Portland: Breakfast at Mother's Bistro & Bar

It started drizzling off and on during my first morning in Portland. This put my plans for a trip to Washington Park on the back-burner. So I decided to walk a few blocks and have breakfast at Mother's Bistro & Bar.

Mother's specializes in "Comfort Food", just like Mom used to make....well not my Mom, no Miso Soup, Sukiyaki, or Nishime here, but someones Mom. The menu features such comfort items as Matzo Ball Soup, Chopped Liver, House-Cured Lox, Chicken & Dumplings, Pot Roast, and Meatloaf & Gravy. Mother's also seems to have cornered the market on "shabby chic" furniture. I arrived at about 10 after 7 on a Friday morning, and several tables were already going strong.

I found that there are two items that Oregonians are really passionate about; beer and coffee. I ordered a cup of coffee, and went through the same drill several times; brewed or French Press, Organic, Dark roast..........and I thought those Vietnamese Restaurant menus were confusing!

To be perfectly honest, I loved the coffee(Holler Mountain Organic Blend - French Press - $2.95), provided by Stumptown Coffee Roasters. The very friendly and helpful Server; I believe Her name was Michelle, gave me directions to Stumptown.

As for the food; I decided to order "Mike's Special Scramble"($8.95):

A scramble of Prosciutto Ham, roasted garlic, fresh tomatoes, basil, and provolone cheese. Nothing wrong with the scramble, though I thought that perhaps a bit more tomato would help cut the richness of the scramble a bit, I'm really not used to such a "heavy" breakfast. The honey whole wheat toast was fine, but the breakfast potatoes were lousy. Some of the potatoes were cold, some molten hot, some pieces over slated, some not salted at all. The edges of several pieces of potato were dry and hard as rock.

The prices at Mother's are fairly reasonable, with breakfast running from Two Eggs any style at $5.95 to $10.95 for Wild Salmon Hash. Mother's also flies in H&H Bagels from New York. Most Lunch entrees run from $8.95 to $10.95, so prices for lunch seem to be fairly reasonable as well.

Mother's Bistro & Bar
409 Sw 2nd Ave

Is now at - 121 SW 3rd Ave, Portland, OR 97204
Portland, OR 97204

Breakfast: Tues-Fri 7am-230pm
    Sat-Sun  9am-230pm
Lunch:    Tues-Sun 1130am-230pm
Dinner:    Tues-Thurs 530pm-9pm
    Fri-Sat  5pm-10pm

After eating this, I was ready to go right back to my room. But since I was armed with my umbrella, I decided to take a walk up to Chinatown(5 Portland-sized blocks North).  Here's a photo of the Chinatown Gateway:

In contrast to Chinatowns in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Boston, and Honolulu, Portland Chinatown was very quite and sedate at this time of the morning. I later read that for a 30 year period between 1880 and 1910, Portland had the second largest Chinese community in the West.

This building for this restaurant; the House of Louie was built in 1922.

As with several "Chinatowns" in the US, like the Chinatown in Washington DC, there's not really much that is truly Chinese about "Chinatown". There was one destination, that I really did want to visit in the area.....

The Classical Chinese Garden.

This garden was completed in September of 2000, by workmen from Portland's Sister city of Suzhou.

According to what I read, from between 1000AD, and through the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644AD), Suzhou was the city where Imperial Court Officials retired to. In retirement, these officials built housing compounds that featured beautiful and opulent gardens.

These gardens take up a whole city block.

A nice relaxing break.

Portland Classical Chinese Garden
239 Northwest Everett St
Portland, OR 97209
November 1 - March 31: 10:00am - 5:00pm
April 1 - October 31: 9:00am - 6:00pm

Admission: $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, $5.50 for students

Comments

[Kristy]

First off... I LOVE comfort foods...mmm mmm mmm! I absolutely loved my mom's moist meatloaf with rice.

And I hear ya with the Chinatowns like in DC. I took the subway just to get there and was sorely disappointed to find out that there was nothing there to do, see, or eat! bah! Wish they had a garden like the one in Portland! Very beautiful! =)

[clare eats]

We have a pretty good chinese gardens in syd too, I will have to go and try and take some pics for ya

[Kady]

Those gardens look great! You know what's funny? I'm from D.C. and I never really went to "Chinatown" because I knew it didn't compare to NY's (plus we have good Chinese food throughout northern VA, where I was raised).

[Wandering Chopsticks]

The Asians don't really eat in Chinatown, although they use the restaurants for wedding banquets. If you ever go back to PDX, the good Asian restaurants are on the other side of the river on the SE side of town (where the majority of the Asians also live). Several new Asian strip mall restaurants have opened up recently too.

BTW, the nickname "stumptown" is because when PDX was founded, all the tree stumps did literally make it a "stump town."

[Passionate Eater]

I love the pictures of Portland Kirk, they are beautiful! I know what you mean the disappointing nature of those hard, dried potatoes. It is really a let down when you are expecting soft, warm, and fluffy potatoes with only a crisp (and not tough) exterior.

[Reid]

Hi Kirk,

Gosh, you were up early....just like if you were at work? When I'm on vacation, I like to try and relax...it doesn't work though. I'm normally up early and don't go to bed until late...*sigh*

[Kirk]

Hi Kristy - It's kind of a project of mine to visit every "Chinatown" in cities I visit.

Hi Clare - I'd love to see some photos.

Hi Kady - I can understand that. I really don't visit Chinatowns for food - it's just that the Chinese Diaspora fascinates me.

Hi WC - I did read about the origin of the Stumptown monnicker. As I notes above, I have other reasons for visiting Chinatowns in every city I visit.

Hi PE - As is usual, the city(Portland) did all the work. I just aim(sometimes not even that) and shoot.

Hi Reid - Funny thing, when on vacation I usually get up pretty early. I love to watch a city "wake-up".

[Kirk]

BTW WC - I did entertain the thought of bussing it out to Wong's King or Shenzhen, but decided not to. How's the food there?

[Wandering Chopsticks]

Hey Kirk,

Wong's King is pretty good for PDX. But if you're used to SoCal large Chinese banquet/dimsum restaurants, then it's not that special. I haven't heard of Shenzhen but then I only go home for a quick weekend to visit my folks.

My mom took me to a new Malaysian restaurant, and there's a banh cuon place too, as well as a few more pho shops.

[Kirk]

Hi WC - Well, we lived in the SGV for almost 5 years....so I'm used to both, the large Dim Sum style restaurants, as well as the smaller shops selling regional Chinese cuisine - like ChungKing on Garfield and such. That said, I don't mind ABCDEs(American Born Chinese Dining Establishments) so long the food is decent. Still I do miss my favorites....MeiLong Village, all the Muslim Chinese places, etc.

[kyle]

Kirk,
Nice pics of the Chinese Gardens, I can almost feel the peacefulness of the place!!

[Kathy]

Yay for a well deserved vacation! Oh man, breakfast is the best meal of the day (after dessert of course!) (and maybe dinner...lol!) I'm sorry the overall food wasn't that great but the ambiance looks pretty inviting to me. Nothing like early moring light and comforting pastels :)

[Kirk]

Hi Kyle - The Gardens were very nice and relaxing.

Hi Kathy - Don't know about breakfast being the best meal of the day....but, San Diego does really good breakfast - too bad I don't take as much advantage of it as I should.

[Lynnea]

I'm sorry your experience at Mother's was so so. My husband and I really enjoyed our visit there last fall. We had lunch though so that may have been the difference. Maybe next time you go to Portland you'll have try Mother's at lunch or dinner time.

[Kirk]

Hi Lynnea - On the positive side - the service was very nice, and the Stumptown Coffee was very good.

[Lynnea]

Oh good point, Mother's has fabulous service!

[Kirk]

Hi Lynnea - Yes, it was. Such very genuinely nice people.

[ExtraMSG]

Portland is in the process of gentrifying Chinatown trying to make it more tourist and event friendly. For a while now it's been a seedy Chinatown with crack whores, gay meat markets, adult bookstores, and homeless shelters. But now they've built the Chinese garden, forced out Hung Far Low, and are redoing the roads and empty spaces. We'll see what it becomes.

As Chopsticks indicated, the real Chinatown in Portland is along 82nd Ave, but not just SE. It runs from relatively far NE down to pretty far SE. Tons of Chinese and Vietnamese especially, plus some Korean and Thai and some very nice markets, such as Fubonn where Malay Satay Hut and Banh Cuon Tanh Dinh are, which Chopsticks alluded to. Personally, I think Wong's King is in the same class as really good dim sum restaurants in BC and California.

[Kirk]

Hi ExtraMsg - I'll make sure to check them out on my next visit - now that I have a better understanding of how good mass transit is in Portland - it seems that nothing is beyond one's reach.

[David Anders]

Greetings,

This article was very helpful! This is more of a question, are there any Asian jewelers is Chinatown area?