The Best Places in Buckman

Push X Pull is a Central Eastside coffee roaster that ferments fruit into its beans, so one week's pour-over tastes like apricot candy and the next like blueberry sweet tea. The room is concrete with aquamarine trim, relaxed enough that nobody will quiz you on terroir. If tasting notes make you nervous, the maple-and-turmeric latte is a safe ask. It ranks among the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops.

1. The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops #34 · Top 100 Coffee Shops
2. The Infatuation The 25 Best Coffee Shops In Portland

Berlu is a Vietnamese bakery on SE Belmont where everything is gluten- and dairy-free, and the star is a springy green pandan sponge cake so beloved that its portrait decorates the bathroom walls. You can also buy socks printed with its face. The chef won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific, which tells you he can cook, though the line is mostly there for the cake with the merch.

1. Eater Best Bakeries
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Winner · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Vince Nguyen
3. Portland Monthly Bánh bò nướng · Portland’s Most Iconic Dishes

The foie gras profiteroles have been on the dessert menu so long they've become a Portland landmark in their own right. Gabriel Rucker's modern French tasting spot on East Burnside has been doing ambitious, slightly unhinged prix fixe since forever, the kind of cooking where sturgeon pastrami with caviar shows up next to a vegetarian finger sandwich and both feel inevitable. A James Beard semifinalist, and still the room where Portland chefs go to be impressed.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Gabriel Rucker
3. Condé Nast Traveler The 23 Best Restaurants in Portland, Oregon

Nong's is a casual counter-service Thai spot that grew out of a one-dish food cart and still mostly sticks to the plan: poached chicken over rice cooked in the schmaltz, with a cup of clear broth on the side. The ginger sauce has the kind of following that has Portlanders keeping a bottle in the fridge door like a family heirloom. It's cheap, easy, and the city's default answer to a cold.

1. Eater The All-Time Eater 38
2. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants and Food Carts in Portland

Sommelier Brent Braun runs the cellar here, with a wine list heavy on Riesling, Oregon producers, and natural bottles, plus small-batch collaborations with local winemakers usually poured by the glass. The kitchen leans seasonal and vegetable-forward, the kind of room where the food earns its place alongside the wine rather than playing second fiddle. A James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program, this chic Hawthorne wine restaurant draws the crowd that actually reads the back label.

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. Condé Nast Traveler The 23 Best Restaurants in Portland, Oregon
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

The dining room is built to look like a Soviet dacha, complete with turquoise shutters and diagonal wood paneling modeled on the owner's great-grandparents' cottage. Kachka is a full-service Eastern European restaurant where the menu runs from happy-hour zakuski and herring salads to Siberian pelmeni and rabbit braised in a clay pot. Horseradish-infused vodka from the team's own distillery handles the rest. The New York Times named it among Portland's best.

1. AAA Approved
2. Condé Nast Traveler The 23 Best Restaurants in Portland, Oregon
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Portland, Ore., Right Now

The chef's counter at this vegan tasting menu spot on Belmont seats you close enough to watch the kitchen improvise, and some dishes on any given night will never appear again. Aaron Adams moves between produce-forward simplicity and molecular technique without making either feel like a statement. The sourcing runs local and specific, down to tofu from an old-school Portland maker. The New York Times put it on their Portland shortlist.

1. Condé Nast Traveler The 23 Best Restaurants in Portland, Oregon
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Portland, Ore., Right Now
3. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now

Canard is a loose, loud French-ish diner on East Burnside, next door to Le Pigeon, where fast food gets a sommelier. Steam burgers, garlic fries, and tartare scooped with fried saltines share the table with serious Burgundy, and the whole thing costs less than you'd fear. Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in America, which the cheeseburger-and-foie crowd seems to have taken in stride.

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now

The menu at this Northern Vietnamese restaurant annotates each dish with culinary and cultural history, so you'll know why the Dungeness crab spring rolls arrive in the square shape customary to Haiphong. The team makes their own rice noodles, a laborious thing few bother with, for a deep roster of phos and noodle plates. Bring a group so the grilled half-duck makes sense. The New York Times put it on their 2025 Restaurant List.

1. The New York Times 2026 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. The New York Times 2025 · The Restaurant List
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Portland, Ore., Right Now

Exquisite Creatures is a plant-based coffee shop in the Central Eastside where the seasonal drink menu reads like a dare, and the orange Tootsie Pop latte is the one people mention first. It all runs on house-roasted espresso, which keeps the strawberry-jalapeño matcha from collapsing into a bit. There are pastries and sandwiches, plenty of foliage, and an unhurried pace for a coffee order that costs a few dollars.

1. The Infatuation The 25 Best Coffee Shops In Portland
2. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in Portland

1. Condé Nast Traveler The 23 Best Restaurants in Portland, Oregon
2. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now

Wood-fired oven anchoring an open kitchen, high ceilings, warm wood everywhere: Nostrana reads like the kind of Italian restaurant Portland genuinely needed someone to get right. Chef Cathy Whims built the menu around regional Italian cooking and Pacific Northwest ingredients, with pizza holding its own among the broader offerings. The naturally leavened dough and housemade mozzarella keep purists happy without making the rest of the menu feel like an afterthought.

1. 50 Top Pizza #48 · 50 Top Pizza USA
2. Condé Nast Traveler The 23 Best Restaurants in Portland, Oregon

1. Bon Appétit #6 · America's Best New Restaurants
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants and Food Carts in Portland

1. Eater Best New Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants and Food Carts in Portland

1. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now

Obon Shokudo is a small, bright Japanese comfort food spot on SE Grand where the whole menu happens to be vegan, a fact it mentions about as loudly as a houseplant. Udon comes in brothy curry or chilled with sesame, and the onigiri get a smear of miso made from things like hominy or pistachios. Fermented hot sauce and tofu get made in-house too. Portland Monthly put it on its 50 Best Restaurants list.

1. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now

1. Portland Monthly The 50 Best Restaurants in Portland Right Now

Hat Yai is a casual Southern Thai spot on Belmont where the fried chicken comes with a stack of flaky roti and a bowl of curry you will absolutely pour over everything. The breading is rice flour and tapioca, so it shatters, and the pickles on the side are there to remind you that you have a palate. Orders at nearly every table look identical, which is the closest thing Portland has to a group chat.

1. Portland Monthly Fried chicken combo · Portland’s Most Iconic Dishes

1. Eater Portland’s 8 Best Rooftops for Views, Drinks, and Sun

1. Eater Portland’s 8 Best Rooftops for Views, Drinks, and Sun

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants

1. Esquire #16 · The Best New Restaurants in America

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America