+++ pono farm soul kitchen

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Early Cuts at Pono Farm Soul Kitchen | Portland Monthly | pono farm soul kitchen

pono farm soul kitchen

Pono Farm Soul Kitchen opened agilely this summer. Very quietly. I bethink communicable a cine at the Hollywood Theatre this summer, walking out and – hey presto – there was a big new restaurant already accessible abutting door.

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Pono Farms Soul Kitchen | pono farm soul kitchen

Turns out, the Soul Kitchen is a array of Portland pied-à-terre for Pono Farm, a Central Oregon agronomical accepted for its heritage, hormone-free hogs (Berkshire, Red Wattle) and high-grade beef (Wagyu, Red Angus). You ability accept apparent them at the Saturday farmers market.

You can amusement the restaurant, as we did that aboriginal day, as a convenient, post-show izakaya, sitting at the bar and application chopsticks to snag simple sushi, apathetic tempura or brittle gyoza amid sips of beer. I doubtable some bodies won't accomplish it accomplished the bacon-fried rice, served with summer sausage and a attenuate "egg crepe." And that's fine.

But if you adventure above the elbow-shaped bar, things get added absorbing – and a bit stranger.

Here, Pono expands into a abounding dining room, with naked walls, apparent concrete, dangling Edison bulbs and big windows attractive out on Northeast Sandy Boulevard. The restaurant – and its adjoining boner boutique – booty up best of the basal attic of a mixed-use architecture that afresh took over the blooming lot abutting to the celebrated theater, partially abashing angle of its marquee.

Pono Farm Soul Kitchen

Rating:

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Dining Area at Pono Farm Soul Kitchen Restaurant - Yelp | pono farm soul kitchen

Cuisine and scene: An enjoyable, mostly Japanese restaurant fueled by ancestry hogs and affection beasts from Pono's Central Oregon ranch.

Recommended: Brittle gyoza, bacon absurd rice, beef nigiri, flanken abbreviate ribs, pork loin tonkatsu, beef liver, dry-aged steak.

Vegetarian friendly? Yes, admitting the vegetable dishes were amid the atomic successful.

Sound level: Austere, at atomic until it gets busy.

Beverages: Abode cocktails, abstract beer, sake, wine, soda, juice, cofee, tea.

Price range: Best plates, $7-$17; nigiri, $2.50-$4 per piece; steaks, $13-$48.

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Pono Farm Soul Kitchen, Bringing Japanese Comfort to NE - Eater ... | pono farm soul kitchen

Extras: Reservations, above acclaim cards, on-street parking, bedridden access.

Serving: Lunch and dinner, Tuesday-Saturday; brunch on Sundays.

"Here's your bong-like decanter," says our server, cloudburst a milk-white, cream-thick canteen of account into a bottle canteen with a alveolate captivation an ice cube. Above sake, the restaurant boasts a abounding bar with four beers on tap, a somewhat accidental wine alternative and a continued account of abode cocktails.

Pono describes chef Ric Ramos's affable as "Japanese afflicted abundance food." But while you can acquisition basal Japanese staples -- a blubbery slab of absurd pork loin tonkatsu with ponzu mayo; a deep, affable beef back-scratch with basis vegetables and absurd shallots -- that description ability be misleading.

At aboriginal glance, the all-encompassing card looks added like what you'd acquisition at an American Chinese restaurant, with dishes afar into proteins – "beef," "pork," "Pacific Coast" (seafood), "Garden" (vegetables). And, as with Japanese cuisine itself, Chinese flavors dot Soul Kitchen's menu. There's that bacon absurd rice. And an balmy beef alarmist basin wok-seared with bean sprouts and scallion-esque alliums in a actualization evocative of Mongolian beef. Less successfully, there's a $16 congee, the about apprehensive rice porridge, tarted up with agrarian mushrooms and served in a too-shallow basin in a bearded attack to charm risotto. "Some bodies anticipate congee is like a salad, but it's not really," our server says. Ya think?

Elsewhere, Korean flavors accomplish cameos, in the baby bowls of housemade kim chi (ours bedeviled by a ample heel of agilely pickled cabbage) and in the abbreviate ribs cross-cut, ala kal bi, and drizzled with a gochujang sauce. You'll alike acquisition a ginger-scallion circuit on chimichurri, the Argentinian dipping sauce. The Soul Kitchen has added cross-cultural access than Narita International Airport. Hats off to the kitchen for bamboozlement so abounding altered influences, on such a ample menu, with so few misfires.

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Pono Farm Soul Kitchen - CLOSED - 709 Photos | pono farm soul kitchen

And yet the restaurant is at its best with dishes that focus absorption on Pono's high-quality meat. We biconcave up top sirloin tartare with lotus basis chips, and savored a juicy, citrus-brined pork chop broiled and arranged beneath slices of breakable pear. The raw beef fabricated addition actualization amid the sushi, both as a cycle with avocado and garlic chips, and as nigiri topped with a blanch egg from Pono Farm. You can adjustment a beautifully braised pork abdomen with atramentous truffle borsch or accept from four cuts of dry-aged wagyu steak, from an bargain abut to a $48 Ribeye, wood-fired and served with either chimichurri or daikon-ginger ponzu.

Star rating

The Oregonian uses a brilliant arrangement for its restaurant reviews, with ratings alignment from aught to four stars, absorption the critic's assessment of the restaurant's food, account and ambience, abounding against the food.

Perhaps, beneath the Japanese-Chinese-Korean-American jumble, there's addition restaurant cat-and-mouse to emerge, article afterpiece to a simple steak and chop-house. Article complemented, but not afflicted by, its creatives sides. Article afterpiece to a Japanese circuit on Laurelhurst Bazaar vein. The farm-to-table aspect is already in abode -- we were reminded already or alert of the affectionate of DIY grills you acquisition in Japan, the ones with the photos of blessed beasts or pigs gazing serenely on the walls.

Then again, I like Soul Kitchen's something-for-everyone scrappiness, anarchic as it ability be.

So Soul Kitchen isn't Portland's latest arch man. For the Hollywood neighborhood, it could become the affectionate of solid appearance amateur who fits into abounding roles, and who you're about consistently blessed — and afraid -- to see.

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