The Oregon Convention Center and Portland skyline
with thick wooden tables and full-keg barrels acting as café tables,and I take a
seat.Commons brews its own quaffs; respectable, if not award-winning drafts. I sip a snappy pilsner and watch a private party of fellow visiting tourists convening over brews and vast trays of smoked meats and cheeses.
Another Central Eastside/Belmont “Beervana”stop takes me to Loyal Legion,a draught house with 99 gleam- ing taps dispensing Oregon’s finest,drawn by bartenders who are like friendly frat brothers studying in“Advanced Beer.”
This place is really steeped in good beer- geekdom with its selections as serious as the drinking patrons themselves -“Can I have an Oakshire CentennialWet Hop Pale Ale?”“Another Burley Brown’s Ratchet Strap IPA,please...”
So many beers I’ve never even heard of before! With more brewpubs than any other
U.S.city, it’s no wonder why Portland is called“Beervana.”
7:00 pm Dinner at Renata I round the corner and arrive at Renata - one of the city’s most buzzed-about restaurants and a true labor of love from husband and wife duo/French Laundry- alums,Nick and Sandra
Arnerich.These seasoned professionals recently struck
86 November December 2015
out together to create a fun,casual and creative Italian restaurant - like some cos- mopolitan eatery you’d find in Rome,or maybe in Lucca, Italy.
A jazzy,hunger-inducing soundtrack plays in the background as I nibble on house- made salumi - a tempting
starter.Deeply satisfying shredded pork agnolotti fol- lows, as does a shareable plate of mari- nated halibut with apple and drizzled with good, rich balsamic.A dark choco- late yeast cake with an inner cumulus of white chocolate mousse makes me forgo taking the Portland Streetcar Loop back to my hotel as I pretend that the brisk 25- minute walk will at least somewhat de- cake me.
Renata typifies Providence’s food scene today: serious fare without taking itself too seriously…
Saturday, September 28 - 10:00 a.m. Tour of the OCC After a light morning nosh in The Eastlund’s bakery, I tour the impressive convention center.
The Oregon Convention Center is not too-too old (it opened in 1990),and it’s been re-developed into a cutting-edge convention market leader by being the largest space of its kind in the Pacific Northwest (its most sustainable one, too).
Beneath its illuminated twin spires and acres of tubular steel latticework there are fifty meeting rooms, two ballrooms, and 255,000-square feet of contiguous space,plus an 800 space parking garage.
I’ve toured scores of convention centers throughout this
hemisphere.The OCC earns my accolades for being most one of the most inspiring and progressive in fact that OCC self-generates two-million watts of power from its rooftop solar array while down below is an actual nat- ural vegetation rain
garden.The center’s architects’even created an exterior storm water collection
system.Virtually column- free and self-sustaining, the OCC boasts LEED Platinum certification. Of course it
does.Again, this is Portland.
12:00 pm Lunch at Kenny & Zuke’s This one’s not on my agenda. I just hap- pen to be walking by it - a deli that may have changed my
life.Kenny & Zuke’s has a long-cured,hours-smoked,painstakingly steamed and hand-sliced pastrami heart, and a soul that could just as well be from
Brooklyn.This is as deli as it gets - lots of shiny counters, florescent lights and linoleum tiles,with friendly staffers dol- ing out top-quality deli foods. I spend an hour on a stool at the counter watching the K&Z cooks slinging their corned beef hash and piling pastrami sandwiches on high…
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92