adios, portlandia

The day we left Portland started out as so many do–with us rushing to leave the hotel in time for check-out.  I really love the calls that they give you right before you’re supposed to leave asking if you need more time.  It’s one of the more polite ways that hotel people ask you to get the hell out.

We went downtown for one more time to meet Lo and Henry for breakfast at Mother’s Bistro and Bar.  We originally thought that we would just stay at the hotel and eat at one of the many McMenamin’s  restaurants, but Lo suggested that we check out Mother’s, and once we looked at the menu, we couldn’t resist one more jaunt to the City Center for what promised to be a spectacular meal.

I am occasionally skeptical when menus look too good to be true, because more often than not, they are.  Somehow, Mother’s got everything right (or at least everything that we tried).  We shared the pierogi as a table and I think we were all left wanting more.  They were so light and the caramelized onions topping the pierogi were perfectly seasoned.  In fact, I think that I can speak for our whole party in saying that everything on the table was superbly seasoned.  It is extremely rare that I eat a meal and don’t add salt, pepper, or both, especially with breakfast foods.  Bravo, Mother’s, for knowing the proper salt-to-food ratio.  For our main meals, Joellen and I shared the portabella, spinach and asiago scramble and the migas.  Lo had the Mikes’ Special Scramble and Henry had the migas as well (good call, Henry).  The portabella was so much tastier than I could have imagined.  The mushrooms were marinated in garlic, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and were sliced thin.  The spinach was well cooked and again, well-seasoned (I am just going to stop mentioned the well-seasoned-ness of each plate since I’ve already talked about it ad nauseum; let’s assume that I mean to apply it to each plate description unless I state otherwise).  The eggs were lovely and fluffy.  The migas, a scrambled egg dish with corn tortillas, sautéed onions, cheese, avocado, chipotle sour cream and salsa were so good–definitely my favorite of the lot.  Lo seemed to enjoy her scramble, which was full of prosciutto, roasted garlic, tomatoes, basil and provolone cheese; Henry also enjoyed the migas (who wouldn’t?).  Oh, and I guess I should mention that I ordered bacon.  You know, because there wasn’t enough on the table.  Not as good as I’d hoped, especially since it was supposed to be “honey glazed,” but it was still great (there really are so few ways that you can ruin bacon).  There was also this awesome jam that all of us devoured atop our toast.  We debated for a good time about what kind of jam it was, and finally decided that it was blackberry.  Definitely blackberry.  We were wrong.  Apparently it was marionberry (okay, so we were only half wrong), and it was really delish.

We bid our adieus to Portland and our friends and made the easy journey to Grands Pass, OR.  We stayed at a great hotel, The Lodge at Riverside, and after helping ourselves to two warm, homemade cookies from the lobby, settled in to the room for the rest of the night.  We were both pretty beat, so we relaxed at had a car-sans-car meal of cheese, crackers, pb&j (we split one) and some fruit.  A great end to a great day.  Thanks for all you had to offer, Portland.  Now off to California.

❤ Amy