Squirrel’s Vegan Kitchen

I’ve been waiting for probably at least 7 months for Nutshell, the newest kid on the Portland vegan restaurant block, to open. My vegan hairdresser’s salon is ajacent to the space, so every trip there just increased my curiosity. The rumor was that it was going to be an upscale eatery, something Portland’s restaurant scene is sorely lacking.

To be honest, while Portland has more vegan-friendly eating establishments than I can even believe, there are few exclusively vegan, or vegetarian for that matter, restaurants, being that people refer to Portland as vegan mecca. And if you’re looking for a nicer place to go out to eat, the pickings get even more slim. When asked, most Portlanders default to the Kalga Kafe. While I love their pistachio lime salad dressing, nothing I’ve ever eaten there has called me back for seconds and I just can’t patron a restaurant where a salad and a pizza cost $50!

Despite my excitement about Nutshell, an all vegan restaurant in North Portland (except for a few non-vegan wines and beers, which are clearly marked) I was a little apprehensive. I enjoy a good meal as much as the next person, but I have a natural defense when I come face to face with foodie- food. Blame it on my years of home cooking and some bad experiences (ahem, Carmelita’s in Seattle) but I have a natural leaning towards familiar foods. So you can imagine my hesitance when I spied a look at Nutshell’s menu to see a list of artisan salts and specialty olive oils.

Behold my heart, I am a new woman.

Hands down, this was the best meal I have enjoyed as a vegan, and possibly one of the best I’ve had in my cognitive memory. Every element of the meal was surprising, delicious and satisfying and we found ourselves savoring every morsel and lingering over each bite.

Enough of my blabbering! Here’s what we ate:

The bread, oil and salt starter is a must when you visit. There is a list at each table with 3 categories: bread, extra virgin olive oil and salt. You can pick as many varieties from each category as you feel up to (and the prices are muy bueno!) and, as our uncultured minds found out, the staff is happy and helpful to lend a hand and provide suggestions. We ended up picking my favorite bread, pugliese, with a very buttery oil and 2 salts, one was a Maine apple smoked salt and the other was a volcanic salt. I am a lover of bread, but I’ve never been into dipping it in oil. Unfortunately for my midsection, I’m now a convert. The taste combinations of the mildly sweet volcanic salt and the deep, smoky salt with the buttery oil and bread had us in falling all over ourselves at our table. Amazing! Jim and I aren’t drinkers and he just likes black coffee, while I prefer iced tea, today we found what our specialty can be: bread, olive oil and salt conoisseurs.

Another neat option Nutshell offers is a shot of soup- literally a shot glass (a double shot, really) of the daily soup, for only $1. A shot equals about 5 good sips of soup and it provides a great opportunity to get a tastey-taste without committing too much room in your stomach, because there are so many things to try! The picture isn’t very good, but it was delicious. Let me preface this with saying that before today I considered myself a hater of cold soup and a hater of savory and sweet things combining in what I deemed an unholy alliance. The soup I had was a peach champagne soup, with a strong herby-rosemary overtone, served cold. It was delicious. Honestly, if they’d mentioned the rosemary prior to my ordering I probably wouldn’t have ordered it. Thankfully, like feeding a 5-year-old, I didn’t know and was given the chance to try something refreshing and new. And really, a shot was the perfect size. Just enough to taste and enjoy the flavor, but not too much.

Jim and I were there around lunch time and I selected the Hawaiian Grilled Pineapple and Avocado sandwich.

Featuring a grilled slab of pineapple, with perfectly charred grill marks, a lightly grilled, sweet Walla Walla onion slice, and avocado on a bed of greens on a moist, light grain bun, it was a wonderful meld of flavors. The smoky char from the grill, the crisp tooth of the onion, the burst of sweetness of the pineapple and creaminess of the avocado played off each other in a delicious way that made each bite unique. On the side were some bamboo fries and 2 dipping sauces, one with a distinct spicy/pickled flavor and the other a buttery, creamy sauce.

This picture is a little blurry, as I had to take it quickly while there was still food on the plate! Jim felt a little unadventurous getting spaghetti with pesto, but I encouraged him as I rarely make pesto at home, and usually it’s used on pizzas. It was served with some grilled bok choy on the side and was the creamiest, most flavorful pesto I’ve ever had vegan. I don’t think it was 100% basil, but I couldn’t quite pick out what else was in it, except deliciousness.

So then, we moved on to dessert. Being that it was our first time there (and the fact that were are gluttons), we opted to try two desserts.

While Jim felt like a little kid ordering dessert, there was nothing childish about the Fresh Cookie Sampler:

A cup of cappuccino (or espresso, if you prefer) was surrounded by a rosemary lavender cookie, topped with Maine apple smoked salt, a spicy ginger cookie with candied ginger chunks on top, a fudge filled butter pecan cookie and a lemon basil shortbread. I was curious to see what Jim would think of the savory elements of some of the cookies and was happy to see him not only enjoying them, but contemplating each bite, tasting the layers of flavors. These were truly cookies to be tasted and not just eaten. I think my favorite was the lemon basil shortbread. I just asked Jim which one was his favorite and after a long retelling of the flavor profile of each cookie (he really is a cookie expert ) he said he really enjoyed the unique combination of the rosemary lavender with the smoked salt on it.

I took the plunge and went for the Chocolate Black Boss Porter Torte.

It was a deep, moist 3 layer cake with chocolate ganache, chocolate shavings and a vanilla bean cream sauce drizzled on top. I actually hesitated to dive in because the presentation was so pretty, but nothing chocolate lasts for that long in front of me. This was the exact rich goodness I was hoping it would be and I think it would be a dessert best split with someone because I overate it at the time, and the sad little scrap that I brought home as a left over will only be a tease.

Could my review be more exuberant? What can I say, I feel like the missing link to the Portland restaurant scene is here and I am so delighted to have tasted its goodness. Oh, and did I mention we got all this food for $33? A steal! We only got to experience the tip of the iceberg and I am currently salivating over the copy of their menu that I brought home. I will definitely be spending my birthday dinner there in a few weeks, if they don’t see me again sooner. Who am I kidding, I’m not waiting a couple of weeks!

I hope you all are doing well and enjoying your summers. I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the country (me= out of touch) but summer seems to be sputtering out here in Portland. Hopefully it will come back around for the rest of the month and September, we’ll see! In the mean time, we have some fun stuff cooking the Squirrel’s Vegan Kitchen lab that Jim and I are happily working on, as well as keeping busy with the usual hubbub.

More home cooked creations and and some adventures (including a crazy trip to the recently-opened IKEA) soon!