Higgins

Higgins Restaurant
1239 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97205

Feeling rather blah after a day spent nibbling our way around Portland (you don’t want to miss a Portland Walking Tour—it's the real deal), we emerged from our hotel after a much-needed nap and wandered over to Higgins.

This is truly a restaurant for the locals. Beloved by all, it has an inventive menu with fresh, local ingredients. The bar was packed for happy hour, and we decided to see if we could luck into a table given the early hour (before 7). The hostess kindly seated us immediately, with the caveat that they’d need the table back in an hour and a half. No problem!

Not to be tempted given our state of satiety, we each had a glass of wine and an entrée. In spite of what my gut was telling me, I had the whole pig plate, with house-made sausage, kielbasa, burnt ends, etc., over polenta and greens. It was bit more than I needed, though all tasted fantastic. DH had a mélange of seafood: prawns, mussels, calamari, and halibut over fingerling potatoes and baby leeks. So fortified, we headed into the evening to check out some brewpubs.

Like many of the places we visited on the trip, this is the kind of place we wish we could go back to, so that we could try everything. Alas!

On to more brewpubs:

For some reason, the TV was playing some PBS doc about baby animals that I saw when I was a kid.

Tugboat – Great atmosphere, live jazz, a roaming pooch.

Rockin'!

Deschutes – Such great beer and ambience, we went back a second time (of which more, later).