Laurelhurst Market, the highly anticipated deli/butcher shop/steakhouse from the owners of Viande and Simpatica, opened for business last week. As I reported with glee in January, the new restaurant is just up the hill from my apartment, in the building that last housed the not-much-missed Laurelhurs Market (the “t” went missing long ago). Four months later, the building is unrecognizable.
The false roof is gone, replaced by a stainless steel facade that still shows welding marks. The parking lot has been repaved, and landscaping added all around. Directly in front of the restaurant are a row of fruit trees (apple, I think) and strawberries. The is made up of sliding glass doors, which should make the dining room a semi-al fresco delight in the summer months.
Inside, Laurelhurst Market looks like many other casual dining restaurants in Portland, with an open ceiling showing wooden rafters, warm earth tones and an open kitchen. Check out the bar, though—I hope all those bottles never see any direct sunlight.
The butcher counter, which is open 10 am-7 pm daily (the restaurant is only open for dinner Wednesday-Monday), is only slightly larger than the counter at Viande’s old City Market location, although the prep space in back is considerably larger. The offerings of house-made sausage, bacon, prepared meats, duck confit, all sorts of boned roasts and more, plus imported hot dogs and salumi, will be familiar to anyone who shopped at Viande. The difference? Now I can buy caul fat within a five-minute walk of my couch. This could be dangerous.
The sandwich menu is an expanded version of the one at Viande, and focuses mainly on good meats and good bread with minimal distractions. They are all $7, or $4 for a half. I ordered the roast beef on a kaiser roll with horseradish, cheddar, pickled beets and red leaf lettuce and my wife went for the ham on levain with plugra (Euro style butter), fleur de sel, shaved radishes and frisee. Both were good, but the ham was phenomenal—sweetly porky, with intermingled flavors of smoke and salt. The radishes added nice texture. It gives the excellent smoked ham and aioli sandwich at Meat Cheese Bread a run for its money.
Roast Beef:
Ham:
We’ll run a more detailed review of the restaurant later this summer.
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Tags: Food Porn, laurelhurst market, meatgasm, simpatica, Viande
you might want to give the address
Laurelhurst Market Restaurant lives up to its name with its extra warm service. The menu is small compared to others but the flavors are big. It’s a great first choice and backup when your plans to eat are thwarted by tude and or traffic. Thanks for the article Ben W!
Located at 3155 E. Burnside, at the Gates of Laurelhurst right across from Music Millenium.
I tried Laurelhurst Market last night, after reading the WW review from Ben, but mainly it was the accompanying pictures of the sandwiches that tempted me to get over there so fast.
I don’t know what impressed me more…the EXCELLENT food (I had a French dip…with their amazing fries, but it was a tough decision)…the very VERY cool look of the place, or the perfect PERFECT tone of the welcoming staff. They really know how to make you feel comfortable about spending hard earned cash eating out in the recession.
I had guests in town this weekend and thought it would be great to go to a restaurant in the neighborhood. We had been to Laurelhurst Market twice before and had a great time. This time, we were treated rudely and will not return. We arrived at 6:45 and were told that we had a 30-45 minute wait. While it was a longer wait than we had anticipated, we decided to have a drink at the bar and wait. After an hour, we asked when we would be seated, the host told it would be 20 more minutes. After 20 more minutes, we were told that we were next on the list, the host seated other parties before us. After waiting for 1 hour 45 minutes, we finally left. The host did not say he was sorry nor did he make us feel we were wanted. We will not return.