Boxer Ramen Opens New Location off 23rd

Have you been to the new Boxer Ramen location yet? Now just over a week old, the new spot on 23rd and Kearney is serving up the same favorites as its SW Stark and NE Alberta locations. While the small chain has been popular around Portland for a while, for my recently-moved-back self, my visit last week was my first!

If it weren’t for a much appreciated tip-off from my mom I might have missed their fantastic soft opening deal last Friday, free bowls of ramen from 4-7 PM! I can understand it was a great way for the cooks to get in their groove, and to lure in new customers, like me!

NYC =>>> PDX

I definitely never planned that I would be spending the last few years living in four different cities. I’ve become well adapted to the cross country move, first to college in Boston (lets just say I got really good at packing a checked bag), then to Bellevue, WA post grad, back to the east coast a year later to New York, and earlier this year (admittedly three months ago) my first move, back to my hometown of Portland, OR, involving the dreaded cross country road trip.

Christmas treats

What a wonderful weekend I had in Portland to see my family before Christmas, it wasn’t long enough. I unfortunately had to leave Christmas Eve so I could work the holiday (major bummer), but my family had an unconventional Christmas morning via Skype. We opened presents just the same as normal, only I didn’t get a homemade waffle like my mom and sister (I made myself steel cut oatmeal with sauteed bananas in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, so not a bad trade off).

Over the weekend, my first stop was to Little Big Burger, conveniently located across the street from my parent’s new place. I had been once before but only tried the veggie burger in support of my vegan friend that I went with. This time I got the burger, with pepperjack and fries. I love this place because of its simplicity. You can have: a burger, a cheeseburger, or a veggie burger, with choice of cheese and fries on the side. That’s it. All the burgers are the same size and all are cooked to medium. If you go on the website, their menu literally only has 6 items. In stores, there is either compost or recycling, and everything you buy fits into one of the two bins. The simplicity is surprisingly refreshing, the $3.50 price tag for a plain hamburger is wallet friendly and the just-larger-than-a-slider size is perfect for a light meal. The fries are great, super crisp and flavored with truffle oil, but the portion size is bigger than the burger and it doesn’t work with the richness of the truffle oil. The store’s quirk is selling only “tall boy” cans of beer, which makes you fit into the hipster Portland vibe in no time.

This is actually my dad’s burger. I was halfway through mine before he asked “Don’t you want to take a picture?” Oh yeah, that thing I have, called a blog. Note the artfully posed fries mid dunk into the special LBB sauce.

The next morning was the annual Christmas tree walk in downtown Portland. I headed out in the wee hour of 6:00AM with my mom to meet up with some of her friends and take a walk downtown to rate all of the hotel Christmas trees. The best hotel by far every year is the Benson, who also makes a different giant gingerbread scene every year. This year was in fact a replica of downtown Portland, in honor of the Benson’s 100th anniversary.

If you look on the bottom right, you’ll see Union Station, where little gingerbread me arrived on the train for the weekend. I’m not sure the Benson got the memo to include that detail.

To complete the holiday experience, you cannot beat a iced glass of eggnog with some extra spice and little hit of bourbon, in front of the Christmas tree. If only the yule log was on tv too.