Portland’s hip restaurants, hotels add to gay travel scene
Yes, Portland, the Rose City, is about as good a gay travel destination as they come. Yes, it’s compact, green, eco-friendly and full of great neighborhood restaurants and bars and yes, there’s no sales tax – on anything! And you can walk into just about any deli and get yourself a bottle of Hot Lips soda made from freshly crushed Willamette Valley raspberries. Despite all this good stuff, my nerdy little confession is that on my recent first-time visit, I barely made it past a bookstore. But not just any bookstore: Powell’s City of Books is a sprawling, gloriously independent bookstore in the trendy Pearl District in downtown Portland. I spent three deliciously offline hours in the (surprise!) travel section alone before checking out the gay literature and art and history sections.
At one point I made a break for one of the famous cookies at the Pearl Bakery across the street, and feasted on a delectable chunky one dense with chocolate and pecans. It paired nicely with the stupendous iced coffee I had at Stumptown Coffee, which is nestled inside the trendy Ace Hotel. I didn’t stay at the Ace, but the vintage photo booth in the lobby made me smile, and I had a memorable dinner at its restaurant, Clyde Common. It was creative, crackling fare, from my starter salad of arugula, castelvetrano olives, pecorino cheese and butter fried croutons, right through to my seared black cod with rapini, capers, chorizo and tarragon vinaigrette. The next morning, had I not been going through another bag of Pearl River cookies, I would have had brunch at Bluehour, a decidedly glamorous eatery that anchors a row of revitalized warehouse spaces in the Pearl.
