The Blue Diamond

This is a menu. It's Faux Leather!

Last week, Patrick and I called up our friends, Amber and Karen, and invited them to go saskaspooning with us.

"You have to go wherever the phone sends you," we warned. "We might end up spending hundreds. We might end up at the 7-11 in the Industrial area."

"That's fine!" they said. "Bring it on!"

"We might end up at a steak house," we cautioned the vegetarian. "You might end up eating nothing but croutons."

"That's cool!" said the vegetarian. "I'm up for it!"

"I hope we end up at the hospital cafeteria!" exclaimed Amber.

So they put us on speaker phone, and Patrick shook his Galaxy S2.

"The Blue Diamond!?!" I said, with horror.

"Hooray!" came the excited voices down the phone. Both Karen and Amber started talking at once. "I haven't been there in forever!" "That was my family's fancy place when I was little!" "Oh, hooray! Hooray!" "Giggle!" "Squeal!" "Giggle!"

"So you're both fine with this?" I asked.

"100 percent!" they promised.

* * *

When I first moved to Saskatoon I knew a girl who worked as a waitress at the Blue Diamond. On Friday and Saturday nights, her boyfriend used to go and sit at a table to make sure she was okay. A few years later, she became a guard in a maximum security prison -- she claimed she'd cut her teeth on bad guys while serving in the lounge. This did not sound like the type of restaurant my family went to for special Sunday night suppers, but then, reputations change over 20 years (just ask Tom Cruise). Perhaps the Blue Diamond was no longer the fine family establishment Karen and Amber remembered from their youth? Unless they came from really sketchy families.

I was a bit nervous when Patrick and I drove up to the big glass building -- that's right, it looks like a large, blue diamond -- and when we walked in to the brightly-lit lounge a couple of guys looked up from their draft beers and said, "Looks like you two came in the wrong door." They pointed us toward the door marked "restaurant". Through the door and up the stairs we went, until we emerged into a large room filled with cozy booths, fake plants, and senior citizens who, unless they were concealing shanks in their support hose, were likely not the clientele who'd prepped Jill for her career in prison work.

Clearly there were TWO Blue Diamonds.The lounge half, filled with tough guys, and the restaurant, filled with the elderly. (What if you were a tough geriatric? Where did you fit in?)

This drink was good.

After being seated in a giant booth, Patrick and I ordered rye-and-cokes
(it only seemed appropriate) and a plate of potato skins, thinking we could share them with Amber and Karen when they arrived.  The skins appeared with more bacon than I think is permissible by law (ie: a lot) and we felt a bit badly because this mean the vegetarian would not be able to partake when she arrived. Oops. (Sorry, Karen!) I guess we should have known -- this is the Land of Meat, after all.

When Karen and Amber did arrive, they climbed into our big booth and we all perused the menu. It likely hasn't changed since 1977, when Saskatoon believed in Quantity Over Quality. With this in mind, I set out to find the meal that would get me the most "bang for my buck", so to speak.

While Karen went with the Just Say Cheese pizza, (though she added pineapple), Amber settled on soup and a salad, and Patrick asked for just a steak with salad and a piece of garlic toast, I ordered the full meal deal. This meant I was served: a small orzo soup, a starter Caesar salad, a piece of garlic toast, steamed vegetables, chicken parmagiana and a side of spaghetti with meat sauce. Oh! And a slice of orange for desert.

 Yes. This was my meal.

I ate the soup -- it was pretty good. I tried to eat the salad but the garlic nearly burnt my tongue off. The vegetables were super mushy, which upset me until I realized that the majority of their clientele likely have a hard time chewing, making these mushveggies ideal. The chicken was actually pretty tasty, but I had a hard time eating all of it -- there were two breasts. "A chicken gave both his breasts for you!" my friends implored. "Don't let his sacrifice be in vain!"

I tried, really I did. But there was also the spaghetti with meat sauce....In the end I took one and a half chicken breasts home and half of the spaghetti. I also added to my leftovers like a million of Patrick's steak-mushrooms -- seriously, they gave him 2 million garlic-fried mushrooms.

And for a guy who doesn't really like mushrooms? That's a lot of fungus to get through on your own.

In the end, we had a lot of fun. Karen was dismayed by the amount of cheese on her Just Say Cheese (and pineapple) pizza, and we were like, "look at the 2 million mushrooms. Look at the 6 pounds of chicken here. You cannot expect less than a pound of mozzarella on your pizza."

"It's the feta," she said. "There is so much of it, it is like eating a salt lick." (Which didn't sound too bad to those of us in the group who love salt).

We drank our rye and cokes and we discussed the cost of heating what was essentially a green house in one of the world's coldest cities. We debated going downstairs to get a drink in the lounge, but in the end we just packed up my leftovers and went to my house, where we toasted the evening with a cool, crisp bottle of Spumanti Bambino (only $9.99 at your local offsale!)

PS I took the leftover spaghetti with meat sauce, mushrooms, and chicken for lunch a few days later. Let's just say without the pomp and circumstance of the Blue Diamond herself, my meal was less than a delight....

Saigon Rose

When Patrick and I found out we'd be heading to the Saigon Rose, I felt pretty happy -- this place is an institution in Saskatoon and yet I'd never been. Actually, that's not true -- I'd been once but it had been cold and raining and it was a rush meal and I got soup, and I kind of don't count soup as food.

The Saigon Rose has been around for eons, apparently. Their Bird's Nest is legendary, I guess, but Patrick and I opted for some other dishes:

Patrick wanted soup, (apparently he considers it food), so he ordered himself a little bowl of chicken soup. There were spring rolls on the menu, and we got an order of those, and then Patrick wanted to try some of the spicy chicken wings. And then we got excited about ginger chicken, and so we got that too, and of course we ordered some rice. And some Vietnamese coffees. Oh, yeah, and there was this bread roll thing that we ordered, because we had never heard of such a thing.

 And then the food came. And kept coming. And coming. And nothing was anything we expected. The soup was far bigger than either one of us had anticipated, and it was made with eggs instead of noodles. Not bad, but just unexpected. And then the chicken wings were deep fried, too, which we hadn't expected. And the ginger chicken was too, but so were the spring rolls, and the bread thing actually came with two pieces, which meant we had tons, and tons, and tons of food.

What we also had was no rice, and no coffees. We asked for the rice, which came eventually. We never got the coffees.

The other thing about the food was that it was really, really, really sweet. Not bad, just really fried, and really sweet. Like me on a Friday night. (Haha!)

Other fun tidbits about the evening? Well, we were entertained by these flames, which were situated right behind Patrick's head, and then the restaurant decided to play some music to entertain us all: it was an endlessly repeating, sickeningly sweet (like our ginger chicken? and our deep fried chicken wings? and the sauce for both the bread and the spring rolls?) version of Old Macdonald's Farm, played on some inane toy.

By the time we left, with a bag full of leftovers, I was no more the wiser about the legendary Bird's Nest, but I do know that I'll probably go back to try it sometime, and while I'm there I'll smash that child's inane toy so no one has to listen to Old Macdonald's Farm being sung by saccharine Disney children ever again.

Otawa Japanese: I forgot about this one!!

Apparently last year Patrick and I went to the Otawa Japanese Restaurant before we went to the movies.

I completely forgot this was a Saskaspooning Experience.

I blame it on the movie we saw afterwards: Inception ate my brain, and the only thing I could think about post-film was the spinning top. And the fact that Ellen Page will never get to be a love interest. And the fact that they used Edith Piaf music for the Marion Cotillard stuff and I couldn't decide if that was cool or self-indulgent.

Anyway, I forgot about the restaurant, and I have nothing to say except it was probably tasty.

The End. (or is it...???)

The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant!

Seriously. That's what the restaurant is called.

The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant has been around for a long, long time. When I moved to Saskatoon, people were like, "Oh, that's my favourite Asian restaurant," and I think now people were saying that because it was the only Asian place around when they were children. Much like I thought Buster Brown's was the place for shoes, only I know better now.

I had only been there once before, when I had these strange tofu-triangles cooked in tomato sauce called, "Soldiers", or something. (They are no longer on the menu). I never went back, but not because it was an unpleasant experience. I never went back because Saskatoon has a MILLION Asian restaurants and The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant is somewhat tucked away, and so I always forget about it.

Anyway.

A couple of weeks ago Patrick and I decided to Saskaspoon.  First we got the Konga Cafe, which was our Saskaspooning adventure last time. Thanks for the variety, Internet. Next we got Mel's Diner, which would have been super, if we wanted a $3.75 breakfast special. (Mel's is only open for daytime eating). We kept on shaking, and finally hit a viable place! The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant! We were on our way to a party on the other side of town, (it's a small town, so in Toronto terms the party was, like, down the streetcar line a ways), and The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant is downtown, and, luckily, open later than most downtown restaurants on a Saturday. Perfect!

The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant is in a mall-type place. You open the main doors, walk down a wide hallway with shops off the sides, until you come to a tall, curving staircase. With its red carpeting and dark wood banister, you kind of feel like you're in the 1970s. The Saskatoon Asian Restaurant probably dates back to then. I suspect that's why the name is so descriptive. Prairie Folk have a long tradition of Telling It Like It Is.

Because it's not Saskatoon Thai or Saskatoon Cantonese, they pretty much have very big menu with many Asian countries represented. As we were on our way to a party, we didn't need to eat a ton -- I had a bag of chips waiting in the car and I wanted room for them later. So while my normal rule-of-thumb in Asian restaurants is for each person at the table to select one dish each for sharing, plus a plate of spring or fresh rolls, also for sharing, this time around we ordered only one dish between the two of us. And that dish?

Thai Peanut Chicken with a side of Rice!

We drank our tea, (they just brought it automatically! We didn't have to order it! Which reminded me of Chinatown in Toronto), and sipped it while we waited. We eavesdropped on the people next to us. It appeared that a young man was introducing his girlfriend to his parents for the first time. Both the mother and the girlfriend were dental hygienists, and while the boyfriend was all,  "Oh, wow, I never thought about you two having the same job. That's so cool,"  I suspect he was really like, "Oh, God, it's that Oedipus complex I read about in Hustler."  There was also a debate about the usefulness of getting a trade versus just working as a pipe fitter, which both amused and irritated Patrick in turn.

We looked around at the people eating at other tables and they were all getting these delicious, saucy dishes. The Oedipal-Complex table beside us had, like, 9 dishes for four people, and they all looked so good. But when our dish arrived, it seemed that all the sauciness had been used up at their table, because our food was, well....sauceless.

I wanted to walk over to their table and tip their lovely, drippy dishes over my plate. But I didn't know them, and this isn't the big city where you can get away with crazy mealtime shenanigans. So I ate my somewhat uninspired chicken dish and thought about my chips in the car. 





Luckily the price was right. A pot of tea, rice, and a meal that fed two of us for less than $16.00! AND there was even extra, which I took home with me. I ended up cooking up a lovely, spicy peanut sauce and adding it to the leftovers. And voila! I had a saucy meal at last.

The Konga Cafe

Last Sunday Patrick and I decided to Saskaspoon for lunch. We shook the iPod and were pleasantly surprised to get Jake's, a lunch place downtown neither one of us had been to in a long, long time. But, being a lunch place downtown, it was closed on Sundays, as they serve primarily business people, and businesses tend to be closed on on Sundays.

Sigh.

We shook the iPod and got...The Konga Cafe!


(Aside: The Konga Cafe is not new to us. It's down the street from my house, for goodness' sake. To the gods of the Internet, I implore you: SEND US SOMEPLACE NEW. This is, like, the fourth time in a row we've been sent to place we've literally been to in the past few months. But I'm not complaining. After all, we could have gotten a MacDonald's. Or a Seven-Eleven. Dammit. Now I've cursed us. Guess where we'll be going next?)

The food at the Konga Cafe is good. Actually, it's better than good. It's tasty, the portions are ample, the ingredients are simple and very nicely spiced. Plus it has a nice ambiance -- it has a Caribbean sort of vibe, but unlike lots of "place-themed" restaurants, this one doesn't feel fake. It's a sort of messy, sort of homey kind of place, with lots of stuffed monkeys, flags, and paper flowers for decor. The place mats are just red, green, and yellow printer paper. It's the only place I'm able to tolerate reggae music.

It's owned, I think, by a couple from the Caribbean, so they knew what they're talking about. Their hours are "12ish - 10ish", for example, and each meal starts with a free johnnycake, which is a deep-fried ball of dough. (I have often wanted to have an International Fried Dough festival, because every culture has a deep-fried dough something-or-other. It could be great. You could have paramedics on call for the heart attacks that would be the logical outcome of such a festival.)

Patrick and I each got the "special", figuring that since we'd eaten pretty much everything else on the menu, we might as well get the dish that might not be there next time.  The special was a breaded, deep-fried chicken breast with a curried, savoury mushroom gravy and a bowl of creamy red-bean and chicken soup. It was awesome. And we were so full by the end of our lovely meal, considering we'd just consumed basically one whole chicken each.

At one point the chef (one half of the ownercouple, I think) came towards our table and she was all dancey-- like she danced out of the kitchen, danced over to us, asked if we'd enjoyed the meal, and then danced away.

And that's it. The Konga Cafe did not disappoint, but this Saskaspooning trip wasn't full of crazy stories or strange adventures. I guess that's just the way it is with your neighbourhood restaurant -- sometimes you just want to go in, get your free johnnycakes, dance a bit with your chef, and leave a good tip. Sometimes that's all you need.

Aroma!

Two weeks ago it was Saturday, and Patrick and I were going to the movies. He had pre-purchased tickets so we could see the 10pm showing of Bridesmaids at the Galaxy in downtown Saskatoon. But before we went to the movies, we had to get supper.

It was 8pm, which meant we only had a couple of hours to eat.  Could we Saskaspoon?
Could we? There were so many what ifs. 

What if we get a restaurant way across town? What if we end up in a slow-food restaurant? What if we get a place where the servers are sullen teenagers who are in the middle of Personal Dramas and forget to place our orders and we starve? What if we get the Seven-Eleven? I was excited about the movie. I didn't want my evening ruined because I'd had to cobble together a meal of old hotdogs and dried out "potato wedges".

Still. We love adventure almost as much as we love movies. So we dove right in and shook that little ole iPod and got....."Aroma!"

The good thing about Aroma is that it is downtown, in the Radisson Hotel, actually only a block away from the movie theatre. The bad thing about Aroma is that we had literally been there about two weeks before. I think it was been the last time we'd been out to eat, actually. And we'd consciously picked it last time -- I believe because of its proximity to the movie theatre.

Sigh.

We went anyway.

I was pretty happy, because I'd been craving pizza all day, and this place does pretty good wood-oven pizzas. So there was that.

I ate a pizza much like this one.

Here is an aside:
I am always amazed at hotel bars and restaurants. They are always full. And, I think, full of travelers. Other than the free breakfast, who is eating at their hotel? I get it when you are in a small town and the only choice for eating is the restaurant attached to the front lobby. I get it -- it's the only game in town. But when you're a tourist, or a business traveler with an expense account, and there is an entire city out there with really good restaurants, why do you eat in the same building where you sleep? I don't care if Aroma is a well-reviewed, well-loved restaurant in Saskatoon. Unless you are a holidaying agoraphobe, please go outside and explore the rest that our town has to offer.

Okay. Rant over. Moving on.

So Patrick and I got mojitos, and I ordered myself a peach and pecan salad with a ham-and-pineapple pizza. Patrick ordered a goat cheese pastry thing with crackers and short ribs.

While we drank and waited for food, we watched as the host told a table next to us that he was "often compared to Steve Buscemi" and we thought how that was not something you should tell someone. Not unless Steve Buscemi is his brother, or you have a fetish for Steve Buscemi, should you ever tell a man that this is his closest celebrity look-alike.

We watched as an out-of-town family tried to find a gourmet pizza that was the closest approximation to the pizza they ordered in their home town. In the end they went with plain cheese.

We watched as the chef, whose kitchen is open to the entire room at large, tossed dishes, swung knives, and slammed pots, pans, and pizzas onto flat surfaces with what appeared to me to be a disdainful-yet-passionate strength. I imagined her speaking with an Eastern European accent; I got the feeling she'd apprenticed with Great Chefs and had ended up in Saskatoon cooking at the Radisson Hotel Bar and had spent the past four years wondering just what the hell happened to her life.

Our food arrived just in time. I enjoyed my pizza, though my salad was a bit heavy on the dressing, and the peaches were dried, which I hadn't been expecting. Patrick liked his goat cheese thing (so did I -- I snuck some bites) but he wasn't too impressed with his shortribs. "They're kind of just blah," he told the server, and I snuck a look at our intense chef and hoped she couldn't hear.

In the end we made it to the movies on time, mojitos and meltey cheese in our bellies. And our nice waiter waived the short ribs from our bill! So that's why you eat at hotel restaurants--they'll do anything to please their customers. Otherwise we might not book our business trips there again!

The Post That Was Almost Never Written

This post has been two years in the making. I wasn't exactly sure how to write it, but not writing it wasn't right, either. It was a Saskaspooning adventure and the rule is, I have to write about all of them.

So here is what happened.

My sister and her husband came to visit me and Patrick. They wanted to try saskaspooning, and so we shook the ipod and we got the Samurai.

The Samurai is a "fancy place" in Saskatoon. It's part of the Bessborough Hotel, which is another "fancy place". Anyway, we really weren't expecting an expensive dinner, but that was where we had to go.

Now, things with families can get strange. You know that. Emotions run high, especially when it's your sister's first time meeting your boyfriend, and suddenly you're thrust into a "fancy restaurant" situation.

To make a long story short, people were not on their best behaviour. We were seated at a large table around the grill, where a chef did all the cooking. We were seated with a middle-aged couple who were presumably on an anniversary date. And I still feel badly that our small, anxious party of four likely ruined their Big Night Out.

For one thing, I tend to regress a bit when I'm with my family, especially when I'm feeling uneasy. And I was uneasy -- I wanted them to like Patrick, I wanted them to like Saskatoon, I wanted them to be impressed with me. So I was on edge a bit. And then my sister was acting really, really strangely -- she said she wasn't comfortable, that she was in pain, and then sort of moped quietly at the table. It was really irritating. I was getting frustrated with her bizarre behaviour. About halfway through the meal she got up, said, "I can't sit here anymore," and went to sit in the car. My brother in law ran out after her, and poor Patrick thought we were all crazy, and I felt equal parts angry and guilty about the whole night. 

We never spoke of the terrible, awkward dinner again, until a while later, when my sister called to tell me that she now realized she'd been unwell that day. She didn't really know, so none of us  realized that her body was having issues, not her head. I had no right to be frustrated with the drama that went down. But we didn't know!

So it wasn't anxiety and strange sibling baggage that caused the meltdowns. It was illness. I am happy to report that everyone is fully recovered, and Patrick no longer things we are crazy.

Should Keri and Ben ever return, we will Saskaspoon again. Who knows? Maybe we'll end up sitting with that couple on their next anniversary dinner. This time we'll pick up the tab.

The Red Pepper!

Hey gang!

So I'm getting a bit suspicious about the Urbanspoon. Because, although we use the random feature, we keep getting restaurants downtown. This doesn't seem very randomized. I mean, we keep getting sent to restaurants we already know about. Restaurants we have already eaten at, often many times. I suspect what's happening is that the random button picks up the most popular restaurants in the Urbanspoon database, the ones that get the most views.

I'm not complaining, and this doesn't mean we're going to stop. And it doesn't mean we aren't having adventures. It just means that we're having our adventures at places we've already been.

So where have we been recently? Well....The Red Pepper!

Have you heard of this place? You probably have. It's right next to that vietnamese place no one can name on 3rd Ave. They recently got a fancy new facade -- it looks like fake rocks have been glued to the front of the building. We were hopeful that they had done up the inside, too, making it like a new restaurant to us, and thus justifying the saskaspooning, but, alas, it would seem their bank loan was only for enough to do up the outside. The inside was the same -- old wooden booths, plastic-coated seats, and overworked wait staff.

The Red Pepper does a variety of Asian dishes. Mostly Vietnamese noodle bowls, cold rolls, deep fried rolls, curry dishes and stir fries of a pan-Asian variety.

We decided to get dishes we'd never had before. We ordered "deep fried shrimp rolls" which turned out to be big shrimps skewered straight, wrapped in rice paper, and then soaked in boiling oil.

SOOO bad for your heart. SOOO good for your soul.

Here is a photo of our food. Can you tell what these dishes are?

And I don't actually remember what else we ate

I'll tell you why I wasn't thinking about food: we were trying to solve a MYSTERY. It goes like this:

While we were eating, we realized that there was a large group of young men sitting at a couple of tables near the back. And they looked tough. Like, punk/metal tough. Like the kinds of guys who'd travel around in a van together, making noisy, sweaty punk music in small town bars and sleeping in ditches. But the thing is....there were like twenty of them. All tatooes and black hoodies with silkscreened anarchy patches. They looked like the people I hung out with in highschool, actually. They also were the types of people that we should recognize. Between the two of us, Patrick and I have at least a passing knowledge of pretty much everyone who looks like "Someone" in this town between 25 and 40, at least by face. (I'm not bragging. It's a pretty small "scene", you know? Also, we're pretty people-about-town ourselves.)

This is them waiting to pay. Do you recognize them?

"Could this be some sort of giant band? Is there a festival?" One of them was wearing a lanyard or something, and we wondered, "is there a show that these guys are all performing at?" I even got the local arts paper to see if there was anything in there, but it gave up no clues.

At one point I suggested going over and asking if they were in a band, or a bunch of bands, but Patrick pointed out that you can't just walk up to every random group of ruffians and ask them if they have a show later. 

Eventually, this giant group of guys got up en mass, waited patiently in line to pay, and then left.  I kind of wanted to trail them, but we were eating ..... something...?

It is unlikely I will ever remember what we ate that night. Our meal has been eclipsed by shrimp rolls and mysterious rockandrollers....

O'Shea's: Saskaspooning isn't always a mind-blowing experience

So recently my friend Mark came to visit. Mark is a nice guy. Fun, polite, patient, funny, impeccably dressed. And accommodating to the nth degree (is that an expression? It sounds like one...)

>>Note: that is not a photo of my evening. But doesn't that guy in the hat look like he's having the best time? >>

Mark came to visit for my birthday weekend. We decided to take him Saskaspooning. He was excited. What might we possibly get? What seedy bar or creepy back alley sandwich stand might we come across? What fancy high class joint might we end up at?

We sat on the edge of our seats in anticipation. This was me and Patrick showing my Big City Friend a good time in good ole Saskatoon!! And we shook the ipod....and got...

"O'Shea's???"

"What's O'Shea's?" Mark asked, all innocent.

O'Shea's is one of Saskatoon's great equalizers. It's an "Irish" pub downtown with a mix of students, after-work professionals (and sort-of professionals), and artsy hipsters. Now, don't get the wrong idea, folks. We don't have a lot of places to drink downtown, so people just kind of flock to the three or so bars -- it's not like O'Shea's is particularly awesome, or anything. It's an equalizer because we have very little else here.

So Mark was happy enough but Patrick and I were like, "Man, we were just there like three days ago." (Seriously. We were getting a drink before a movie). The one positive is that a few years ago I wrote a novel (it remains unpublished) that Mark had read, and the characters spend a lot of time in a bar called Backdraft (isn't that a good bar name??) which is based on O'Shea's. So Mark was pleased about getting to see that bar.

(Again, Mark is very polite. So we had no idea if he was really pleased, or not. Those manners make him inscrutable).

Anyway, off we went to O'Shea's. We sat at a tall table near the bar, between a couple of beefy guys in ball caps and an older, rather stringy couple in leather jackets and sun-and-cigarette-lined faces. We all ordered beers, and I got a hamburger and a side of Champ, an O'Shea's delicacy of mashed potatoes, onions, and spices. Patrick got a half-order of fish and chips and Mark, bless his healthful ways, ordered a grilled chicken wrap with a side of salad.

The food arrived. The hamburger was big, tasty, and the Champ was as delicious as mashed potatoes in a bar can be. (In fact, Andrea, a character in my yet-to-be-published novel always orders mashed potatoes at Backdraft, so I kind of have to always get them at O'Shea's in an homage to her). The fish and chips were, well, fish and chips, and the wrap was.....drippy.

"What's happening to your food?" asked Patrick as Mark lifted his sandwich up to his mouth and a long, pale pink stream dribbled out of the wrap and onto the plate.

"I guess my sandwich is moist," said Mark, cheerfully, and took a bite. "It's very tasty," he said, and dabbed at the sandwich with a napkin. Oh, that Mark. Polite to the end.

Portlaspooning!

Patrick and I recently came back from a trip to Portland, Oregon. While we were there, he suggested we try Saskaspooning. "But we're in Portland," I countered. "We'd be Portlaspooning."
"So?" he countered.
So, indeed. We decided to portlaspoon.

We were sitting the Hollywood Branch of the Portland Public Library, the very branch that Ms Beverly Cleary herself used to work at. We'd just completed our Ramona Quimby (if you do not understand my references here, please take a few minutes to google these people. You will not be sorry that you did) walking tour and were feeling a bit hungry, and the library had free wifi. So we stood by the periodicals and gave the old ipod a shake....and we got a pizza restaurant about six blocks from where we were standing.

Now. Those of you who know me know that pizza and Ramona Quimby are two of my biggest weaknesses. I make a point of eating pizza everywhere I go (this means that I once ordered pizza at a restaurant in Vietnam that arrived via delivery bike from a pizza place elsewhere in the village, consumed fantastic pizza at a place in Tokyo that a man from New York declared, in a large letter adorning the wall, to be the best pizza worldwide, and I once forced Patrick on a trek across Toronto in a January Blizzard to get a slice). We'd already eaten pizza in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and I very nearly bought a slice in Santa Cruz after the Rob Zombie concert (how brilliant is it to sell pizza in a bar?). So we weren't really looking for another pizza, and we weren't really looking to eat in the same neighbourhood we'd just spent the past few hours wandering around, but what can you do? Those are the rules, even when you're in Portland.

We found the place, Dolce Vivi, discovered it didn't open for another 30 minutes. We decided to get a drink, so strolled over to a brew pub nearby. On our way we passed a young man with a chin beard juggling Indian clubs whilst peddling his unicycle. It was delightful.

After our drinks, we headed back to Dolce Vivi and discovered that we had found the Quintessential Portland Pizza Place. Here is a copy of their menu:


Get out your magnifying glasses, because you want to read that text there.

Okay, so we ordered a pizza with two halves -- half with their home-made sausage and some sort of vegetable, and half with all vegetables. We ordered some drinks and a salad to start, and waited for our lovingly prepared pizza. We watched the people -- there was a couple of guys in Urban Woodsman outfits, and a number of couples on dates. The place was chock-a-block with hipsters. At one point Patrick got "mock angry" with me and pretended to be shouting angrily at me, and one of the hipster men looked like he was going to come over and deal with this abusive situation, only he was carrying a baby on a sling so he stayed where he was and ate his pizza, but glowered at us while we all ate.

Finally our pizza came. I am not sure how I feel about cornmeal crusts. They may be locally made and ground by cult members, but I sort of missed wheat. It was pretty heavy. But otherwise, it was a lovely pizza. Fresh toppings, plenty of vegetables, and cheese from a happy, healthy goat. What else could you want in a pizza? Besides wheat and grease, that is.


The other fun facts about the restaurant? As it says on their menu above, they are also a slice place, but they make each slice from scratch. So if you order a slice, they will make the crust for you and cook your slice from raw. Also? The beat salad was really good, the wine was relatively inexpensive, but the California beer Patrick had? We decided it had an aftertaste a bit too similar to blood.

And that, my friends, is the story of the one and only time I will ever have pizza in Portland, Oregon. Unless I go back, of course. And then I will likely have pizza again.