Sonata is an adorable BYOB in Liberties Walk. When I say adorable, I really mean it. Both E and I could not get over how cute the space is. I mean it’s pretty much just clean and simple, but also totally cute. It seems like a fairly subdued place, but the night we were there there was a very large birthday party table so it was a bit noisy from their festivities, but that doesn’t seem standard. And I love the music-related name. Their menu changes seasonally and is very small. In fact, it’s probably changed to the spring menu by now. I like the small menu because I don’t have to waffle between too many choices. We did get some help from our awesome server on some of his recommendations.
Freshly baked complimentary bread. It was warm, delicious, and herby.
We got the crispy pork belly as an appetizer. It is a giant and thick hunk of pork belly with a thick crispy skin with smoked tomato marmalade, compressed apple, and calvados molasses. Holy crap, this thing is just awesome. I mean pork belly in an of itself is awesome, but then you put all this other stuff with it and damn, I just can’t tell you how good this is. And it’s so damn pretty, too!
E got the cod entree. There are three pieces of potato wrapped pacific cod on napa cabbage and hedgehog mushroom in a sweet onion cream. The fish was super fresh and cooked perfectly and E could not get over how much she loved the cabbage.
I was also pretty crazy about my entree, the chicken. It was a pan roasted bacon wrapped chicken with chestnut stuffing, bourbon whipped potato, haricot vert, and glazed cipolini onion. First off, the chicken was beyond tender, having been pounded, but then once wrapped in oodles of butter, it gets even more tender and beyond juicy. I love chicken that melts in your mouth. The potatoes were great, the green beans were just crispy enough, and I love the cute little onions so much that I wished the plate was full of them.
Ok, onto the dish that E loved the most… her dessert! It was basically a trio of chocolate goodness – warm chocolate beignets, chocolate decadence, and a chocolate hazelnut chipwich. Ok, so these beignets, they were warm and had ooey gooey chocolate on the inside. Like seriously. And she pretty much wanted to marry this chocolate decadence.
I got the apple pie for dessert, only these were adorable little mini fried apple pies with vanilla whiskey ice cream and caramel sauce. These were so cute and tasty! The ice cream was pretty intense… I thought to myself “it’s like vanilla, only with extra awesome.” Then I realized that the awesome was whiskey.
And with our check came these homemade chocolates with caramel and  sea salt. Yes, they were as good as the rest of the meal. E and I both loved our meals at Sonata so much that we can’t wait to go back. Not only was the food perfect, the service was excellent. Everything was just spot on. Even the executive chef, Mark Tropea, came out to check in with us after our meal. We felt so honored. We can’t recommend this place enough!

Portland is a town where food carts and trucks abound. They’re just about everywhere, and there are special areas designated for them. In the southeast, there are a plethora of these “pods”. So what did I do while I was there? I went on a food cart crawl with B! First, we stopped at D-Street Noshery. Yeah, these pods even have names! And I got me an Awesome Cone. What’s Awesome Cone? They take a waffle cone and put food in it. It’s as simple as that.
A few of the options of the night were already sold out, so I had to go with the chicken and dumplings awesome cone. And yes folks, this is exactly what it is. It’s a bigass waffle cone filled with a heaping helping of homemade chicken and dumplings. It was delicious! The waffle cone itself is sweet, which is a slightly bizarro contrast to the savory filling, but I liked it. It’s actually like having your dessert included with your entree. After you’re done heaping out the chicken and dumplings, you eat your waffle as dessert. They make the waffle cone to order, which takes a surprisingly long time, so these aren’t exactly fast food. I wonder how long of a wait there is when there’s an actual line of people. I don’t want to know!
We also stopped at this adorable mac & cheese cart. Everything is made is small batches, so sometimes, you have to wait, like we did. But that’s ok.
Mmm… my mac & cheese with fresh tomato topping. Creamy and delicious!
There was also an arepa truck where B got a veggie one. It smelled and tasted amazing!
There is also Oregon Soup Works, which is the soup version of Oregon Ice Works. They make 2 fresh soups a night. They were also decked out with all kinds of philly sports decals, so represent!
Pie! Where do all these cute little carts / trucks / trailers come from?
The best thing about these pods is that they actually provide seating! And it’s somewhat covered! You could even get a draft beer from this little truck. It is Oregon, after all!
Next stop – SE 43rd and Belmont. This was another pod with many more occupants. Lucille’s Balls. Hee! They make meatballs! Sadly, I think they just closed.
Euro Trash, definitely the most technicolored truck of the bunch. They serve a wide variety of food with some random european influences.
You gotta have a hot dog cart!
Lardo wins for having the cutest little food cart known to man. And for making everything with lard.
Their delicious and hot lardo fries, sprinkled with cheese and rosemary and salt. It’s served with a little curry ketchup. Yay! I was already stuffed at this point, with the giant cone full of chicken and dumplings and all that mac & cheese, but lard was calling!Last up, we went to Cartopia, at SE 12th and Hawthorne. There are only about a handful of big trucks here, but we mainly stopped by to go to Whiffies Fried Pies so B could get a couple of mini sweet pies, to go. They have savory and sweet pies and they’re mini individual pies. Alas, my weak and tiny stomach could not partake of any more food. Until next time!

Sometimes, there are strange little events around town. Like this past first friday, I went to a Twin Peaks themed art show and pie contest in Kensington. I’ve never watched Twin Peaks, so I don’t really know much, but apparently, Agent Dale really liked cherry pie. I have nothing against pie, and first fridays can be quite amusing, so off I went.

The contest was simple. Taste each of the 11 pies and vote for your favorite. There were three apples and then the rest were a smattering of random flavors, including pecan, lemon, and sweet potato cheesecake. There was no cherry pie to be had, which was a bit odd. I had to taste them in order, and this probably wasn’t planned, but they all seemed to get sweeter as the numbers got higher. It got harder and harder to taste them! Which one won? I have no idea! But I actually voted for the sweet potato cheesecake. It was my favorite!

They also had random donuts and other sweet treats around different booths.

And later on, they brought out some moon pies and some freakishly technicolored peeps.

We went to a few other galleries too to check out what else was going on. Sometimes they had food. And sometimes, like this one, it was a very nice offering. I’m not quite sure what the bottle of sriracha was for though. The dip?

Sometimes, they were philly themed so you could have soft pretzels. And they even had some nice carafes of wine.

But sometimes, it was just boxed wine.