Cloudy with a Chance of Stinging-Nettle Flan and Tomato Coulis

How did Portland, a soggy city on the West Coast, come to be the scrappiest, most original gastronomic destination in America, a town where you can eat everything from food-truck feasts to four-star spreads that rival fancier (and way more expensive) places? Alan Richman explores the food world's new promised land—and explains why you should go now, while the good times last

"I came here in the early '60s," recalls Roger Porter, food critic and professor of English. "I asked someone what Portland was like, and he said, 'It's the kind of town where if you ask for a bottle of wine by name, they think you're a homo.' "

Back then, nearly every American city had shaped an enduring identity. New York was about restaurants and Los Angeles about film, but nobody had any idea what to make of Portland, Oregon. I traveled there regularly in the early '70s as an NBA beat writer for a Philadelphia newspaper, covering the 76ers against the Trail Blazers, and only vague memories remain, none of them relating to a remarkable meal. Other cities in the league, including the second-rate ones, had some food attraction, even if it was an oddity such as the revolving restaurant above the Holiday Inn in Baltimore or Mushy Wexler's Theatrical in Cleveland.

I remember walking through the industrial grayness of Portland forty years ago, passing the occasional pancake house, putting up with the relentless drizzle. James Beard, a founding father of American cuisine, was born there but had long since fled to New York. Neither Blazermania (a few years away) nor the food carts (a few decades away) had appeared.

How did it happen? How did Portland, at best second-tier and certainly worse where food was concerned, ascend to its status as the most fascinating gastronomic city in America, the all-around champion in the category of food and drink? Bragging a bit, I can say that I pretty much predicted it would happen, foresaw that the American Northwest had the potential for culinary preeminence. I anticipated the vineyards, the farmers' markets, the abundant produce and seafood, the leisurely lifestyle, and above all the entrepreneurial spirit.

Perhaps you are wondering why I am not now heralded as the prophet of Portland. I can answer that. It's because I always said such a cultural and culinary makeover would occur in Seattle. But Seattle, it turned out, was just like every other city, and Portland was something else. Explains Karen Brooks, the Portland Monthly restaurant editor and critic, "Portland had the don't-give-a-fuck attitude."