Portland Walks – Three Friends Coffeehouse and Cafe

In spite of the weather forecast, yesterday turned out to be a very nice day to be outdoors.  My wife and I took our fourth walk from the twenty walks list in our Portland City Walks book.  This walk (number 9), focuses on the East bank of the Willamette River.  The Willamette river runs through the center of Portland with commercial high-rises on the Westside, and light industrial on the Eastside.

In the mid to late 1800’s, the East bank of the river was a swampy area lined with sawmills and industrial manufacturing.  Now there is a wonderful esplanade that lines the river where people can sit and watch the city, run, bike and (like we did) walk along the river.  The esplanade also hosts several plaques and signs that provide historical information and photographs from the 1800’s of the river.

Our walk took us about three hours to walk the 2.7 mile course, as approached the final set of turns on the route, we read in the book that we could take a one block detour to a local coffee house on the corner of Ash and 12th.  We had not seen any other unique place to have a treat during our walk, so we decided to check it out.

The Three Friends Coffeehouse and Café looks like it is housed in either a very old bar or grocery store.  As we were quite warm from our walk and the sun, we decided to both have Italian Sodas – mine was blackberry and my wife had cherry.  We sat inside, sipped our drinks, and enjoyed the quiet ambiance of the coffeehouse.  I must say that I am still not quite sure why there are fake tombstones on the wall.

This was quite an interesting walk, and we really enjoyed the cool treat at the end.  With sixteen more walks to go, I look forward to uncovering new treat opportunities to share.

Walk 9, Grand Avenue Historic District to Eastbank Esplanade Loop, 2.7 miles, 3 hours and 15 minutes, 7219 steps.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Portland Walks – Nob Hill Bar & Grill

Last week we took another one of the walks in the Portland City Walks book by Laura Foster.  This time we asked some friends to join us as we walked the Nob Hill Loop (walk number 13).  It was a cool cloudy day and there was some rain showers as we strolled along the 2.7-mile route.

This walk focuses on an older section of Portland originally developed in the mid to late 1800’s when there were many mansions built on full city blocks and then torn down to be replaced by higher density housing during the last 100 years.

About half way through the walk, our friends saw a local restaurant where in the past they enjoyed a great hamburger, so we decided to have lunch at the Nob Hill Bar & Grill located at NW 23rd Ave and Lovejoy St.  NW 23rd is the trendy street of Portland and there is quite a contrast to enter the Nob Hill Bar & Grill, which has retained its 1950’s corner bar atmosphere (several internet reviews refer to it as a dive – in a nice way).  Our friends had originally sought out Nob Hill Bar & Grill bar because they read that in 2006 the bar earned an award for best cheeseburger in Portland.

We all ordered the mushroom burger that contained the hamburger patty, mushrooms, Swiss cheese, onion, lettuce, mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun.  My wife and I decided to split an order of their sweet potato fries, and our friends had the sweet potato fries and tatter tots with their burgers.

Our burgers arrived about five minutes after we ordered them and we all received a good-sized burger that was juicy and had excellent flavor.  I was surprised that the sweet potato fries were a crinkle cut and not slabs like those that we would get from a local restaurant chain.  The fries were cooked to perfection, just the right amount of crispness and not soggy or limp.

We enjoyed relaxing while we ate our burgers.  Once we finished, we ventured back into the rain and enjoyed our time while we finished our walk with full stomachs and a smile on our faces.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Portland Walks – Via Delizia

Last year my wife purchased a book for us titled: Portland City Walks.  We decided that after almost 30 years of living in the suburbs outside of Portland, that we would get out and really explore the city.  The book contains twenty walks that are in Portland or the surrounding communities.  There is a wide variety in the length of the walks from 2.5 to 6.6 miles.

A little while back, we took our first walk (number 17) in the small college town of Forest Grove.  It was a nice sunny day and we spent 2 1 /2 hours walking the 4.1-mile loop around the town.  The book in informative as it gives specific directions for the walk and then at points along the walk, there is historical information to read about the houses, buildings or area.

We decided to take our second walk (number 14) in downtown Portland through the Pearl District to Slabtown.  Even though it is now the month of May and we have had some great weather this month, that day had scattered showers and we even heard some thunder, which is very unusual for Portland.  Even with the rain, we had a great walk.  We really enjoyed reading information in the book about the how the area of the city had changed over the years from individual housing to industrial buildings with railroads, and now back to condominium housing.

We don’t get into the city of Portland very often – in fact I think that I have spent more time walking the streets of Paris than I have those of Portland.  Along the way, we saw there was a small café with a display case full of gelato.  As this trip was like walking through a European city, we decided to stop for a few minutes and enjoy a small dish of gelato.

This café, the Via Delizia is on the corner of NW 11th and Marshall of Portland.  We went in, I ordered a single scoop of mint chocolate, and my wife had a scoop of coconut.  The dishes of gelato even came with little gelato shovels, just like they do in Italy.  It was nice to sit down for a bit and enjoy the refreshing coolness of the gelato.  We were able to visualize that we were in Rome sitting in a little gelato shop while taking a rest from sight seeing.

We decided that on each subsequent walk, we would seek out a new dining or food experience.  Now we just need to speed up our pace as this 3.3-mile walk took us almost four hours to complete (that includes going inside stores along the way and exploring).  If we take that long on some of the longer walks, they will take us all day!

I can’t wait to see what treats we will find on our next walk.

Get the book here: Portland City Walks

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell