Portland Day 5: Ziggy builds his first bear

Our amazing adventurous time in Portland is coming to a close. Today was our last day (besides a few hours tomorrow morning), before moving onto Seaside. Of course I wanted our last day to be amazing and memorable. I tried to rack my brain to think of last few things I just had to do before we left.

We went to sushi as a starter. I was going to go to the Portland famous 'Bamboo', but they were only open for dinner and I wanted to save that spot for something else. We ended up at Masu Sushi, a small but well established sushi bar at the beginning of Pearl District downtown. I ordered my favorites from sabaku: a spider roll (soft shell crab), and unagi maki (eel). I also decided to try the volcano roll, which has white fish, crab, in some sort of 'volcano' sauce that was sweet not spicy. The volcano roll was presented with a flame beside it, which was made by a cucumber pedestal holding ice and alcohol. Everything was also cooked, I think they must have used a blow torch on it. It was interesting because I have never had hot sushi. Sad to say, Sabaku back home in Moab still beats them in taste and presentation.

We did some shopping downtown again. Zach found a few used vinyls for a cheep price. I went into Penzey's spice store and entered heaven. They had so many different kinds of spice blends, dried herbs, etc. etc. I did not know what to get because there was so much i wanted. I decided on some that I could not find very well in Moab, including Szechuan peppercorns and anise seed.

Then we went into Cacoa, an amazing chocolate shop! I want one near us sooooo bad. They had a variety of fine chocolate bars, a case full of truffles, and a drink menu that included chocolate coffee drinks and drinking chocolate. I had a chocolate macchiato that was perfect. I want to go back and try the chocolate-cinnamon drink.

 We took Danzig out to Washington Square: a giant mall in beaverton about twenty minutes away so he could build his first bear. I've built a few bears in my time, so we were both super excited. He picked out the black bear, and dressed him up as a "ninja". He is confused about his name but assured us it was a boy bear.

O, and also I found my Rogue bacon maple ale!

Before dinner we stoppped by the tasting room at the Upright Brewery. They are a local and very small Portland Brewery that sells their beer in local bottle stores. I wanted badly to have a taste at the tasting room last time but couldn't obviously, I was only twenty. There is nothing bad to say about that place, the beer is amazing.

We went for Toro Bravo as our last dinner in Moab. It is a Spanish inspired tapas restaurant. It is not really ethnic food, but a very creative take on the culinary scene in Portland. I really loved having everything a la carte and being able to match my own food the way I wanted. We started with the fried potato salad w/peaches and arugula. That was definitely the best part of the meal. Then I had braised lamb w/ noodles which was also delicious. This was by far the best meal we have had in Portland, I was so impressed and I would love to cook for them.