Category: food

Portland, Oregon 2025

Leaving the Portland airport, seeing the architecture of the homes and evergreen trees made me feel like I was back in Seattle. But as we drove into downtown Portland, two things stood out, distinguishing Portland from Seattle–namely, the Willamette River and the bridges, one after the other, a few rising high above it. Water features prominently in Seattle, but the water there is like an amoeba surrounding it, whereas in Portland, the Willamette is a strong line, cleaving the city in two, creating western and eastern sections. The Western side is more of the urban core, including the downtown area. The Eastern side is more suburban, with several portions of the longer streets and avenues filled with shops, restaurants and even movie theaters, creating a kind of charming main street vibe. I really like Seattle, but I might like Portland even more. The food scene seems just as good as Seattle, if not better, and they have probably the best bookstore I’ve been to. I want to talk about that store and also a used vinyl/cd/video store which I really liked as well.

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Restaurants (2022)

Mitchell, I saw this youtube video on plate lunches, and they mentioned Island Style BBQ Corp (corporation?) on North King. Have you been there? I never heard of this place, and it didn’t look that great. What about Bob’s BBQ in Dillingham? I feel like you said positive things about their plate lunch, but I can’t remember.

Great Food Synergies

Some types of food seem to go well with each other. A great example in Hawai’i is spam musubi–spam, rice, and nori. It might be the tomato-basil-mozzarella equivalent in Hawai’i, which may or may not speak badly about Hawai’i. What are some others? I’d also be interested in hearing an explanation as to why these foods go well together.

The Plate Lunch Thread

Right now, if a visitor came to O’ahu, I’m not sure which plate lunch I would recommend. A part of me feels like plate lunches have gone down hill–or there really aren’t many outstanding places. Do you guys agree or disagree? HK’s and Grace’s were two of my favorites, but I think there’s only one Grace’s left. (The one in Pearl City seemed to go downhill a bit, too–and they eventually closed.) I also really liked Koi’s, but their brick and mortar closed.

Here’s another question: What entres or sides would you like to see in a plate lunch? The first entre that comes to mind for me is Indian butter chicken. A good butter chicken would be awesome in a plate lunch. I wouldn’t mind seeing other types of rice in plate lunches–like biryani, or other types of Indian or Middle-Eastern style rices. I’m not sure if locals would like this, as they’re more like rice pilaf. I also wanted to see a mushroom risotto as well, but I’ve heard risottos are too difficult to make or you can’t make them and have them sit on the side.

Building the Best Local-style Bento

A few weeks ago, I was thinking that if Zippy’s opened up restaurants on the mainland, particularly in college towns on the west coast, they could do well. This conversation lead to another idea: What if you just opened up a bento place, sort of like K’s Bentoya in Waipahu–where they only have two premaid bento options. But what if you tried to top the Zip Pac–that is make a bento that’s better. Is there a better bento than the Zip Pac? I’m not saying it’s the best, but it’s a good one. (The ubiquity of Zippy’s probably contributes to it’s popularity.) Anyway, what would you include in the best bento? To me, if you could make one or two great bentos, that’s all you’d need to make a killing. On the west coast, I think this could become popular with non-Asians/Hawai’i people as well.

(Note: This was originally part of a thread that discussed bentos and plate lunches, but I decided to create separate threads for each topic.)