Week 33 – The Observatory!

The Observatory is a classy little joint tucked away on SE Stark that successfully straddles the line between modern elegance and Portland hipster chic. With craft cocktails, dim lights, and a staff with at least one guy with a handle bar mustache or man-bun at any given time (although I shouldn’t talk shit about Mr. Man-bun, he treated us well), it has a great late night menu with a seriously beautiful cheese plate. Although, I will say that I think both times I’ve been to The Observatory I’ve ordered a drink that I can’t find on their menu but is called something along the lines of “A Rose by Any Other Name…” (see what I mean by hipster chic?) that tasted like drinking straight potpourri. The smell alone was like the rose perfume your grandmother dosed herself in while you were growing up. I personally don’t have that grandmother, but one of you out there does. I’m sure of it.

Cheese Platter - Variety of cheeses, roasted garlic, house cured bacon, fresh fruit & red wine caramel.

I’d say thank goodness for servers that don’t mind writing the cheeses down for me, but in this instance, and it wasn’t until way later that I even noticed, the server wrote the following:

-Cheddar -Goat -Blue -Manchego

Well. That is not helpful at all. There's a million kinds of cheddar, goat, and blue cheeses, all of which, including the Manchego, I've already talked about before. So here I was promising an awesome post about the cheese plate at The Observatory which I’m not able to make good on.

I can however talk about the plate itself, which, as I’ve already mentioned, was one of the best cheese plates I’ve had, presentation and taste wise. To call it ‘house cured bacon’ is almost an insult, those little square bites are so delicious and closer to what I’d call fried pork belly than just plain old bacon. Another real gem on the plate is the red wine caramel, I can’t say that I’ve had anything like it. It’s sweet and a little tangy, and I wanted to sop every bit of it on the plate up. Not to mention the gorgeous array of fruit and the whole roasted garlic included as well.

There were two cheeses that we really loved and two we were less fond of; I still can’t get behind a blue cheese (I keep trying I swear), and this particular Manchego wasn’t our favorite either, although I liked the one I had week13. They weren’t bad cheeses, I certainly still ate them, just less agreeable to our palates. The cheddar and goat however were fabulous, I paired the cheddar with the fresh fruit, and smeared the goat over the red wine caramel soaked baguette. Just to die for. That paired with a fancy cocktail (just not the one mentioned above) and you have a quality evening worth every penny.

At this point, I’m nine weeks behind my ‘one blog a week for an entire year goal’. So instead of that, I am not abandoning this project (I swear!) but maybe realigning my (and your) expectations. I’ve been out and about enjoying life, which is a great thing, but not really conducive for getting a lot of writing done. My new goal is just to keep this an ongoing project for as long as I can or for as long as people want to keep eating cheese with me (not like I’m going to be running out of cheeses to try any time soon). I’ll keep trying to knock these suckers out in as timely of a fashion that I can. Week 34 coming soon!