zabbo

This weekend marks the deadline for submitting speaker proposals for the Linux Plumbers Conf. I figure that CRFS falls under the category of future Linux storage so I submitted a proposal to talk about it.

If you have something that you’d like to discuss with your peers, and which falls under their broad list of categories, you should send in a submission.

If it’s accepted then you’ll get to come enjoy Portland with us! I have a secret plan that will make this sound like a lot more fun than it seems like it should at first glance. I want to try and provide some kind of list of the more interesting places to dine in Portland. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty tired of the beer-and-mediocre-pizza meal that our community so often gravitates to.

Doesn’t that sound great? I sure hope so. Here, as a pair of teasers, are two places for after dinner treats: Cacao and Teardrop.

An Exploration of Portland Food and Drink has put up a review of Taqueria Nueve. Alice and I go there pretty often, it’s on the top of our restaurant list when it’s sorted by the ratio of food quality to cost.

The following is my favourite part of Food Dude’s review:

I’ve had a few people email me complaining that Taqueria Nueve is not “real Mexican – they are so cheap there’s hardly any cheese!” Sigh. Be aware, this is not TexMex, this is not Sonora style, Americanized food. Real Mexican food is not acres of cheese floating in a pool of rice and beans. This is the real stuff.

This leads directly into the story we tell about checking out Taqueria Nueve before our first visit. On its citysearch page is the following gem:

We were excited to check out this “Mexican” restaurant after the rave reviews it received. Hardly a Mexican restaurant. They do not serve tortilla chips (even if requested) and there is little to zero cheese in their dishes.

This became part of our set of things we look for in good restaurants. If the mouth-breathers on citysearch complain about the lack of cheese, or the small portion sizes, or the lack of a TV (no, seriously.), then we figure that it’s a safe bet that we’ll enjoy the place.

Alice and I gave Tabla (see what Google Local has to say) this weekend to celebrate her first paycheque at her new job. I should talk about her new job some time, I really should, but first Tabla.

Alice knew much more about it than I did. She mentioned having heard that the chef behind it is a Western Culinary grad, which is not in the least bit surprising — one might say very common for a restaurant in Portland. She also warned that reviews she’d read complained about the serving sizes. More than likely such a complaint comes from a seam-bursting member of the Hungry Man or — I still can’t say this with a straight face — Enormous Omelet Sandwich generation and as such is actually a ringing endorsement.

So, in we went. The menu offers a very interesting three course dinner option where you choose an appetizer, a half-portion of pasta, and a half entrée all for $20. Alice and I both opted for this as it let us cover more menu and it seemed like a reasonable amount of money to spend. I was weak and started with the cheater dish — roasted peppers, fresh mozarella, diced basil, and olive oil. It’s just too easy to make this taste great. I was pleased to see that they bothered to do a good job of it — the basil was clearly fresh and they dressed it up a little by serving it in a pastry shell that was admittedly hard to disassemble. I was neither thrilled with nor disappointed by my pasta course. The beefy sauce was quite tasty and, while dry pasta isn’t a fundamental failling, I think I was in a mood for springy fresh pasta. Alice raved about her fresh pappardelle and rabbit sauce, though, which I’m going to aim for next time.

I’m going to be made fun of for what comes next, I just know it. I really enjoyed my entrée which was expertly crafted mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus, and some pork and sausage skewers. The sausage was nothing to write home about, sadly. However, the pork and asparagus were both startlingly well prepared. The pork was not dry and disgusting at all. The asparagus was fantastic. I’m told by a certain someone that this amazing feat is attained by mere mortals who have blanched, shocked, and grilled as often as you or I put our pants on each morning. I refuse to believe it — I think they have some asparagus gnome tucked away in the kitchen.

I’m going to be made fun of because of Western Culinary’s black box test. At the end of the program the students are presented with a pile of ingredients to prepare for the school’s chefs in a fixed amount of time. The unlucky students get totally mad things to prepare. Chicken hind-quarters, a whole fennel bulb, and farro; GO. The lucky ones, like a certain someone I know, managed to draw — wait for it — steak, potatoes, and asparagus. If Iron Chef is the Indy 500 and this black box test is driving in Boston then drawing those three is like going to some rural county where they don’t test parallel parking to get your driver’s license.

Finally, the portion sizes were absolutely not too small. I found them just right. We managed to still have a bit of appetite left for the third course but weren’t bursting at the end of the meal. I can imagine someone raised to think that it’s reasonable to eat a pound of anything for breakfast would be irritated by the mass to dollar ratio but our reasonable friends across the atlantic who relate their portions to the size of the human stomach would be well at ease.

Anyway, two thumbs up. I’m looking forward to the visits of my distant friends so we can return and have a nice meal.