Mile 1446 - Portland Food, OR

You can’t be in Portland long without wanting to swear yourself in to the life of a foodie.  No matter what section of Portland you’re in, there’s some overwhelmingly good food within 5 blocks.  At least it seemed that way to us. 

Here are our recommendations for a day full of dining.

Let’s start with Breakfast: You’ll want to start at the Byways Café, because everybody loves starting their day with a food coma.  This place is like a breakfast joint you’d find on some forgotten highway, transported into downtown Portland.  The walls are covered with vintage road trip collectables, as if the owner had a monopoly on estate sales over the last 10 years. 

Then there's the portions!  Aaron just had to try the Amaretto French Toast after he read the enticing description "Four slices of amaretto-infused brioche served lightly dusted with powdered sugar, honey pecan butter and maple syrup." It was the equivalent of half a loaf of bread but seriously, who could pass that up?  Well, Sarah had an omelet...it was good too. We recommend coming here with three or four people and ordering two of their specialties. You won't go away hungry.

Lunch:  You might as well have breakfast again because not only is it the most important meal of the day, it’s just that good.  Head over to Pine Street Biscuits and prepare to be amazed at how many delicious calories they can pack into one little bite.  Yep, that’s a homemade biscuit, egg, sausage and a TON of gravy.  It tastes as good as it sounds.  It could have been worse, we could have ordered the Reggie.  Aaron also got a front row seat and learned a thing or two about how to cook an egg.  We both are anxiously awaiting a time to try it out ourselves!

Now it’s time for dinner:  Why not make it 3 for 3 and have breakfast again at the Waffle Window?  Here you can experience the sweet or the savory depending on your mood, piled high on a delicious waffle.  Or if you share, you can experience them all!  One really isn't going to fill you up, so we recommend ordering at least three!  We were so excited and hungry that we ate it all before remembering to take pictures.  So you’ll just have to take our word for it.

Though we do love to eat, you may have guessed that we didn’t really go to all of these places in one day…we’re not THAT crazy.  But now it is time for dessert and we may have been crazy enough to go to BOTH locations of Salt and Straw in one night.  But how can you resist the newest, hippest ice cream joint in town, where they take artisan flavors to a whole new level.  Our palates experienced ice cream that was 2 parts amazing and 1 part confusing.  Chevre with jalapeño jelly. Creamed corn. Honey balsamic strawberry with cracked pepper.  Sea salt ice cream with caramel ribbon.  Coffee and bourbon.  Sound unreal; disgusting perhaps?  You’ll just have to check it out yourself!