New York Times names best Portland restaurants

The list covers a wide variety, from bar food and craft pizza, to modern French cuisine as well as Filipino and Indonesian cuisines.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The New York Times is putting a spotlight on Portland’s food scene. The newspaper published an article on Monday highlighting what it calls the 25 best restaurants in the Rose City.

It’s part of a series that looks at the newspaper’s favorite restaurants across the U.S. Describing Portland as the “dining capital of the Pacific Northwest,” the New York Times said it’s “one of America’s great culinary cities.”

The curated list covers a wide variety, from bar food and craft pizza, to modern French cuisine as well as Filipino and Indonesian cuisines. It may come as no surprise that several James Beard-award winning restaurants and nominees made the cut, including Gregory Gourdet’s Kann, Langbaan, Lovely’s Fifty Fifty and Gado Gado.

“The name of this freewheeling spot run by Thomas and Mariah Pisha-Duffly references the Indonesian dish of the same name, roughly meaning ‘mix mix.’ And that’s what the couple is doing here,” the New York Times article says, referring to Gado Gado. “Take the dry-aged steak tartare, fortified with hot mustard aioli and Indonesian bitter bean. It is spicier and more intriguing than the classic French version, while still hewing to the spirit of the bistro favorite.”

“We are immensely grateful to our community, both in Portland and those who visit us from far away,” Gado Gado said on its Instagram page, in response to the article. “We love you. We love this restaurant.”

Longtime Portland icon Le Pigeon is also on the list, along with Cafe Olli and Lilia Comedart. The New York Times praised the latter two restaurants just last year, placing them among the 50 restaurants they were most excited about in the country in 2023.

Here are the 25 best restaurants in Portland, according to the New York Times: