It comes with toasted, squid-ink-blackened fideo noodles topped with a spoonful of roast garlic aioli. The paellas are good, perhaps the best in Portland, but the rossejat, paella's pasta-based cousin, is even better. Start with a gin tonic, Spain's most beloved cocktail, then dive into the pitch-perfect tortilla Espanola, some salt-cod croquettes and a seafood paella stocked with red peppers, shrimp, calamari and plump, caramel-crusted rice, each grain holding an ocean's worth of flavor. Nearly a decade in, Beast remains an essential Portland restaurant.Īt Ataula, a breezy tapas bar with dark wood tables and a white bar flecked with jawbreaker-like color, Cristina Baez and Jose Chesa present flavors that Spanish food fans couldn't previously find in Portland. In between, there's the usual fine soup, recently an arugula vichyssoise a salad of mustard greens with domestic prosciutto and local cheese and olive-oil-poached halibut and morels in a champagne beurre blanc, the first time I've seen Beast feature fish as the main dish. Beef tartare now serves as an early course, while Pomeroy's famous foie gras bon bon, with its giggling cap of sweet sauternes gelee, now acts as a dessert. The signature charcuterie plate, which had dainty bites of chicken liver mousse and pork rillettes arranged like numbers on an analog clock, has been broken up. But the menu, which had begun to feel more dated than timeless, has been revived. The atmosphere still feels like an updated salon for food-obsessed Portlanders.
Set-price meals are still served twice a night at communal tables (currently six courses for $102, including tip). Something new is stirring at Beast, chef Naomi Pomeroy's 9-year-old supper club.
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