Karen Brooks
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Food critic Portland Monthly, hoop dreamer. James Beard Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award 2017. Netflix Chef’s Table Pizza; Street Food USA
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Articles by Karen Brooks
Why Portland Restaurant OK Omens Mattered
OK Omens owner Monique Siu (left) with chef Justin Woodward in 2023. Frogs could fall from the sky. We could be down to our last rations, holding on to hope by a fingernail. And Monique Siu would still make sure we had a lovingly crafted meal, delivered with great bread, a beautiful glass of wine, and proper service.
The Definitive Guide to Portland’s Best Indie Coffee Shops
Even when the focus is elsewhere—maybe it’s on rocks, as at Carnelian Coffee—Portland cafés and roasters don’t tolerate sub-par coffee. Portland’s coffee scene never stopped. While more fancy beans are being roasted around town than ever before, putting “stuff” in them is no longer sacrilege. We’re far past the pretentious habits of the aughts. You have your purists, sure, your honey processed connoisseurs and the set who can’t stop talking about the gesha they cupped over the weekend.
Acclaimed Portland Chef Naomi Pomeroy Has Died
On Saturday evening, what started as a joyful river outing near Corvallis turned profoundly tragic. Today, the family of Naomi Pomeroy confirmed to me that the chef is feared drowned. Her body has not yet been recovered. Pomeroy, 49, whose name is synonymous with Portland’s independent food scene, was inner tubing with her husband Kyle Linden Webster, co-owner of esteemed restaurants Expatriate and Yaowarat.
Opening Oct 6, Four Culinary All-Stars Bring Bangkok's Chinatown Street Food to Yaowarat Original
Every once in a while, a restaurant opening screams Holy Smokes. As in, this could be Portland’s next big thing. Right now, the honor goes to the highly anticipated Yaowarat. Opening date is Friday, October 6 in the former Lazy Susan space at 7937 SE Stark St. Expect a Thai Chinese joint like no other. One reason: it’s hard to find this cuisine, much less an entire menu devoted to it, outside of Thailand.
Okta Is Now Oregon Wine Country's Greatest Restaurant, Ever
What’s it like to be a bee? To nose-dive into a blossom to find the nectar of life? The answer arrived for me recently in a dish called “Pollinator,” midway through a tasting menu at Okta. A beautiful flower arrives on a white plate. It doesn’t look like food. It’s constructed from nasturtium petals in concentric circles, each a different shade of a hot sunset. Do I dare pick it up? I think I want to eat it, but how? Am I being punked by nature cuisine? Just grab it. A whole life hides inside.
A Whirlwind Food and Drink Tour through Portland's Dame Collective
THREE MINI RESTAURANTS. Portland’s teeniest wine shop. A pop-up obsessing over offbeat bialys and the perfect pour-over coffee. A pop-up within a pop-up making beautiful matcha and hojicha lattes. What connects them all? The Dame Collective—as much a poetic concept as multiple projects unfolding in three little spots around NE 30th and Killingsworth.
Portland’s Acclaimed Modernist Restaurant Castagna Will Not Reopen
For two decades and change, Castagna defied the gods of reason to create some of the best meals in Portland’s history. Four of the city’s most acclaimed chefs made their bones here: heroic “chef’s chef” Kevin Gibson (Davenport); charcuterie champ Elias Cairo, (cofounder of Olympia Provisions); Matt Lightner, who went on to win two Michelin stars and open McMinnville’s forward-thinking Okta; and from 2011 to present, the poetic Justin Woodward.
Portland’s Essential Outdoor Dining Spots
Who has an outdoor table? For years, the question seemed down-right Biblical every summer, as sun-deprived Portlanders hunted for open-air tables like Indiana Jones tracking down the Holy Grail. Now, we have an answer: everyone. Outdoor tables, once a special find, are now a way of life, year-round. Some are bare-bones operations built by the Dude School of Architecture.
Why San Francisco’s Coveted Good Food Awards Quietly Moved to Portland in 2023
Portland: meet the Good Food Awards. You may not know them. But you should, and you will. After 11 years in San Francisco, the humble, prestigious awards quietly relocated to Portland. Now, the “James Beards” of the artisan food world is ready to make noise with the 2023 Good Food Awards ceremony at Revolution Hall, April 21. The event is produced by the nonprofit Good Food Foundation.
The Gado Gado Team’s Next Project: A Wild Bar-Restaurant Called the Houston Blacklight
Portland’s most fearless food couple, James Beard–nominated chef Thomas Pisha-Duffly and his design-savvy wife, Mariah, will open their third project in June. The Houston Blacklight, a playful bar with casually serious food, will rise at 2100 SE Clinton St, formerly the Night Light Lounge. Don’t expect a mere culinary offshoot of the couple’s funky, acclaimed Southeast Asian restaurants Gado Gado and Oma’s Hideaway, which recently launched the world’s first Filet-O-Fishball sandwich.
Iconic Feast Portland Food Festival Will Not Return
London critic Marina O'Loughlin once called Feast Portland “possibly the best food festival in the world.” But all things must pass. Signals have been rumbling since 2022's events were put on hold. Now, it's official. According to cofounder Mike Thelin, Feast Portland is calling it quits. Portland may never see anything quite like it again.
Where Does Portland Monthly Food Critic Karen Brooks Eat Off-Duty?
My dining-out life is driven by deadlines. Whatever place I’m writing about, that’s where you’ll find me. In 2022, I obsessed over Kann (our Restaurant of the Year), Berlu (Chef of the Year), and all-day Cafe Olli. They join my short list, along with the restaurants below—places where I take out of town friends or just seek shelter from the storm. What unites them all: spots with their own ideas for food and space and community, not easily duplicated. Great pastries don't hurt, either.
The Complicated, Triumphant Return of Portland’s Honey Bagel
Sometimes miracles happen. In the pandemic spring of 2021, when all hope seemed lost, Honey Bagel charged into Portland like the wizard Gandalf blinding the dark forces with holy light. Word of mouth spread quickly: some of the best bagels in the land were surfacing at a weekly pop-up at Pizza Jerk. Flavors were familiar, but Honey Bagel was in its own lane—big, bold, hand-formed, and tasting somewhere between a great deli and the Beastie Boys. I called it Portland's next great bagel. Honestly?
Fulamingo, Portland's Hidden Japanese Market, Is Stocked With Cult Snacks and Secret Chef Ingredients
Imagine a great playlist, but with Japanese food instead of music. The mix includes cult snacks, instant wonder foods, and secret ingredients favored by chefs. That's the A-side, the fun side of eating, what we live for. The B-side is basically everything you need to capture the essence of Japanese home cooking, plus a collection of artisanal sakes to go with it. And that, in a bag of fried ramen chips, is Fulamingo—a DIY Japanese market from industry vets Erik Hanson and Kana Hinohara Hanson.
Interview: Chef Kristen D. Murray's Makes a Last Stand at Måurice
Even by Portland standards, Måurice is quirky, the veritable definition of a local food gem and singular lunch spot. This is where Edith Piaf, bubbles, black pepper cheesecake, Paris-level quiche, art, and idealism come together in n a self-described “French-Scandinavian pastry luncheonette” at 921 SW Oak St. Since opening in late 2013, the all-white wonderland has doubled as an idealist food kingdom and the alter ego of owner Kristen D. Murray.
Two Portland Chefs Nab James Beard Cookbook Award Nominations
Cookbooks by Portland chefs Gregory Gourdet (Everyone's Table) and Joshua McFadden (Grains for Every Season) are officially in the James Beard ring, vying for the foundation's prestigious award. Nominees were announced today for the James Beard Foundation 2022 Media Awards, which focus solely on cookbooks, broadcast media, and journalism. Read the finalists list here. Finalists in the best chefs and restaurants categories were announced in March, with three Portlanders contending for awards.
The Minds Behind Eem and Langbaan Ignite a New Thai Food Experience with Phuket
Phuket Café is a Thai restaurant. Beyond that, labels are off. Greeting you at the entrance: Chazz Madrigal, your tattooed bartender in a massive cowboy hat, arms going up and down like pistons, as Morrissey bumps overhead. He’s a dive-bar pro and a DJ with his own following. Drinks are from their own planet. Consider the Coffin Maker: a lip-smacking conflation of mezcal, cucumber cane vinegar, and lime crowned with, of all things, fried shallots and cilantro sprigs.
Chef Matthew Lightner to Open ōkta and Tributary Hotel in McMinnville This Summer
For years now, Oregon's wine country has been tagged as on the verge, perennially “the next Napa.” Why not? The Willamette Valley, a 150-mile-wide swatch of vineyards and farm fields, 37 miles south of Portland, produces A-caliber wines and produce—fiercely artisanal, independent, and idiosyncratic. What's been missing is a region-defining restaurant, a place worthy of a pilgrimage to complement a passionate food culture with its own vibe. Get ready.
Portland’s Best Lunches 2022: Sandwiches, Food Carts, Restaurants & More
Irecently came across a Portland Monthly guide with “8 Power Lunch Destinations” in the headline.The pitch went like this: “Hosting foreign executives? Taking the team out for martinis? Just want to wear a suit? We’ve got a crisp-linen tablecloth for you.” I felt like an archaeologist pondering the remains of a forgotten civilization. What strange creatures dressed up for lunch? Six of those places are gone, among them Imperial, Headwaters, and Little Bird.
Is Phuket Cafe Portland's Next Great Thai Restaurant?
Whole fried chopped and served miang kham style with herbs, betel leaves, and lettuce for wrapping. For months and months we've wondered: What is Phuket Cafe, a deep under-wraps project from prominent chef-restaurateur Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom and his business partner, Eric Nelson, a cocktail innovator supreme and the party-vibe instigator behind Eem, our 2019 Restaurant of the Year? Ninsom also owns Southern Thai curry hot spot Hat Yai and Southeast hangout Paadee.
Visit Portland's Berlu for an Unconventional Vietnamese Food Experience
T he first thing I ever ate at Berlu, in 2019, was a puffed rice cracker served in a wood box in the world’s most silent food chamber. It was near translucent, undulating and amorphous, like an art installation of sea foam. Like many things made by the quietly talented Vince Nguyen, it was raw, naked, and spare, the kind of aching poetry that made this teeny restaurant an eccentric gem. What was missing? That frisson of flavor, the thing that hot-wires the mind to the joy bone. Flash forward to now.
First Look: Han Oak Reopens with Hot Pot, Caviar, and Korean Chips
Drake is thumping on the sound system. Lights are party-dim. Every table sports a hot pot and blue flames, the centerpiece of a new four-course concept. At the door: Sun Young Park is making sure every customer feels welcomed at her “home,” a scene of house-party chill, Korean family vibes, and kids romping around a rambling, grassy backyard in full view of the cozy dining room and chef's counter.
Restaurant Review: Bluto's Greek-Inspired Menu Is Outstanding
The city's best pita with hummus that rocks. Take a little Israeli-riffing Shalom Y'All. Add Ox's leaping flames and meats roasting over open coals. Toss in Tusk's artful seasonal salads and a little Mad Greek Deli neighborhood vibe. Mix with a sweet light-filled room, ouzo-laced cocktails, and a blistering house-made playlist of hip, jazz, and post-punk. The ingredients are super casual but the flavors are detailed and spiced to thrill.
Providore is a Must-Try Food Paradise in Portland
A lovingly crafted Rubinette Produce display inside Providore. On traffic-zooming Northeast Sandy, steps away from Korean food rave Han Oak, an ingeniously stocked market epitomizes Portland's emerging food wave: deeply local but connected to larger conversations and stories in the food world.
Exit Interview: Portland Bread Legend Ken Forkish
Forkish at his bakery in 2005 Ken Forkish, acclaimed bread baker and pizza thinker, has not only left the building—he left Portland. Without fanfare or even a post on the websites of Ken's Artisan Bakery and Ken's Artisan Pizzeria, Forkish quietly slipped away with a note to newsletter subscribers: It was time to move on and not to worry—the bakery and pizzeria would live on in the hands of longtime employees. What happened? Where did he go?
Portland's Most Obsession-Worthy Dishes in 2021
Marvelous yet simple French toast from Sweedeedee What are the best dishes of the year? The answer is highly personal—it's an art, not a science. Consider this: Which dishes are you still dreaming about the next day? Did anything change your perception of what something familiar can be, be it French toast, a tostada, or the humble green bean? What broke your food brain—flying-ant mayo, a fish-sauce pork patty, wine lees ice cream?
Portland's Best Restaurants of 2021
How will we remember Portland’s food scene in 2021? What are the defining meals? Who’s setting the table for the future? The question drives us mad every year for our annual Best Restaurants issue. Throw into the mix a challenging year as we tiptoe back inside restaurants. Who will forget the food lovingly prepared and boxed up with unfathomable determination ... then stabbed at with plastic picnic forks?
Portland's Best New Dining Experiences: Toki, St. Jack, Sweedeedee & Oma’s Hideaway
Our Restaurant of the Year, República, came out swinging as Portland’s ambitious new frontier of Mexican-forward food—traditional and modern, breakfasts to guisado lunches to choreographed tasting-menu dinners. It was one of five restaurants that blended point of view, personal worlds, and culinary chutzpah into the year's best new dining experiences.
In the Portland Dining Scene, These Little Lights Really Shine
'Go big or go home' doesn't work in Portland. The city's sweet spot has always been the small, the intimate, the passionate—and no two alike. Our latest crushes: a fearless anti-somm wine den, two brothers reimagining their family's pho shop, a chef-driven brunch, and a vegetarian takeout crib fighting for a more just world. Thơm Vietnam’s wonder bowl of beef broth and silky noodles is an enduring Portland food crush, right up there with tallboys and doughnuts.
3 New Pizza Restaurants That Represent the Best of Portland | 2021
Portland finally won a figurative best pizza Oscar this year when articles flooded the internet after an exhaustively researched new book shocked the world with its crown for America’s best pizza city. But we laid out Portland’s secret years ago, true then and true now: every great style is sampled here, then remixed by pizza fanatics doing their own thing, infectiously, with art and craft. These newcomers solidify the argument. Cafe Olli Fuck, that’s delicious.
The Last Days of Paley’s Place
On a break from prepping one of their last dinners, Vitaly and Kimberly Paley, a former dancer, horse around in their iconic dining room. Paley’s Place was once as essential to Portland life as a latte or a trip to Powell’s. Soon it will be gone, a way of life with it. Not just a near spiritual connection to old-guard farmers and fisherman, but the utter graciousness, the conviction and intelligence, the old-world sense of standards. But from now until the last diner eats the last bite on Nov.
Cafe Olli Is Portland's Next Great Pizza Place
Cafe Olli's pizza with potatoes, Jimmy Nardello peppers, homemade sausage, and hand-pulled mozzarella at fall's Bar Norman pop-up. Been fretting over the future of Portland's food scene? I know I have. Who's going to carry the mantle to support local farmers? Who's going to get ambitious? Hell, who even wants to work in the business? One reason for optimism: Cafe Olli, an all-day “handmade everything” cafe coming soon to the former home of Ned Ludd. Watch for a late November opening.
A Vegan Goth Bakery Pop-Up Is Coming to Mama Dút this Halloween
A cupcake from the upcoming Baker Ghoul Magic pop-up at Mama Dút Most days, Kachina Williams, 26, is Portland phenom Thuy Pham's protégé at her vegan Vietnamese snack palace, Mama Dút, where she's charged with making an Instagram-ready array of cupcakes, sugar cookies and multi-hued whoopie pies.
Berlu Cooks Up One of the Country’s Most Daring Vietnamese Tasting Menus
Vince Nguyen's new Vietnamese tasting menu at Berlu promises to be one of the most daring in the country. If all goes well, Berlu will reopen Oct. 14 with one of country's most daring Vietnamese tasting menus. Gone are the minimal French food poems from Vince Nguyen, a quietly exciting talent who began embracing and exploring his Vietnamese roots for the first time during the pandemic.
Portland's 9 Greatest New Food Carts of 2021
Geri and Ethan Leung of Baon Kainan Sorry to the 4,000-square-foot restaurant space downtown: the big story of 2021, much like 2020, is the resurgence of food carts. Some are creative, while other play to nostalgia or modern twists on tradition. Together, they've secured Portland's crown as the country’s best food cart city with the likes of wild mushroom sisig, old-school smashburgers, wood-fired pork chops, and chickpea al pastor tacos.
Head to Coquine Market for Sexy, Bocce Ball-Size Onions
An early fall haul from small local farms If life were truly just, every neighborhood would have a place like Coquine Market—inviting, intimate, and more passionate than a Sound of Music sing-a-long. Who needs a million choices on the shelves? We just want someone to take us inside their food brain, narrow it down to the good stuff, and park it in a room with personality.
Portland's Best New Cheeseburger Is Hiding at Davenport
Davenport's "no name" burger juggles little more than exquisite local meat, Basque sheep's milk cheese, homemade sherry mayo, and one luscious tomato slice on a potato bun. It's just perfect. It’s no surprise that Kevin Gibson can make an epic burger. What's surprising is that he's serving it. Consider this: Gibson doesn't especially like burgers.
Portland’s Best New Vegan Restaurants, Food Carts, and Pop-Ups
Portland has always been a hotspot for vegan food, but in the past year, our vegan options have exploded—and they’re better than ever. Far beyond tempeh and veggie burgers, you can now find vegan versions of Detroit-style pizza, fried catfish, porkless bao buns, Cuban sandwiches, signature sushi rolls, and spicy fried chicken sandwiches. Whether you’re a lifelong vegan or just looking for a meatless meal, check out these options.
Next-Gen Vietnamese American Noodle Shop Thơm Opens on Alberta
Brothers Jimmy and Johnny Le at Thơm on NE Alberta. In case you missed it, young Vietnamese American cooks and food thinkers are shaking up Portland's food scene with fresh visions that blend Portland and Vietnam. Several opened during the pandemic, including Mama Dút's vegan comfort food eats, Berlu Bakery's elegant sweets and savories, and Portland Ca Phe, roasting beans from Vietnam.
St Jack’s Is Vying for Portland’s Best Restaurant Crown
John Denison, St. Jack’s new chef Last summer, La Moule laid down the perfect outdoor picnic for the times: cold rosé, hand sanitizer, and scruffy, socially distanced sidewalk tables on SE Clinton. All of it seemed weirdly normal. Except the meat loaf. Forget ground beef and ketchup. This was the Jean-Paul Belmondo of meat loaf—outsize, jeweled with pork belly, pistachios, and prunes and bound in handsome puff pastry.
This New Filipino-American Food Cart Is “Not Your Tita’s Cooking”
Geri and Ethan Leung of Baon Kainan In 2019, Ethan Leung was one of Seattle's “next hot chefs,” a sous at the sizzling Ben Paris inside a sleek new downtown hotel. A few years earlier, he had bailed from the financially secure world of his family's dreams: engineering. Monotonous, he called it. Soul-draining. In cooking, he found things that drew him to breakdancing—creativity, self-expression, camaraderie. He learned the fundamentals on YouTube and on the job.
At Slabtown’s New Pizza Thief, Chewy Sourdough Crust Steals the Show
The shop's pepperoni pie is the ticket. Grab a slice of pepperoni from an 18-inch pie at the new Pizza Thief, then smile at your fortune. Especially if you live in Northwest's pizza desert, a neighborhood barren of the individualist shops that make Portland America's most original pizza destination.
Oma's Hideaway Is Portland's Most Exciting New Restaurant
A typical Oma’s feast (clockwise top right): wonton mee; a wild Fruity Pebbles Rice Krispie bar; charcoal game hen (and some stray legs) with coconut sambal; herb-strewn oyster omelette; pork spareribs with fish sauce caramel; a cucumber margarita spin; and roti canai. In late May, I meet up with friends at the new Oma's Hideaway on SE Division. We hug. We hoist drinks. Our food arrives on plates. Plates. Yes, our outdoor table is furnished with a plastic BYO tub—as in, bus-your-own dishes.
Modernist Pizza Authors Have Named Portland America's Best Pizza City
Pizza Jerk is one of our plethora of pizza joints to earn us the crown. Everyone’s abuzz with their own hot take on Bloomberg’s drop yesterday of some pretty BIG news: the best pizza city in America according to a new, exhaustively researched book, is Portland.
Derby Kenton 2.0 Unleashes Tropical Cocktails, Smash Burgers, and Filipino-Inspired Brunch
Derby Kenton's Judith Stokes Things you need to know about Judith Stokes: she has a lumpia roll tattooed on her arm and makes one of the city's best smash burgers. She's an unstoppable force—a funny, sassy, hard-charging Filipino American restaurateur. And she wants you to know: if you don't know Derby Kenton, you will. Gutsy?
Meet Canard's Dairy Queen-Inspired Pine Nut Buster Parfait
Canard's Pine Nut Buster Parfait is capped with a candied pine cone. Forget peanuts, the crown jewel on a Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfait, iconically striped in vanilla soft serve and hot fudge. Forget even hazelnuts, the default “Northwest move.” For its recent reopening menu post pandemic shutdown, Canard–Portland Monthly's Restaurant of the Year 2018–taps the earthy, burnt-toasty, beguiling flavor of … pine nuts? We're not talking the simple act of subbing pine nuts for peanuts on top.
Expatriate’s New Spicy Fried Chicken Sandwich Is a Strong Contender for Portland’s Crown
Expatriate’s Properly Spiced Fried Chicken Sandwich Does the world need another spicy fried chicken sandwich? Nashville owns the space, with sanity-testing cayenne pepper levels. LA is now a hotbed of hot chicken. Portland has its own hot sauce–happy options among its ranks of excellent fried chicken, including the colossal, Crystal-honied signature at Jojo's food truck, a weekly Wednesday spicy sandwich at Gumba, and a menu mainstay at the recently returned Basilisk.
Kimura Toast Bar’s Japanese Basque Cheesecake Is Ready to Conquer Portland
A Japanese Basque cheesecake from Kimura Toast Bar. On a trip to Japan in 2018, Kayoko and Matt Kaye were intrigued by a cheesecake that tasted like crème brûlée. Instead of a bottom crust, a golden chewy exterior formed naturally in a hot oven, creating a kind of caramel force field around the interior. For the couple, owners of Kayo's Ramen Bar on N Williams, it was a revelation: decidedly different from the soft, jiggly Japanese cheesecakes they found in Japan's bakeries and 7-11s.
Meet the Bread Heads at Starter Bread
Starter Bread bakers Matt Kedzie and Zena Walas Every Monday I haul over to a sleepy street off West Burnside to yank open the world’s ugliest treasure chest, a plastic bin tucked behind a metal gate. Waiting inside: bread wrapped in brown paper and labeled by hand. It’s heavy enough to inspire a few Pumping Iron moves on the spot. But banish all preconceptions.Starter Bread inspires the kind of deep thoughts usually reserved for Texas barbecue or retiring basketball players.
Oma's Hideway Opens with Chinese-Malaysian Street Foods, Char Siu Pork Platters, and Mai Tai Slushies
Cocktails from Oma's Hideaway After a five-month hiatus, the short-lived Oma's Takeaway, one of PoMo's best restaurants of 2020, will reboot on May 22 as Oma's Hideway, complete with a new menu and a retro futurism vibe at 3131 SE Division. Say hello to V. 3 of a pandemic-born project from the folks behind Northeast's Gado Gado, a delicious mind-bender of Indonesian food.
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