My Ultimate Guide to Portland Restaurants and How to Spend a Day

Plus 4 day-long itineraries.

This is a special edition of Morning Person, packed with all of my must-eats and must-hikes in Portland, Oregon. See you back here Tuesday with some fresh recs!

It took 24 hours and an incredible stroke of luck for me to decide I wanted to spend the rest of my life in Portland, Oregon.

In 2015, Jonah won a sweepstakes through the website Eater for us to fly to Portland for four days for the Portland Feast Festival. I had never visited the Pacific Northwest, let alone considered Portland as a place to land, and was completely swept away by the city, which struck me as a perfect pairing of city and nature.

At the time, I was training for a marathon and ran from our downtown hotel into a large spot of green on the map that turned out to be Forest Park, one of the largest urban forests in the United States. By the time I returned from my run, breathless with excitement, I pitched a ten-year plan to Jonah that involved moving to Portland, adopting a dog, and buying a house so we could hike in Forest Park every morning. Amazingly, he was game—even more amazingly, this all came true.

Our expectations were so high when we moved in October 2020 that our plan could have easily backfired, but my love for this city has only grown as we’ve discovered more hikes and restaurants. One of the most frequent questions I receive in DMs is for my Portland recommendations. At long last and by popular demand, I’ve finally created a list of restaurants for your next trip, along with curated day plans at the end. Happy travels, and please comment with your own can’t-miss spots—I’m planning on keeping the browser version of this list updated with new additions!