Feast Portland 2014: USA Pears Night Market

In case you missed my last post, this past weekend, I was a photographer for Feast, Portland's biggest food and drink festival. Famous chefs from around the country join forces with Portland's local culinary talent to cook for crowds and host classes and dinners for an action-packed four days. Each night, there's a marquee event that ranges from a sandwich making competition to a black-tie affair at one of Portland's ritziest hotels.

My favorite of the events, however, has always been the last year, I got to meet one of my baking heroes, Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar at this event! The USA Pears Night Market creates a street food fair akin to those in Southeast Asia, but with booths staffed by national and local chefs handing out their favorite dishes, which often times consisted of an Asian-flair to stay true to the theme:

Up top is the lovely Lee Anne Wong from Honolulu, Hawaii's Koko Head Cafe, serving up one of her famous breakfast dumplings. The dumpling consisted of maple Sriracha pork, bacon and sage gravy, creamy eggs and maple Tabasco. One of my favorites of the night.

Fish was a popular ingredient that was served; there was a lot of raw tuna, yellowtail, salmon, and other seafood to choose from:

From top to bottom: albacore tuna with sea vegetables, matsutake, dashi and nasturium from Oregon Coast Restaurant Beck; a salmon and apricot ceviche from local Peruvian fusion restaurant Andina; a raw salmon and grape salad with jerk spice, palm sugar and habanero vinaigrette from Jon Shook of Los Angeles' Son of A Gun restaurant.

There were also some wraps, frybread (kind of like tacos, but better), and skewered dishes that stayed true to Night Market's streetfood theme:

From top to bottom: periode cake frybread with beef tongue, tomato jam and crema from Smallwares, one of my favorite restaurants in town; grilled beef kofta with herbed yogurt and roasted tomato relish on lavash from local Arabesque restaurant Levant; and skewered rabbit loin medallions wrapped in serrano jamon and topped with ginger-soy aioli and nori from Spanish-influenced Ataula, another local favorite. 

Oh, and of course, these dungeness crab nachos (topped with pimento cheese, pico de gallo, and habenero cherry hot sauce to boot) from local Argentinean-inspired restaurant, Ox:

One of the longest lines of the night was local talent Gregory Gourdet of Tyler Malek (and people's choice winner of Feast's Sandwich Invitational), actually flambeed them on the spot:

I was also particularly fond of these alfajores cookies (that is, Argentinean shortbread cookie sandwiches with a rich dulce de leche caramel in the middle) from Andina, which I'll be attempting to recreate on the blog soon:

My favorite dessert, however, was local winemaker Union Wine Company's collaboration with other local purveyors Jacobsen Sea Salt and Quin Candy. Together, they teamed up to bring us some wine-flavored sweet treats, including this Pinot Noir-flavored cotton candy (handed out by Quin's head candymaker Jami Curl herself) and caramel corn topped with Pinot Blanc-infused Jacobsen sea salt:

And that's all for now!

Learn More:

• Shameless plug: did I mention I'm available for hire as a food and food-events photographer? You can see my (grievously outdated) portfolio and contact me for more information.


• Check out the full line-up of chefs and vendors at Feast Portland's information page about the Night Market. Next year's Feast will be held on September 17 - 20, 2015 so mark your calendars!