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Detour Cafe

I was sitting with a couple of long-time Portlanders at the Detour Cafe, reminiscing about the old Quality Pie Company and what the city used to be like: more working-class, more small-towny, perhaps more old-fashioned. Tom, for example, said it was tough to find a good bacon-and-egg sandwich anymore. It’s like we were missing something that used to be. And
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Blossoming Lotus

To list the Blossoming Lotus as a breakfast place seems to demean it. Even calling it a place that serves breakfast doesn’t remotely do it justice. How about this? On its Web site, the Lotus calls itself “a vortex of positive and loving vibrations for all to experience.” Seriously. Portland’s Blossoming Lotus (there’s one on Kauai, also) is in the
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Bijou Cafe

New/Classy/Veggie You can be healthy/progressive and be a “real” restaurant! The best way to sum up the Bijou Cafe’s standing in Portland’s breakfast scene is this: Out of 36 restaurants listed in Frommer’s Portland guide, only three serve breakfast: the Heathman, Peanut Butter & Ellies (which made it as a kiddie/novelty place), and the Bijou. And the best way to
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Gramma Lucy’s Cafe

Note: Closed 5/2008 Mom & Pop/Kid-Friendly One of the more entertaining experiences in the Portland breakfast scene is to sit at the counter at Gramma Lucy’s. That’s because Gramma Lucy’s isn’t just a restaurant. It’s also a training ground, a family party, and a stage. At the center of the whole thing, and constantly on the stage, is Mark, the
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The Tin Shed Garden Café

Mushroom-rosemary gravy. Somehow that wraps up the Tin Shed perfectly – that, plus the fact that when the weather’s nice there are so many people waiting outside, drinking self-serve coffee, that they put up benches out front and people share newspapers with each other. In fact, traveling east from MLK Boulevard, the first indication you have arrived on the Alberta
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Review: Cricket Cafe

I used to have this friend Bob, from back east. St. Louis, specifically, but in Oregon that’s “back east.” Bob was a Deadhead and a pot head, not generally a guy anyone called “uptight,” but Bob used to go berserk at the slow pace of the service industry in Oregon. We once got tossed out of the Montage because he
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Review: Fat City Cafe

Here’s how you do a Breakfast with the Fellas. You meet too damn early on a weekday, ’cause fellas have to work. You can’t meet on a weekend, because fellas have to sleep, or they have to get up and do stuff that isn’t a breakfast with the fellas. You show up on time so you can give a load
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