Rachel's Guide to Portland: Irving St. Kitchen

Have you ever decided to go to a restaurant based solely on the desserts they offered? If so, then you're the kind of person I would love to go out to eat with. Dessert was a major factor, besides location, in choosing Irving St. Kitchen for last week's dinner with mom.

 Irving St. Kitchen is a Southern food restaurant with a Northwest flair. They serve fancier (i.e. more expensive) versions of Southern comfort food classics, like fried chicken or ham and biscuits. Their happy hour, however, is very reasonably priced, and I was quite surprised that the place wasn't busier given its location in the Pearl District.

The drink menu is fairly extensive: they serve very nice, suitably-priced wines for happy hour, they have a creative cocktail menu, and they even have wines on tap! I opted for the red wine (I was in need of some calming), and my mom surprised me by ordering a cocktail: the Black Thorne, which was made with plymouth gin, plymouth sloe gin, carpano antica, and orange bitters. My wine was very nice and smooth, and mom's cocktail was the bomb- floral, lightly sweet, and very fragrant with an orange twist!

For food, I was in a salad and french fries mood (it happens), so I ordered the Green Goddess Caesar which was made with fresh, crisp romaine leaves and croutons that melted in the mouth. My mom and I split the fries from the happy hour menu, which were served with a garlic aioli (warning: this aoili made me not enjoy my own company afterward, if you catch my drift; if you want to impress anyone afterward, I recommend skipping the aioli, despite how yummy it is). My mom ordered the ham and biscuits, which came with a red pepper jelly. I sampled a little bit of biscuit with the red pepper jelly and oh my! It was a nice, tender biscuit and the red pepper jelly was such a surprise- sweet, but not overly so.

Finally, it was time for dessert. It was somewhat tough to narrow it down to two desserts for us to share, but we decided on the butterscotch pudding and the banana and chocolate marjolaine. I was kind of expecting to have to horde my dessert, given how it seems that the pricier the restaurant, the smaller the dessert. Not so here. In fact, there was so much dessert, my mom and I each had leftovers. Leftover dessert?! Say what?!

Seriously, both were incredibly delicious. The black bottom butterscotch pudding was sweet, buttery, and there was a layer of chocolate at the bottom (be still my heart). As for my marjolaine, oh man, it was delicious. Layers of chocolate, banana cake, vanilla frosting, and bruleed bananas on the side. You should know that I really love bananas and chocolate together. So basically, I was in heaven. Twice. Because I had leftovers.

I highly recommend this place, especially for happy hour. You get a lot of bang for your buck, and then you can top it off with a bomb dessert. So, to drown your sorrows after realizing you can't afford anything in the shops in the Pearl, get yourself a bite and a drink at Irving St. Kitchen.

How d you feel about dessert? Portlanders, have you been to Irving St. Kitchen? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!

5 comments dinner, happy hour, Portland

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