Portland is an interesting city. What actually makes up Portland is only a few square miles of city center, and the rest is outlying neighborhoods and towns that sort of fall under the blanket term "Portland" when they are referenced in conversation.
It is a particularly interesting city it is specifically known for its trendy culture and combination of new and old architecture, but it hasn’t always been like that. In the past two decades, Portland has seen an immense amount of growth and change
To better understand what Portland was like before its boom, I talked to one of the best experts on Portland that I know, my mother. She lived around Portland in the 1990s, and she knows it very well. She remembers it being an empty industrial city. It had no traffic, no pop culture relevance, and no sun (that hasn’t changed). It had its small mom-and-pop shops, its big industrial complexes, and a very small city center. Oregon Live Magazine described it as “a dirty, weird place to disappear.”
Since then, it has grown into a pop culture icon that is constantly referenced in films, television, and music. That growth in cultural popularity came from an internal cultural change. New houses, apartments, and buildings were built, the old structures were gutted, and the outlying suburbs were further developed. When walking around Portland, you will find yourself jarred by the incredible juxtaposition between beautiful modern buildings, and old industrial structures, pushed right up next to each-other. In some instances, they are touching, and in others, they are one and the same. The insides of the old buildings are often torn out and refinished to look like their modern counterparts. This is a style that is more commonly known as Industrial chic.
So, what does all of this architectural talk have to do with the local food culture? Well, those old buildings that got gutted? They weren’t just old industrial buildings. They were old apartments, restaurants, stores, and Delis. These establishments that were once the heart of this weird, grungy community, are now trendy cafes, upper class boutiques, and overpriced apartments. As these new places have opened up, they have drastically changed the food environment in Portland. Restaurants are now fewer and farther between, and they are more expensive than they ever have been.
On my first day in Portland, finding food was a genuine challenge. Walking around downtown, I passed blocks and blocks of shops, before finally finding a couple of food trucks at a promotional event in a plaza. My Cubano was fifteen dollars. On day two, I journeyed to the Hawthorne district, looking for a place to eat, and it was the same issue. On a half mile stretch of this very commonly walked district, I found maybe one or two places that were both affordable and healthy. On day three, I ended up just eating at all of the places that I used to eat at as a child, at least those that were left. I ventured back to the old diners, stores, and pubs that I used to find myself in as a child. The food here was different from the food in most of Portland, because it was the same that it had been for the past twenty years.
Now, all of this is not to say that this growth of new restaurants is going to ruin Portland forever, I just think that we should be sure to remember to keep Portland weird.