The Portland Area’s Rarest and Most Distinctive Foods

What foods are most distinctively Portland?

American food historian (and City Cast Las Vegas co-host) Sarah Lohman has some answers. She wrote a book on the country’s “delicious and distinctive and rare” foods (“Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods.”) “My passion is really America, all of the diversity and complexity within this country,” she says.

For Portland, she picked out this list:

Spanish Roja Garlic

Like many rare varieties of produce, Spanish Roja is not commercially viable to produce on a mass scale, because it bruises easily. It’s not clear where the name came from or who first developed this variety, but historians say it came to the Portland area before the 20th century.

The taste: Spanish Roja is really spicy when raw. “It is very known for its intensity of flavor,” says Lohman. “But then when you slow roast it, it is the most sweet, complex, buttery garlic that I've ever had.”

Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry

Historians do know about this one’s name. It’s Portland-appropriate that it was named after someone’s favorite dog. Ground cherries are in the tomatillo family and have a papery husk. They are often added to fruit salads and turned into pies or sauces. Sometimes they’re served straight up.

The taste: Aunt Molly’s ground cherries are sweet and tart. “They're a delightful food,” says Lohman. “In the same way that I would sit and eat a pint of berries, I would sit and eat a pint of these. And they're just really unusual and beautiful.”

The Marshall Strawberry

This berry has a claim to fame as one of chef James Beard’s favorites.

This variety of strawberry wasn’t developed here. But it thrived in this climate. In the first half of the 20th century, 90 percent of Oregon and Washington’s strawberry farmland was planted with this variety. But then disease hit in the middle of the last century. “When 90 percent of your acreage is planted with one variety of strawberry, if a disease hits one acre, that's it: Everything else is done,” says Lohman. There’s no harm in planting this in your backyard today, as many local gardeners do.

The taste: The Marshall strawberry is super sweet with a high sugar content. It’s delicate and must be eaten right away. (When it was grown commercially, it was frozen immediately in the fields.)

Resources:

• The Ark of Taste is the Slow Food movement’s repository of local and distinctive food. You can nominate your own dishes.
• Sarah Lohman’s book is “Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods.”

What’s your nomination for most distinctively Portland foods?