Restaurant(s) Of The Year: 2009 & 2010?

I never thought I would find myself in a place where I would have trouble deciding on my restaurant of the year. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about this and discussing possible choices with my eating assistants, but the answer hasn’t come easily. When it comes to Portland food, the only thing I’ve been able to count on is that restaurants are reliably unreliable – and that they seem to go downhill right after I make them my restaurant of the year.

With the rate that restaurants have opened in the past few years, it’s easy to chase the new and shiny ones, but as you can tell from the reviews I’ve done lately, I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to them. It’s easy to chase the newest shiny ball and I understand why people do that, but I want to see how a restaurant weathers the storm of time. When they first open, the owners keep an eye on everything, the chef is always in the building during service, someone is expediting, the staff is kept on their toes, and less of an eye is being kept on costs. But what happens in a year, or five? Are they on auto-pilot? Does the owner wander in during the morning and rarely come in at night? Has the food and service slowly coasted downhill? In my current mindset, if I go to a place that has been open nine months, I expect it to be good. How about after five years?

With all of this in mind, I went about the process of naming my restaurant of the year. I looked at all the normal factors: menu, beverage list, food, service, ambiance, value, etc. It wasn’t too difficult to narrow the list down to two restaurants, but then I got stuck. Two different restaurants with two completely different cuisines and approaches to what they do. Both are in the same price range, both are so popular that reservations are required most nights of the week, and both are good at everything they do. Also, I have reviewed them both before, though with not as much detail as I will now.

I must have gone back to each one six or eight times before deciding it was hopeless to try and pick the best. Like comparing oranges to apples, both are very good, yet very different. I’ve decided to make two restaurants of the year (since I never named a restaurant for 2009, I suppose this is an attempt to catch up).

I’m also going to break with tradition this year and name a restaurant with the most potential. All of this will be coming out in the next 10 days.