Los Gorditas

For my birthday, we decided to go out and try a new place in Division in the Richmond Neighborhood in Portland. We've passed this place called Los Gorditas a couple times before and the place is always packed, so we had to try this place.  I read the reviews before going to this place and there was a whopping 220 reviews for this corner food truck..  Many people suggested the Garbage Burrito, so that's what I got.

The woman enjoying the place.

The good luck bear for an awesome meal.

Let's get down to the good stuff.  We ordered a variety of tacos and the ones above are the carne asada, carne deshebrada, and the pastor.  The carne asada and deshebrada are steak and the pastor is grilled pork.  All of them are good, but the best are the tacos below.  Hands down the carnitas which is the fried pork is the best.  This carnitas is some of the best that we've tried all over Portland and very comparable to another place in Alberta.  I'm getting hungry just by looking at these pictures. Again.

I also ordered the infamous garbage burrito that is the buzz in the reviews I read.  Look at the size of this beast compared to my head.  So the way the menu describes the garbage burrito is:

"Large flour tortilla stuffed with beans, rice, cheese, sour cream, onion, cilantro, chicken, beef, and pork, plus a scoop of red and green salsa, onion and cilantro again."

With the three types of meat incorporated into this awesome burrito, I just had to try.  It was good, really good, my life will never be the same.  Just look at this awesome thing.

What an awesome place. This will not be the last time I go here.

For dessert, my woman made me a chocolate almond cake with strawberries. What a perfect day.

Hardware & Architectural

This store called Hardware & Architectural is by far one of the coolest and probably my most favorite store in Portland.  We found this store as a part of our phase of exploring the Richmond neighborhood in Division.  This type of store is what I've been looking for in Portland and I'm glad it's here.  It's not a new store but very cool indeed.  This place reminds me of a flea market in New York, all of the items they carry are exactly alike.  Some things they carry are vintage looking items like bottles, signs, clocks, furniture and even vintage cameras.  The moment I went into the place, I felt like I was a little chap going into a candy store, drooling, starring at items in awe and drooling again. Yeah, this place is that awesome!!!

I love this fender piece, they had it in front of the store.

There are some many unique and interesting items here.  My wife had to hold me from buying many items that were cool.

 Many of the light fixtures are custom made by a guy that works in the store.

The store is huge, there is a whole second section in the back of the store which carried the bigger items such as window frames, doors, and wooden sectionals like the picture above.  This is my all time current favorite store in Portland.  Check it out!!!

Division Ops

Division is such an awesome place to explore, we passed it by a couple times before just to see potential stores we can to by to and found that there were many thrift/vintage clothing stores all along Division.  This thrift store that we went to was called Bearly Worn.  They had some pretty good stuff here and the time we went there, they had a sale on top of their regular prices because they were going out of business.  It's unfortunate they had to close.  We found a couple cool items here.  Nana found a red vintage shirt and a G-Star shirt.  I found a G-Star jeans for $6.  Nice.

The woman and the dog exploring Division.

Shoes.

An awesome picture of meat. I was attracted to the sign.

There was this old sign/board of a bicycle shop, I wanted to take it but it was soaking wet. 

La Petite Provence

My wife and I are in this phase of exploring Portland and going to the places we've never been too.  One of the areas that we went to was Division.  We went along Division from about 60th avenue down towards downtown and stopped at every place that looks interesting; I find that this method is the best way of finding cool new places in Portland. 

What we found so far in Division is that there are many vintage/thrift stores, at least a couple food cart communities, cool home goods/furniture stores and some of the best restaurants in Portland.  For me Division is like one of Portland's best kept secret, maybe because I rarely go to this area.  Anyways, while we were exploring the street we passed by this European looking cafe, all black looking with yellow accents.  We walked pass the entrance a couple times to see what the place was and it turned out to be La Petite Provence.  We have heard of the place before and thought there was only one in the Alberta location, but here in Division also?  It turns out that they have four locations including this one, so we had to check it out.

The place is cozy, the atmosphere is very relaxing and the food looks very delicious.  All of their decor instantly reminded me of Europe, even the people working there had accents.  The place was packed with people enjoying the weekend and the food. 

Before going into Petite Provence, we had our lunch just up the street at Pizzicato Pizza because we were really hungry.  So going to eat a second lunch within an hour was really pushing it but we just had to try this place.  La Petite Provence is famous for their French Onion Soup so we ordered a cup of soup and for dessert we tried Monkey Love since it was highly recommended by the staff that was helping us.  

The French Onion Soup is probably one of the best soup I've had in my life.  The texture was smooth, the onion wasn't too funky that it makes you choke.  The best part of the soup was the cheese along the top because it was crispy.  I thought about this soup for the rest of the week and can't wait until I go there again.  The Monkey Love is also awesome,  it has a coconut cream in the inside with banana covered with chocolate goodness.  This was also another desert that will always forever be in my heart.   I highly recommend this place and my journey continues as I cross another place off from my official "Places To Eat in Portland" list.
I wish La Petite Provence would open in Beaverton, that would be great.

Pok Pok

So finally we tried this Thai place called Pok Pok at Division that supposedly is very good.  At it turns out it was impressive.  This place is not the typical Thai food place because they don't offer the traditional Thai foods, instead they offer the so called street foods of Thailand.  This dish to the left is a beef noodle soup.

This dish is what made Pok Pok famous and got its place in the Food and Wine magazine.  This is the

"Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings" and it was amazing.  This wings changed my life.  Well not that much but you get the point.  Two guys sitting next to us ordered 3 dishes of the wings.  Ay!!!!

This is the Muu Sateh.  It was ok.

Any burnt corn is good.  I don't discriminate.

I forgot what this one was called, but good indeed. It's some kind of meat dish.

I love the location of Pok Pok.  I rarely go to Division and every time I do go here, I always wonder why I don't go here more often.  It's cool seeing residential areas having small local commercial in the neighborhood.