Portlands Dining Month at Little Bird

by Nadia LeeMay 19, 2014

There’s so many great deals during dining month…
Hopefully they have foie on the menu?

Little Bird Bistro tl;dr

Whenever I’m on a trip I usually love to cap it off with a nice meal. Since our flight was delayed and we have heard so much about Little Bird, we decided that this would be an awesome place for our last meal in Portland. Little Bird is a downtown bistro and a sister restaurant to a more famous Le Pigeon but both had great reviews so we were excited to check it out.

Lucky for us it just so happened to be Portland’s Dining Month (which took place during the month of March) and we were able to participate in their 3 course menu for $29 and also order some additional items for their regular menu to try out a larger variety.

For the three course menu we chose:

Appetizer: Salt cod gnocchi with steamed clams, pickled chili pisto and green olives
- This was just ok, the salt cod definitely did not come as much as I would like and the taste was overall muted despite the strong ingredients listed such as salt cod and pickled chili pisto and green olives
Main: Grilled pork shoulder with warm potato salad, lardons and apricot mustard
- Pork shoulder usually need a lot of flavor and while this was moist, unfortunately this dish also didn’t wow me and felt boring for me. While I’m sure it would be a solid dish for most, the flavors didn’t really pop
Dessert: Almond torte, cherries and orange cream
- This was a solid almond torte and the cherries were a nice touch

Out of Focus Photo of Foie Gras at Portland Little Bird's

In terms of the dining month meal, I wish this would have showcased the restaurant a lot more especially considering that it was our first time at the restaurant. If this was the only thing I ate at Little Bird I’d be unimpressed since the meal was solid though nothing memorable.

Other dishes we ordered:

The Burger with onions, goat cheese, pickles, butter lettuce, brioche, fries with seared foie gras: For me, I usually can’t pass up anything with seared foie gras, what can I say I’m a deprived Californian! The burger was good, bursting with flavor; however, personally for me, the goat cheese overwhelmed everything and made the burger very heavy.
Entree of Seared Foie Gras: While this isn’t normally on the menu, we asked if they were able to accommodate and luckily they were able to do it! This was great, its hard to go wrong with seared foie gras; however, the accompanying sauce was not nearly as strong as what we had at Tasty and Alder.

Finally to round out the meal we got some complimentary mini macaroons, a delicious and tasty treat.

In terms of service for being a cute bistro I expected better service. Maybe our pregnant waitress was going through something but she was just not very friendly and did the bare minimum to answer our questions and also serve us throughout the night.

All in all, I’d say I wasn’t very impressed with Little Bird and considering a host of other options available in Portland I’d say if you have limited time and this wasn’t top of your list, I’d try some of the other options you may have researched.

Tray Full of Lemon Rose Macaroons at Little Bird