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Portland, Oregon Metro Restaurant Reviews

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clarklewis Restaurant 

This was an adventure just trying to find the restaurant. The building has no signage on it, and the parking was on the street and hard to find in this industrial neighborhood. Once inside, it was very dark as they had no overhead lighting except over the open kitchen. They even have a small flashlight at the table to read the menu. The menu was hard to read and a little confusing as you place order along with order sizes:  s=small, l=large, and f=family style.

We brought our own wine to drink. Since we didn't purchase wine from them, they brought over their all-purpose wine glasses for our pinot noir.  We could see that they had red wine glasses and had to ask for them. The waiter reluctantly brought them to us.

We decided to try the Chef's Menu where you get three or more courses for $50.00 each. Since there were four people in our party, we could try a little of everything. Following is what we received in the Chef's Menu:

Amuse Bouche:

Radishes - Ground work farms, French breakfast, sweet cream butter, Portuguese sea salt. - As you can see, the descriptions on the menu are a little confusing.  This was four large radishes on a plate with some butter and sea salt. This was very good and I would have enjoyed another one. But it was an amuse bouche and supposed to be a "teaser."

Starters:

Belgian Endives - Viridian Farms Johnagold apples, walnuts, cider vinaigrette, and parmesan - Also very good.

Farm Egg - Poached, Anson Mills polenta integrale, fontina, and black truffle oil - Another very good starter, but it had only 1/2 an egg. It was hard to split the egg and share with four people. Also the egg was not poached, but boiled.

Comice Pears - Wrapped in speck ham and mesquite grilled, arugula, balsamic, and parmesan - Very good. I like the taste of the grilled pear.

Mussels - Fresh cured garlic, wild fennel pollen, conserva of chilies, and bay laurel - The mussels were excellent. The best mussels I have eaten in a long time. I could make a meal of the mussels.

Pastas:

Cavatelli - Semolina paste, R & R Farms pork braised with fra' mani salami, pecorio - good

Ravioli - Of roasted Viridian Farm Cinderella pumpkin, sage brown butter, and pine sage - The ravioli was excellent. They only had 4 large raviolis on the plate. We enjoyed it so much, and would have liked another one.

Taghatelle - Egg noodles, draper valley hen braised with green peppercorns and sage - good

Tagliarini - Olive oil poached white shrimp, calabrian chili, garlic, and wild fennel pollen - this was a little too garlicy.
 

From the Stove and Hearth:

Since one of our fellow dinners is a vegetarian, we asked to be sure and bring dishes he could eat. They convinced us that they would only bring out an equal amount of non-meat dishes. This didn't happen, and they brought out only one non-meat dish. 

Halibut - Alaskan, butter braised celeriac and sage, white chanterelle prosecco sauce - Our non-meat eater liked it. The rest of us didn't try it as we wanted him to have something to eat.

Pork - Mesquite grilled cutlets "saltimbocca" and shoulder, spicy corona beans - We were not impressed by it.

Lamb - Sudan farm, spit roasted shoulder and chop, tomato braised lancinato kale - Kind of stringy and chewy, and in general not very good. Had the taste of mutton.

Desserts: 
(We like to share desserts)

Lemon meringue tartlet with wild huckleberry sauce - Very good.

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