Food Critics

Maile and I are spoiled. Portland has some really great restaurants and we have been to enough of them that now it is getting harder and harder to please us. I had a coupon last night for a buy one get one free dinner for any of the restaurants owned by the Restaurants Unlimited Incorporated. They own places like Newport Bay, Stanfords, Portland City Grill and others. We decided we would go to Manzana in the Pearl District. We couldn't find it though because it was no longer there. It had been replaced by Palomino which is owned by the same company so we decided to go ahead and try it.

Now Maile and I should really start our own food critic blog or at the very least start posting on city search or something because all we do when we go out is comment on everything about our experience. Palomino had a good ambiance. No complaints there. Our waiter was attentive and cute. **wink, wink Our first impressions of the menu was that it lacked a cohesive theme. Exactly what kind of food does this place specialize in again? Nothing stood out of note. We shared an order of portobello mushroom soup which they kindly split into two bowls for us. The soup was good but I was glad for the fresh cracked pepper because it really needed an extra dimension to it. Just a tad boring. They also served us sliced bread with some sort of salsa or marinara sauce with chunks of cheese (maybe feta) in it. I like the sauce but Maile thought it was a bit weird.

We decided to order two things and split them each in half. I ordered a chicken and Gorgonzola salad and Maile got the Marsala chicken with cappellini. The salad was actually quite delicious. It had pears and candied walnuts and coated lightly in a maple vinaigrette. The chicken was very tasty and the flavors of the salad blended quite nicely. I thought the $18 price tag on the salad was rather exorbitant but the salad itself was nice.

Maile's Marsala was nothing to write home about. HA, although I guess it was enough to blog everyone about. Nothing extraordinary about it. A little heavy on the garlic. The presentation wasn't very nice. It really needed some sort of vegetable with it to help liven up the plate. Brown sauce and sauteed mushrooms never look all that pretty when poured on a plate over a flattened breast of chicken. The chicken was $19.

Anyway, I think our final verdict would be that the price was way too high for the creativity of the food. You can find much better places in Portland that give you a much better meal for the price. I am just glad we got $18 knocked off our final bill.