Pacific Northwest Plate Lunch Road Trip & Tiki Search

I couldn’t decide which forum to put this in; Main, Food, Locating or Beyond ~ it’s a little of each.

My husband and I (and dogs) took a drive from Seattle to Ashland Oregon. Yes, unfortunately one week too soon to crawl with the Pacific Northwest crowd ~ but we did visit the Alibi and Jasmine Tree. We also made a point to eat as many Hawaiian Plate Lunches as we could find (and hopefully find a treasure trove of tikis).

The drinks and food at the Alibi were outstanding. Todd had a Mai tai and a tropical drink the name escapes me, (which he proclaimed “too melon-y and sweet) to go with his teriyaki steak. Delicious meat, perfectly medium rare, crowned with three canned pineapple rings and a dousing of sweet teriyaki sauce. A plus for the swanky steakhouse touch, a spice apple ring and garlic bread.. I, the non-drinker, had a virgin pina colada and the Polynesian platter. There were 3 hunks of beer battered halibut, 3 giant stuffed shrimp, coconut shrimp and at least a dozen scallops this plate is enough to feed two or three… the smoke was beginning to get thicker as the karoke crowd began to fill the upper level. Mercifully we left before the wailing began.

Jasmine Tree: the pu pu plate consisted of fried shrimp which were more batter than shrimp and the crab rangoon were not very crabby, but the eggroll and bbq pork were quite good. The won ton soup marginal; two lonely dumplings in a salty chickenesque broth. We ordered the Polynesian Chicken (basically sweet and sour chicken sprinkled with crushed peanuts and coconut) and the house chow mein , chock full of fresh vegetables and plenty of chicken, shrimp and beef mixed in with the soft pan fried noodles. Certainly the tiki décor made this basic Cantonese restaurant a lot better!

Space Room Lounge
4800 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97215-3252
Phone: (503) 235-6957

Space Room lounge is fantastic and unaltered 1950's Sputnik all the way. It's like walking into an old episode of "Star Trek," blacklight-enhanced space scenes cover the walls, and the light fixtures are flying saucers and giant starbursts. There’s a cozy vibe that's just slightly seedy; smoky with the TVs set on the basketball game. Locals hang out at the bar, smoking and playing Keno. Not a tropical drink place by any means; the martini Todd had was good.

Vinyl Club Hawaiian Restaurant and Nightclub
130 Will Dodge Way
Ashland, OR 97520
541-488-1690
Type: Bar
Drink Quality: ACK!!! They have a tiki drink menu, but these are not the classic versions. The Mai tai is a blended strawberry daiquiri. Thought briefly about asking the bartender if he knew how to make a classic Mai tai, but he was too busy talking to one patron at the bar. Instead, Todd ordered a layered drink (rum, midori, cranberry juice, pineapple juice) he said it was weak (and we didn’t see any layers!)

This bar is hard to find ~ the entrance is on the alley behind the main street.

Architecture: faux zebra fabric booths and aluminum tables, disco ball and lottery machines, dance floor and bar. Pretty darn swank.
Music: Hawaiian music during dining time ~ later, this turns into a very busy bar scene. Music varies.
Food:
Coconut shrimp (6 small shrimp, 6 bucks)
Teri Beef (7.00)
Chicken Katsu (6.50)
Nothing very remarkable about the food, except that the portions are certainly not Hawaiian-sized. Any bruddah would leave hungry. Mac Salad was very plain; no bits of anything, just a bland pinkish mayo dressing, might have been store bought. Two stingy partial scoops of rice dot the plate. Cabbage is used under the main dish for no other reason than to psych you into thinking you’re getting a mound of meat.
Staff: she was friendly to the locals, never interacted with us much. The cook came out to talk to friends, but made no effort to extend aloha to us 
TIPSY: zero

No Ho’s Hawaiian Café http://www.nohos.com (Portland and Medford, OR)
703 E Main Street
Medford, OR 97504
541-245-6919
Type: restaurant
Drink: beer and wine
Architecture: Lots of wood slats on the walls, clean lines, feels a little like a surf shop. A very cute restaurant.
Music: Hawaiian music
Food: ONO ~ big portions. Order the regular, 2 scoops: the menehune is one scoop rice and smaller portion of the main dish, the Blalah is 3 scoops and more meat portion. We busted our guts on the regular. But ohhh it feels good. Wear stretch pants!!
Korean Mix Plate (15.35) Korean ribs, spicy Korean chicken.
Special Saimin (blahah size 9.60) two fried eggs, cabbage, char sui top a giant bowl of noodles.

Oh we saw a plate of the yakisoba go by. The waitress needed both hands to carry the plate.
No desserts (oh as if we had ROOM to eat a dessert)
Staff: terrific! Efficient, friendly, fast. Lots of families eating here.
TIPSY: zero

Other location:
2525 SE Clinton St
Portland, OR 97202
603-233-5301

Bamboo Grove Hawaiian Grille http://www.bghawaiiangrille.com
0515 SW Carolina Street
Portland OR 97239
503-977-2771

Type: restaurant
Drink: beer on tap, wine. Offers mixed drinks. No sit down bar.
Architecture: cute interior, surfboards, and one tiki.
Music: Hawaiian music
Food: spoiled.
Todd’s shoyu chicken (6.50 for the small plate) was plentiful, but tasted a little bit off, like it was left over. My spicy Korean chicken (6.50) was on special, and was definitely rancid. The mac salad was homemade, but the pasta was cooked way past mushy.
Out of saimin. Prices for the grilled meat items are high. Also, I’ve never been to a place that charges extra for chicken in the Oyaku Donburi (which means “chicken and egg on rice”)
A cold vibe here.
Staff: sympathetic, offered to replace my meal. We were too afraid to order anything else. They didn’t charge us for my dish.
TIPSY: one large carved tiki

Patrick’s Hawaiian Café
316 SE 123rd Avenue
Vancouver, WA 98683
360-885-0881


Type: restaurant
Drink Quality: offers Mai tais and other drinks, but no bar (per se), was hard to tell about the drinks, as there isn’t a bartender on duty. Since each time we were here, we were driving, we didn’t order cocktails.
Architecture: lots of SPAM merchandise adorns the walls. T-Shirts and posters from well-known places on the islands dot the walls. Fake palm trees and plastic fishies everywhere. A joyful place despite the lack of tikis.
Music: Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday Live Music. Hawaiian music plays during mealtime. The ukulele player was eating dinner with the owner and his family and staff. I wish we could have stayed to listen to him play. We did get to listen to him tune his uke!

Food: ONOLICIOUS! Easily THE BEST plate lunch I’ve had on the mainland. Sumo-sized! We ate here twice. We mapped it, door to door, 170 miles is NOT too far to drive to Patrick’s. This food better than certain places on Kauai!!

Maui Onion Rings (5.95). Beer battered, perfectly crispy, not a bit greasy. Served with the most delicious dipping sauce (we think its ranch, but it was BETTER than any dressing poured from a bottle)
Deluxe Saimin Noodle Soup (7.95) huge steaming bowl of noodles, 3 pork-shrimp wontons, big shrimp and lots of veggies in a chicken-dashi broth.
Hibachi Miso Chicken with Peanut Butter (7.95 lunch). Three marinated boneless pieces of chicken were charcoal cooked and coated with a Thai-like peanut sauce.
Deluxe Surf & Turf (9.95 lunch)(kalbi ribs, huli huli chicken and coconut shrimp) two strips of ribs, 3 pieces of chicken and3 large shrimp oh so good.
Surf & turf (8.95 lunch) (teri beef, huli huli chicken deep fried mahi) mounds of food, we substituted Korean chicken garlicky and spicy sauce on grilled chicken.
The potato-mac salad has tuna mixed in.

You will be too full to even think about dessert. Don’t let that stop you. You MUST have the homemade ice cream. We shared a scoop of coconut ~ oh so toasty, so coconutty, rich and creamy.

Check out the gift area for your Kauai Kookie needs lots of fun trinkets for sale. And flavors of SPAM I didn’t know existed!

Staff: you feel like family. Welcomed, made comfortable, we felt like guests invited for dinner.
TIPSY: zero

Side notes:
Kokomo’s Bar and Grill is evidently closed (so said the ladies at the Shakespeare Festival), perhaps due to a liquor license problem brawls

I could not convince my husband to take an hour detour to McMinville, OR - Alf's Burgers and Ice Cream ~ where its been reported, that there are three monkeys on display. Monkeys that wear diapers and pants. I called, there is only one monkey left. I’ve googled, and saw some pictures, maybe we really didn’t miss much. Still, woulda been interesting.

elicia

[ Edited by: dogbytes on 2004-06-21 12:41 ]

Sorry we missed you on your way through town. You missed out on a great Hawaiian place, by the way; Tommy-O's in Vancouver on Washington St. is surprisingly good with big portions and nice, if non-tiki, atnosphere,

On 2004-06-21 16:07, TikiMaxton wrote:
Sorry we missed you on your way through town.

me too: this was a spontaneous trip~i promise to meet up the next time we're in vancouver or portland. i have a feeling we'll make that trip more often (not a bad drive!)

and if you're ever in the area..drop a note, and we'll meet up!

elicia

I think this belongs in both Main & Food/Drinks, & that the Tiki bars should be added or updated in the Locating Tiki forum. I'm thinking of adding a Plate Lunch review thread to the Food/Drink forum (as soon as I find that Island Boy menu...) & I'd like to add this info to it.

Thank you for the great report!! I can't wait to try Patrick's.

Hope to meet you on your next trip through.

Very Best,
Gem