Note: the above photo in the intro page is not the restaurant written about here but rather North 43 Bistro pre-pandemic
Pausing for now to wax terrific or horrified over a dine-in meal at a local Portland restaurant remains subject to the vagaries of the pandemic. To criticize a restaurant for any reason (bad food, one of them) would not be fair; our restaurants are struggling to keep their doors open and don’t need the unkind words of a reviewer. Dining out–inside–is still limited, but Portlanders can get their fill of a fine meal by other methods that have taken hold during this Covid era: order out or dine outside in all weather conditions.
Some restaurants have weathered the dining-out debacle well in their alternative approaches: Chaval and EVO have designed great independent spaces for dining-out inside their huts, igloos, et al; EVO has in fact installed a state of the art air filtration system to be able to have a dine-in option as well.
But what do you do when you’ve spent good money to dine out, when there are still many restaurants not offering dine-in options; those that do are fully booked in their limited capacities. These make-shift inside-a-darkened-“outdoor” space posing as a dining room can’t afford to serve an awful meal. Send the food back? I would have but this particular menu offered so little else that I’d want to eat. To call the list strange was understatement. What must the chef be thinking? Weird cuisine should never be a stand-in for good cooking.
