For the Carnivorous Foodie in all of us….by Jessica Chang

Ox Restaurant

2225 NE MLK Blvd., Portland, OR 97212

503-284-3366

oxpdx.com

A new restaurant that has a lot of meat choices!?!? You can bet we were there as soon as possible!

After watching Anthony Bourdain’s visit to Uruguay episode, we are thinking this will be our next vacay…South America here we come! But in the mean time, we’ll take what we can get in the States.  When we found out about how Ox is Argentinian influenced (their giant oven for meat grilling is pretty sweet) and has a lot of meat choices, it was a no brainer.

What we ordered:  Green kale salad with feta ranch dressing, fired chickpeas, kalamata olives and strawberries / House Chorizo and Blood Sausage / Mote con habas: heirloom hominy, braised pork belly, fava beans, chiles, olive oil-fried duck egg / Beef Skirt Steak / Maple-brined pork loin chop (comes with chimichurri dipping oil) / and finally for dessert – grilled pineapple with coconut milk sorbet, toasted cashew, rum raisins and fleur de sel.  (it was the Meat-O-Meter’s birthday, so we celebrated in good form!)

How we ordered it: Everything was ordered as is.  We consider this place Hoity Toity.  You may have heard me mention this before, but the more expensive the restaurant, the better quality and the better the food is prepared.  To eat Paleo or close to Paleo, Hoity Toity restaurants are the way to go if you can afford it.  You can’t get any more organic, locally raised, gluten-free, grass-fed than this!!

What we got:

Cost: Green kale salad – $9, Blood Sausage – $9, Chorizo Sausage – $9, Mote con habas – $8, Beef skirt steak – $19, Maple-brined pork loin chop – $19, Grilled pinapple w/ coconut milk sorbet – $8

Quality:  You can just take the skit from Portlandia’s “where does your chicken come from?” and there you have it.  The server told us it’s all grass-fed and local. All of it was very well made, tasty in every bite, what you would expect from a nice restaurant.

Quantity: All of this was enough for the two of us and a little extra.  I wouldn’t say that the skirt steak was a great amount of meat, but the pork chop was a good size for a hoity toity restaurant.  Sausages were super tasty! Blood sausage was my fave.  Though both were disappointingly small for $9.  The Mote con habas had a disappointingly small amount of pork belly.  3 pieces of meat maybe in the whole dish.  Would not get it again, but very tasty.

With the extra side dishes, this meal was incredibly satisfying and we were stuffed. The chimichurri sauce was AMAZING!!! A suggestion from the Meat-O-Meter:  ”Sell that shit at New Seasons and I will buy it in bottles!”

Meat-O-Meter says!

Yes this place was good.  However, he wasn’t over the moon.  It’s all about the price and amount of the meat.

On a side note, the dessert was perplexing.  It didn’t blend well together.  We felt like we were eating some pineapple, then some sorbet, and then a cashew and a raisin.  The dessert wasn’t “composed” well together, I guess you could say it was underwhelming for 8 bucks.  Also couldn’t help but think that we could have made it at home with pineapple/Coconut Bliss and some cashews and raisins.  On a positive note, it is Paleo.

Overall, pretty good though for a birthday dinner!  Ox restaurant is nice.  The food is great and there are lots of meat/veggie choices and combinations to choose from.

We give it a thumbs up!

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