Beaverton is home to very few restaurants like Don’s Favorite Foods, a tiny Italian restaurant with an atmosphere that lands somewhere between midcentury dinner party and upscale lodge restaurant. And midcentury is not far off: Meals begin with things like Italian cold cuts and sesame popovers, clams casino and steak tartare, before moving into the world of pasta and larger, meaty mains. Owner Don Salamone blends his years in fine dining with childhood memories of his East Coast Italian American family dinners, which translate to dishes like short rib pizzaiola and pork braciole. Don’t confuse “classic” with “tired,” however; those family recipes are meticulously executed and polished, and dishes like ‘nduja carbonara or octopus with dandelion and castelvetrano olives are far from old hat. Dinner is $100 per person; reserve via OpenTable.

One of Portland’s hottest restaurants for a decade now, don’t expect to get a seat at Langbaan without some effort; regardless, it’s worth it. Located at a chef’s counter within owner Akkapong Earl Ninsom’s Northwest Portland Thai restaurant Phuket Cafe, dishes here are complex and nuanced, without shying away from loud and profound flavors. Past menus included pickled mussel salad with satisfyingly bright acidity, the crunch of lotus stem juxtaposed with charred fresh figs. A fermented fish curry had a lingering, delicate funk and sweetness, with a pristine piece of steamed halibut at its center. Menus shift periodically, but every meal starts with miang som, a betel-leaf-wrapped bite of plump shrimp and citrus, and kanom krok, a crispy rice cup filled with coconut-cream-coated scallops. Reservations are available on Resy. Menus start at $125.

The blonde wood touches and California vibes of this Slabtown restaurant evoke images of Venice Beach date night spots, particularly when paired with dishes like seed-coated avocados with tamari yuzu, or beets with goat cheese snow. Its four-course tasting menu — more of a family-style meal — is a tour through some of chef Garrett Benedict’s current favorites, which may include things like fingerling potatoes with citrus trout roe, or milk chocolate with butterscotch, honeycomb, and popcorn. The meal is $75 per person, with an optional $55 wine pairing. Make a reservation via Resy.

The family-style, four-course tasting menu at this striking Pearl District restaurant changes often, but with chef Erik Van Kley in the kitchen, any visit will likely dazzle. Past dinners have incorporated chanterelle mushroom and potato pierogi with ricotta and truffles, platters of duck with crepes and ‘nduja brown butter, and butter-poached halibut in a pool of beautiful harissa broth. The tasting menu is $70 with a $45 wine pairing; make a reservation via the website.

This Pearl District tasting menu restaurant takes a foundation of Mexican ingredients, culinary techniques, and historical context to concoct dishes like sablefish in the style of pescado zarandeado, or salmon aguachile with black garlic and rhubarb. On a past visit, duck breast arrived over a duo of moles, incorporating apricots, squash, and pistachio to bring out the wild gaminess, butteriness, and sweetness of the bird. Servers will often talk through the personal, creative, and historical lineage of each dish as it lands at the table, giving the overarching meal a sense of place and dimension. The meal is $129 for seven courses and $150 for 10, with reservations on Opentable.

Gabe Rucker’s Le Pigeon has had no small influence in defining what constitutes Portland dining: playful and creative, boundary-pushing and nonchalant. A past dinner included watermelon ham with oolong-pickled quail egg, braised goat sopes with aji amarillo-pickled cucumbers and nectarines, and hamachi in a creamy dressing with cantaloupe popping boba; while the menu changes frequently, every non-vegetarian meal ends with Rucker’s foie gras profiteroles, the best ice cream sandwich a human could consume. The restaurant offers both meaty and vegetarian five-course menus each night starting at $135, with nonalcoholic and alcoholic beverage pairings as well as optional add-ons like foie gras. Reservations are available via Resy.

While many fine dining restaurants in Portland try to couch their seriousness with a party atmosphere, this small, quiet sake bar with neighborhood izakaya vibes exudes a focus and professionalism, allowing the food and drink to speak for themselves. Oregon-grown wasabi roots sit in a bowl of water, stems tangled; chefs swirl wasabi against a flat grater to form a light, delicate paste, served alongside nigiri from around the world. On any given visit, fourteen-day-aged sea bream may arrive with yuzu-Thai chile kosho and house soy sauce, providing a lovely floral note, while 21-day dry-aged Ora King salmon may appear with blood orange-serrano kosho, buttery with a satisfying sweetness and acidity from the citrus. If you’re lucky, you’ll finish with ribbons of rice noodle swirled among chanterelles in a yuzu-kosho compound butter — an elegant end to an unassuming, refined omakase. Reservations are available via Tock.

The omakase at this Hawthorne sushi counter is one of the city’s finest, from the first bite to the scoop of yuzu sorbet at the finish. Each piece of fish here gets so much love at every step of the process: Horse mackerel bathes in salt, sugar, and water, bringing out the natural sweetness of the fish. Salt-and-pepper-cured saba gets a cold smoke, with a clear arc in flavor. It’s worth it to spring for the add-ons toward the end of the meal, in particular the silky, beefy A5 wagyu. Reservations for the $95 omakase are available via Resy.

The maximalist omakase adored by people like Questlove is back, and chef Ryan Roadhouse is scooping consomme gel into bowls of marinated Dungeness crab and fermented yuzu-compressed cucumber, or poaching firefly squid before tossing them in an effervescent egg yolk emulsion, or frying fresh figs in the style of agedashi tofu in Portland once again. Nodoguro dinners are an adventure, often involving more than 20 courses of both sushi and other Japanese-Pacific Northwestern dishes. Tasting menus are $250 per person; reservations can be tough to get, but we have tips for you here.

Throughout the pandemic, Han Oak has metamorphosed, offering takeout meals, hosting pop-ups and brunches, and eventually settling into seasonal tasting menu service in its hidden gem of a restaurant. Behind a barely marked turquoise door, a courtyard reminiscent of a friend’s lawn opens onto a warm, bustling space, where servers drop glasses of Portuguese orange wine and Korean lemon-lime soda at tables. Currently, Han Oak is throwing its “gimbap party,” in which a parade of banchan and corned beef soo yook open for a build-your-own rice wrap smorgasbord, with fillings like koji-cured coppa, crispy fried soft-shell crab, and an array of pickles and ferments. The energy is far from formal here; if you get a reservation late enough, an impromptu karaoke party may begin. The full meal starts at $65; reservations are available via Resy.

Just off Sandy in the Hollywood District, this Southeast Asian restaurant wrapped in shellfish-adorned wallpaper offers something the team calls its rice table, a play on the Dutch-Indonesian rijsttafel service. For $85 per person, a flurry of dishes like pickled beet panipuri, chicken satay in terasi peanut sauce, and Chinese sausage and shrimp shu mai precede a feast of curries, stews, and braises, covering the table with an accompanying bowl of chef Thomas Pisha-Duffly’s grandmother’s clove-scented rice. Highlights include the blistered tomato curry and flaky roti canai. Make a reservation on Resy.