar (too spicy for me to have much, but delicious)
Kung Op Wun Sen - clay pot with prawns, pork belly, bean thread noodles (I couldn't eat this one because of oyster sauce)
Tim and his friends were sitting next to us, so I also got to try their Brussels sprouts and pork belly. Everything was unique and flavorful and just what I was hoping for. My favorite was definitely the noodle soup, with two kinds of noodles, some heat without being overtly spicy, the smooth richness of the coconut. Yum. I admit that I'm now craving pad Thai, though, after having other Thai dishes two nights in a row. May go back to esan tonight and just enjoy my standby food.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.