555632 Mon Sep 08 09:44:00 -0700 2008 0 4 Pacific Northwest 0 4017377 In the effort to try and break up the usual out-of-towner-visiting-Portland posts you see here on CH, I thought I'd offer up a few crawl reports. I'd recently returned from vacation oversees and was woefully jetlagged, and it really wasn't until this weekend that the combination of food and booze in my system finally re-aligned my internal alarm clock. Last Saturday, I met up with a friend at CLYDE COMMON. In terms of all Portland restaurants and menus, for me it's the total package. The food is innovative and comforting at the same time, and this weekend was no exception. I ordered my favorite dish, beef tongue hash, which recently returned to the menu after about a nine month absence. Also new on the menu is the lomo and soft-scrambled eggs. I was really tempted to order something more substantial, perhaps even the whole fried fish, but I knew I had a whole night of drinking ahead of me so I didn't want to feel like there was a weight in my stomach. I opted instead to just have a plate of padrons while two-fisting a flute of cava and a glass of Lot B bourbon. Our next stop that evening was TEARDROP LOUNGE. The owner was cool enough to let me guinea pig a drink he's entering into a cocktail competition in New York. It was a gin-chartreuse drink, augmented in the usual TDL fashion which included an electric hookah to smoke cherries. Not wanting to end the evening there, we ambled over to cozier environs, all the way to TANUKI. On the TV screen was Vermilion Pleasure Night, and while my buddy was ->this<- close to ordering okonomiyaki (which also returned to the menu after a brief absence) I opted instead to nurse a tokkuri of Taruzake Kikusakari, a really peppery sake whose cedar notes are perfect for a warm summer evening. The next day a few friends and I celebrated a birthday at Toro Bravo. Arriving early, we headed upstairs to the adjoining cocktail bar, SECRET SOCIETY. They've got a ton of Prohibition-era drinks on the menu, like the Corpse Reviver #2 and the Pegu Club. While you're not ever going to call them cocktail geeks in the same way you would Teardrop, it's still a comfortable place to drink while you're waiting for your table to be ready. After just one drink, the group headed back downstairs to TORO BRAVO. A large group can be a blessing and a curse at a tapas joint. It's nice that you get to order a lot of things, it sucks that you only get one bite. I think the optimal group number might be 4, or even 2 hungry guys. With a group of seven, we ordered one dish each for the first round, and then another seven dishes for the second round. Fourteen orders placed at TB, and we scratched the surface. It being a birthday, we didn't want to stop drinking there so we headed over to RON TOM's for a quick drink on the back patio. Places like Ron Tom's gets a lot of flack from foodies for being nothing more than a hipster-laden bar but I think the space is gorgeous and the back patio is exactly what the doctor ordered on a fine summer evening. Service is a little lacking (I would always recommend paying cash and ordering at the bar) but at the end of the day, it's all about the company you keep. Mon Sep 08 09:44:00 -0700 2008 50350 SauceSupreme