PERSEPOLIS

A sense of dread crept upon me as I approached the site of my evening's dinner reservation, which was just too, too ominously, precariously, next-door close to another disappointingly lousy restaurant I had the misfortune of visiting, the bafflingly enduring Turkish joint Uskudar.  Like the fear of a contact high, I was afraid all the mediocrity manifested in Uskudar would infiltrate Persepolis, it's Persian neighbor.  As it turned out, my prescience proved unfortunately accurate.

I had made a reservation, which was a good call because by the time my guest's arrived (slightly later than targeted) there was nary a table available.  It never will cease to astound me how absolutely packed mediocre restaurants can be, while excellent ones close for want of business.  But there's no accounting for taste, and thus, Persepolis is a neighborhood hotspot.  The decor is vaguely Mediterranean, a map of old Persia on one wall, some Byzantine replicas across from it.  "Experience the World's Oldest Cuisine" their website tempts, and by the looks of thing they haven't updated their menu in about as long.  The
 website and the food photography is vastly more attractive than in real life, which may have led to my pretty high, unmet expectations.  Tilapia is on the menu (always a bad sign, even if they did try and sort of slip it in there by spelling it "thilapia"), but other than that the menu reads like an intriguing exploration of the region, so the lackluster execution proved even more disappointing.




We started off with an eggplant trio; I wanted to give as much a try as possible, and one of my tablemates rhapsodized about the eggplant side dish.  Well, maybe we should've stuck with that, since none of these were spectacular (although all tasty enough).  They all remained unfinished, but in retrospect I wish I would've hung onto them to use as sauce to daub my entree, which was pretty one-dimensional.   The main dishes are big enough not to necessitate ordering a ton of appetizers or side dishes, although those might be stronger than the mains.  My thilapia (sic) wasn't
 the worst version of the fish I've ever had, which can often taste like dirty dishwater or the bottom of a murky, stagnant pond.  This just didn't taste like much, although sumac is a favorite of mine, and it was nicely crusted with a ruddy coat of it, and the lemony spinach salad aside was quite pleasant, if not earthshaking.  Both of my tablemates ordered the ground beef kubideh, kebabs of seasoned
 sirloin that exhibited a sort of mushy texture.  One got them with a cucumber and tomato salad ruffled with herbs, the other chose the Polo adas (basmati rice with lentils and raisins), both of which benefitted from the verdant zhoug-esque dipping sauce which accompanied them.  The rice was tender and fragrant, so at least they got what it one of the
 mainstays of Persian cuisine right.   I had lobbied one of them to get a stew instead of doubling up on the kebabs, but I'm also never one to force people into ordering what they don't want just for the sake of diversity.  That said, I convinced them to add on a vegetarian stew as a  dish just to test out more of the offerings,  from which we had three to choose: Gaimeh Badamjan, a spiced dal-type stew with a tomato base, Ghormeh Sabzi featuring "green leafy vegetables, red beans and dried lime" or the Market Vegetables, which was listed under Stews but I'm pretty sure it actually wasn't, as it was

 described as a steamed or sautéed platter.  At any rate, we chose the Ghormeh Sabzi, which has obliterated anything green or leafy that ever existed about those vegetables into a soupy brownish sludge, dotted with random kidney beans and only consumed for my part) to amp up the vegetable ratio of my meal, although with how aggressively they had been cooked I'm not sure they even qualified anymore.

Wrapping things up, Persepolis dessert menu is dominated with ice cream-y options, from a three-scoop sampler to variations on lemon sorbet or a saffron rose flavor.  There is also the standard, baklava, which seemed a little heavy.   One of my companions who was a regular there suggested the ice cream trio, which featured chocolate-strawberry-rose water.  I inquired whether we could sub out the chocolate for lemon sorbet, which didn't seem like too much to ask, but apparently it was.  So we deferred to their rote offerings, and ended up finishing only about half of the three small scoops, letting the other half melt into their respective puddles.

While I fully understand that not every restaurant has to be revolutionary or bursting with nuance, it's still astounding to me that a place like this could be bursting at the seams while so many other excellent establishments struggle to fill their tables.  As a neighborhood mainstay, I suppose it fulfills its purpose at a bare minimum, but that is the extent of it.  For my own sake, the place has too much in common with the city for which is was named: its mountainous terrain and remote location which probably determined the city's demise is much the same sentiment I feel for the Upper East Side.  The city's nebulous history is as mysterious as to how and why this mediocre restaurant endures, but at least with my help via modern technology you can avoid squandering your dining dollars here.

 1407 2nd Avenue
Phone: 212 535-1100

DIVERSION PDX: BULLARD

Whoever beat out Doug Adams in Top Chef must've either gotten really lucky, or I'm gonna have to seek out THAT guy's restaurant, too.  But I was in Portland, and that's where Adam's has opened his new-ish Texas-meets-Oregon wonderland called Bullard.  And it is so utterly excellent I can't imagine how he didn't win, but if it was that fate that allowed him to create this destination within the Woodlark Hotel in downtown Portland, I'm thrilled he lost.  The back of the menu gives you an idea of what hospitality means to Adams, and the kind of vibe you're in store for.  I could've easily removed my boots here, and yeah, post-prandially?  Definitely too stuffed to jump.

Elk horns are right at home here

The bustling bar

The dining room itself is spacious and simple, sparse but not barren.  A vast portion of the real estate is dedicated to an amply stocked bar from which they sling tweaked classics in three versions each.  They fall into five categories: Old Fashioneds, Whiskey Sours, Negronis and Margaritas, plus a full array of beer and wines.   It would seem a fine destination for drinks, especially with all that elbow room, although it's a little odd considering their sister bar, Abigail Hall, is just steps away through the lobby of the hotel, a drinking hall dedicated to old times cocktails in a space nearly as big as Bullard.

That's Bullard the restaurant, not the city in Texas from which its chef hails, and that influences its otherwise Oregon-centric menu.   And from the far end of the restaurant, past that beckoning bar, is
 from whence all the magic derives: a bustling open kitchen glowing with a wood-fired oven whose flames can be seen flickering from afar.   Our server was bright, poised, chipper and of course, requisitely tattooed.  She guided us briefly through  a fairly straight-forward menu, clarifying which plates were more share friendly, although prices are a fairly accurate gauge of this.  Lucky for that, because a $68 T-bone better serve more than one, especially in Stumptown.

Field Greens Salad

But the food is wildly flavorful and generous, and at times generously wild.  A simple sounding butter leaf salad might not have been so accurately titled, as most of the greens with other-than-butter-leaf varietals, but a server explained that the selection of baby mustards, watercress, chicories and mizuna were hand-picked daily from a local farm in terms of whichever looked best.  A recent update to the menu now titles the salad as Field Greens, a much more accurate description.   The various leaves cradled tiny discs of crisp fennel stalk in a a gently lemony dressing, its pucker tamed by caramelizing the tangy citrus, and a shroud of crunch breadcrumbs that looked a little heavy for the delicate greens actually meted out perfectly, augmenting their crunch.

Grilled Prawns (aka shrimp & grits)

Another appetizer, Grilled Prawns, could easily pass as a moderate main course, bolstered by a veggie side dish such as the braised turnips with chili oil and roe, or an indulgent maple-roasted squash with pecan.  Basically a fantastic modern riff on shrimp & grits, the shellfish themselves were among the best I've ever had, fresh and sweet and firm.  The grits came in polenta form, baked into a solid brick and burnished to a crisp golden brown crust, leaving the interior plush and tender and rife with buttery corn flavor.  But the true star of the dish, as was the case with pretty much every thing we tried, was the sauce.  This guy can do sauce.  This one in particular was rich and ruddy, a tangy chili-enriched butter kicked with garlic and... magic.

Usually I opt for whatever fish is available, and while a Supper Plate of Rainbow trout with black-eyed peas and celery was presumably great, it was the lure of Braised Elk Shoulder from The Smoker that caught my attention.  I didn't even know if I'd like elk, but it's preparation sure made a case on its

Tough not to pocket this one....

behalf, braised with mushrooms and truffles on a bed of buttery-rich potato puree.  The shoulder meat succumbed to the gentle pressure of a fork, no steak knife required (although the one provided was exquisitely beautiful, its gleaming blade secured in carved bone).  It was richly beefy but a little lighter on the palate, a characteristic that was more than compensated for by (again) the sauce, an umami-rich pool of stock, meat juices and mushrooms that I spooned up like soup, wished for a straw, wondered if there were jars to spare for purchase that I could buy by the bucketful.  The decadence of the

Braised Elk Shoulder

 creamy potatoes almost went by unnoticed in comparison, although in any other context they would have been the highlight, as luscious as they were.  We worked in another entree as a shared side dish, a Cauliflower Steak which was really not a steak but the whole head, roasted and slathered in smoked peppers and crispy bits of onion, the whole things refreshed with super juicy supremes of blood orange and shreds of basil, the latter of which maybe wasn't quite as flavorful as it might've been, but then again, it was December, and then AGAIN, the

Cauliflower (not) Steak

 combination was anything but lacking in flavor
 from all the other elements, so nothing was amiss.  





After all that food and just our two little stomachs at capacity, dessert unfortunately wasn't going to be an option.  It was an interesting sweets menu, though, which kind of had me wanting to a la carte select ingredients from each offering to compose my own dessert, although had we decided to forge ahead with ordering one, either the grapefruit Baked Alaska or the Cranberry Cobbler with sour cream apple ice cream were the most tempting.  My choose-

What we missed.

your-own adventure dessert, though, might've somehow included the toasted vanilla marshmallows, white truffle ice cream, mulled red wine sauce.... oh, the delicacies we missed.  Oh.... the delicacies for which we must return.  True stories.

813 SW Alder Street
503-222-1670

DIVERSION PDX: CHINA RIM

"Can you do chicken and eggplant?"
"Yes!  We do!  It very good!"

(c/o Michael S. on Yelp) the interior, which shows that
basically NO ONE eats in here.

I wouldn't normally go off-menu at a Chinese restaurant, but China Rim's menu is egregiously limited.  We even called ahead to see if there were any seasonal specials, but were informed there were not. It's been rough ordering Chinese in this neck of the woods, as the quality of all four of the current providers have fallen off substantially.  Two antiquated mainstays, Wan Q and Chiam, have somehow persisted in their gleaming mediocrity since I was in high school, and the newer shining star, Taste of Sichuan, which started off strong, has devolved into a producer of appallingly greasy and flavorless slop, and compounding its disgracefulness by serving its take out in black plastic take-out containers rather than the classic white cartons, as it should be.  Even worse, it currently scores a 76/100 with
the health department, when a 70 will shut your operation down, so.... yeah.  So the final option (aside from a Panda Express, which in my opinion doesn't even count) is China Rim, which has displayed a spastic roller coaster of quality and execution varying from visit to visit, as well as the aforementioned paucity of offerings.  But you can only choose from what there is, so the latter seemed be our best shot.

And luckily, it put out.  Funny when we went to pick it up, though, there WAS a list of specials hand-written on the door.  I guess ordering over the phone has its linguistic glitches.  But Pam (the owner) was ebulliently enthusiastic about the final price of our large order: the total amount shared the last four digits of our phone number, a coincidence she was certain would bode well for us in the new

Black Mushroom with Bamboo

 year.  Maybe that's why the food this time was significantly improved.  My dad insists, every time, on the House Special Show Mein, which is absolutely the most unspecial special I've ever seen, yet I have to hand it to them for consistency: it is inevitably a primarily bland tangle of spaghetti-like noodles tossed with soy and scallions, maybe a little sesame and the classic chicken/beef/shrimp triumvirate that elevates none of the components but does provide variety.  Better was the black mushroom (shiitakes) with bamboo, although it needed to be listed as pea pods with 'shrooms and bamboo, because they comprised 50% of its makeup.  Little gloppy on the sauce, too, but China Rim

Prawn with Green Vegetable

 is unabashedly Chinese-American, so while it is no way authentic or purist, it's mostly pretty tasty.  (At least this time.).  Prawn with green vegetables might've been the best example of why we felt content with our choice: the prawns tasted really fresh, as did the melange of green: broccoli, boy choy and pea pods- and some squiggle-cut carrots and crispy water chestnuts thrown in for good measure.  Again, too much cornstarch in the cloaking sauce, but using a slotted spoon to serve ameliorated some of that.




Beef with broccoli featured really tender strips of meat, although the broccoli got a little overcooked.  The best dish, though, was our special-request chicken and eggplant, which could've been a lot spicier (as the eggplant dish on the menu was denoted with a little chili pepper warning of heat), but it was really flavorful, the silkiness of the eggplant nestling morsels of chicken quite nicely, and zipped up with a little spicy heat and shreds of fresh, snappy green onion.

Even the fortune cookies seemed fresher, and their messages were super random and quirky: certainly different from the generic ones to which I am accustomed.  Mine said I would receive a nice compliment, specifically on Friday, so I had to wait a few days to look forward to that (and I actually did get one!).  But to China Rim, this time at least, I will impart mine, as the current front runner amongst the slim pickings of suburban NW Portland.  

CHINA RIM 

• Phone number tel. (503) 626-8883