Hello and welcome back!

I had the great pleasure of being taken out to Willow Restaurant in Portland for a belated birthday celebration. Run by the two person team of Doug Weiler and John Pickett in a converted apartment, it was a pretty great experience to be able to enjoy some really great dishes in an intimate setting.

If you just wanted to see some pretty pictures, here’s the album.

The menu above speaks for itself, but I’ll write it out just in case that helps:

• scallop ‘crudo’ (rhubarb | celery)
• pan roasted maitake mushrooms (favas, garlic mojo, ramp)
• summer squash panzanella (bread, squash emulsion, squash marmalade)
• fried green tomatoes (broccoli, roasted ramp aioli)
• barbecued pork (sumac, spring slaw)
• poundcake (ricotta, strawberry)

I opted for the non-alcoholic pairing, not out of an avoidance of alcohol but more of just being extremely intrigued by the offerings here. I’ll probably do the beer pairing next time, but seeing the rhubarb spritzer and a salted celery cream soda sealed the decision for me to lean with this option this time.

If you were curious, pictures of the other pairings are in the album.

I wish I took more pictures of the space, it was pretty neat, and a good model for how one could convert an apartment into a cool dining space.

The rhubarb soda was clear and refreshing and an excellent pairing for the next two dishes.

The scallop ‘crudo’ was put in single parentheses on account of the scallops actually having been cooked. They still had a great “raw” texture though, and the combination of rhubarb and celery was a revelation. I’ve always considered celery simply a thing you have in combination with other vegetables to make a soup base, but it really stood out here and provided a salty crisp contrast with the rhubarb and scallops.

The maitake mushrooms were phenomenal and probably my favorite dish of the night. Packed with umami and glazed with a sauce that contained soy and brown sugar, it’s given me some inspiration for when I see this mushroom come on offer again in my weekly produce box.

The cherry kombucha was a deeply flavored drink that provided nice complexity and acidity which helped cut through the creaminess of the panzanella and the sweetness of the fried green tomatoes that follow.

I was amazed at the flavors that they put into the bread here. I never thought that squash as a primary motivator of flavor could be so satisfying. It’s a great “start to the summer” kind of a dish.

Sweet, chewy, and sticky, the fried green tomatoes were nice and a good dish, but I found the other dishes more to my liking. The pairing condiments of a broccoli sauce and the ramp aioli were the most interesting elements of the dish, as well as the pairing of the cherry kombucha, which really brought up the dish which would have been perhaps a bit too focused on sweet savory on its own.

Finally, the last “entree” was a barbecued pork of sorts. It was paired with a peach ‘sangria’ made non-alcoholic by bringing white wine to a boil and burning off the alcohol.

I really enjoyed it for what it tasted like rather than as a comparison to other barbecued pork. If I had to compare it to anything, if one tried to make a piece of pork in the style of an extremely high grade beef jerky, this would be an idealized representation of that. Wonderfully chewy, savory, and flavored with sumac, it was very cool, but someone wanting a classic barbecued pork would be initially confused I think.

Ending the night, we had the long awaited celery cream soda and…

…the poundcake, a classically made one with great execution, along with a ricotta cream and hood strawberries. It was a wonderful end to the night. Perhaps the cream soda was a bit on the sweet side but it still was a great compliment to the cake, with caramel and salty notes to play with the more traditional sweet treat.

So I give Willow a hearty recommendation if you are out for a celebration and want to do it in a quiet setting, and want to have a more thoughtful experience with your food. I can’t compare it to other tasting menu style restaurants, as this is the only one I can remember in recent memory.