Lovely’s Fifty Fifty in historic Mississippi Avenue neighborhood of North Portland, Oregon

Appetizing oven-roasted asparagus with lovage salsa verde and egg

Flavorful pizza of morel mushrooms with ramps, pecorino tartufo and gremolata

Classic salami pizza with Mama Lil’s sweet hot peppers, oil cured black olives & Italian oregano

Before serving piping hot pies from their 800 degree oven, Lovely’s Fifty Fifty in Portland, Oregon was Lovely’s Hula Hands for seven years.  Owners Sarah and Jane Minnick decided to shutter Hula Hands and redirect the space into a pizza and ice cream parlor, but not for lack of success.

It was their desire to bring the kitchen side of the business back into the fold of their family that prompted a makeover. Instead of relying on a talented chef employed to direct the kitchen, the Minnicks wanted to have more of a hand in the production of the food they served.

Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty has become a creative farm-to-table pizza and ice cream parlor with a praiseworthy and continuing commitment to quality ingredients from local farms. Still featuring a rotating, seasonal menu, diners now find pizzas, salads, delectable appetizers, and house-made ice cream and beverages.

With its gorgeous high-ceilinged interior and jovial service that made it feel more like we were dining at a friend’s dinner party than on a sunny, hip Portland strip, Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty is a very special listing in this website’s directory of Farm to Table Pizza. Portland, Oregon can certainly be proud of its pizza offerings; A couple of months ago, we also reviewed pizza night at Ken’s Artisan Bakery.

Even with only seven 12” pies to select from, the choice was a tough one.  Apart from the classic rendition (fresh mozzarella with organic basil from Groundwork Portland’s Emerson Street Garden Groundwork), the list stumped us with mouth-watering offerings.  Would we try fava beans with asparagus, roasted spring onions, basil-dill yogurt and farm egg?  Perhaps roasted yellow potatoes with fenugreek greens, La Quercia pancetta and tallegio cheese, or the inviting housemade fennel sausage with braising greens, rosemary and provolone piccante?

To give ourselves a little time to decide, we requested the oven-roasted asparagus with lovage salsa verde and egg appetizer.   Debating over the menu while sipping a glass of dolcetto from Viola Wines Cellars, a small urban winery in Portland (which crafts Italian-inspired wines using natural winemaking techniques from grapes grown in the Columbia Gorge, Horse Heaven Hills and on the Oregon side of the Walla Walla Valley), my companion and I nibbled the olive-oil brushed asparagus that had just come fresh from the wood-fired oven.

We finally decided to try one classic pie and one particularly creative one. The Chop Butchery salami with Mama Lil’s sweet hot peppers, oil cured black olives and Italian oregano was just as one would expect a salami pie to be—salty and divine—with the peppers and olives adding a personal “Lovely’s” touch.

Our choice on the creative side was inspired by the knowledge of the previous years’ forest fires, which generated a natural environment for the local morels to flourish.  We saw them in the local markets and figured we couldn’t pass them up given the uncertainty of their growing season from year to year and our budding interest in edible fungi.  Boy, were we rewarded!

Where the salami pie was a warm and comforting reminder of all that is wonderful about pizza, the morel mushroom with ramps, pecorino tartufo and gremolata stood out with a symphony of flavor and texture the likes of which I had not experienced before except in only the most unlikely combinations (clam and bacon pizza at Area Four in Somerville, Massachusetts, or shrimp scampi pizza in Boston’s North End).  The spongy, woody morels reminded us of a more complex, piquant crimini.  Pairing it with ramps was a brilliant move given they could very well have grown in the same verdant area, and combining wild edibles with their own neighbors is most often a fool-proof recipe for deliciousness.

To ease our stomachs through the cheesy feast we imbibed the house-made kombuchas: fenugreek-maple and rhubarb cardamom.  Incredibly inventive, these brews went heavier on the spice and lighter on the sweet maple or tart rhubarb than expected.  I’d especially recommend asking for them in a cocktail.

We were unable to manage fitting anything else in our satiated bellies, otherwise the strawberry buttermilk ice cream would have been my perfect dessert.  Other options like fig leaf vanilla bean, mint stracciatella, and chamomile barley toffee offer enough variety for ice cream novices and connoisseurs alike.

Adding yet another star quality farm-to-table pizza parlor to our directory, Lovely’s Fifty Fifty is a must-try for anyone passionate about delicious pies.  From the sourdough crust to the seasonal rotation of original toppings, Lovely’s has the creativity and local-farm consciousness that is raising the bar for restaurants and wood-fired ovens all across America.  Bon appétit!

[Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, 4039 N Mississippi Avenue (between N Mason & N Shaver Streets), 503.281.4060, Dinner (Pizzas & salads, oven roasted vegetables, soups w/ bread, homemade ice cream): Tues-Sun 5:00PM-10:00PM]

(Lucas Knapp 7/13/16)

Runner & Stone storefront in Gowanus, Brooklyn

Breads and pastries for the day including Bolzano miche (made with rye, spelt, cumin, coriander & fennel) and the bakery’s millstone logo in its crust

Fried chicken sandwich on brioche with cabbage slaw & garlic mayo

Indulging in coffee cake crumble, an almond croissant and a palmier

Bakery’s creativity relected in walls made of “belly blocks”, concrete blocks set in old flour sacks

There’s no better example of how a baking resurgence is being woven into the culinary fabric of New York City than at the small but widely acclaimed Runner & Stone bakery cafe, a Michelin-recommended Bib Gourmand (i.e., an affordable and excellent restaurant), located a mere three blocks from the site of one of America’s very first tidewater grist mills in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Yes, that Gowanus. What was once a busy (and notoriously polluted) industrial zone has in recent years become a hotbed of creativity, both artistic and culinary. Runner & Stone (a name which refers to the two stones used to grind grain) opened here in 2012 with a focus on locally sourced ingredients, seasonal dishes, and house-made preparations (they make almost everything here: from their butter, ketchup, and mustard to ricotta, mortadella, pastas and even pastrami).

Inside, the setup is modern but casual and reminiscent of an Italian-style cafe with the front bar counter displaying the day’s breads and pastries and a dining area further back. Despite calm and dark interior colors and industrial elements like a rusted metalwork exterior, the sleek space has an inviting atmosphere courtesy of large front and rear windows (the rear one peers out over a serene Japanese-style garden planted with grasses). The space is definitely on the small side as a dinner destination but if you’re lucky enough to snag a table, it’s organized creatively with mirrors that spread light into the dark nooks.

One of the most unique elements of the space are the three walls made of concrete blocks that were set in old flour sacks. Each one of these bulging “belly blocks” (so called by the design firm, Latent Productions, that fabricated them) display unique rippled wrinkles and fabric creases from the sacks with bubbly textures and curvy shapes that belie the material’s strength while calling to mind the alveole and varied contours of fermentation and a bread’s varied surface.

Originality and experimentation are just as integral to the vision behind the menu as well. Both the baked goods and dishes from the kitchen reflect ideas plucked from a variety of global cuisines (Italian, French, German, Asian) but modified with unique twists that take advantage of what the restaurant’s long list of local suppliers have in season. When I came in for a recent midday visit, I had a tough time deciding what to try among all interesting offerings. I ended up deciding on one of the cafe’s mainstays, a fried chicken sandwich on orange-water scented brioche with cabbage slaw and garlic mayo, and the less typical, banh-mi inspired mackerel, tomato, and shallot sandwich on baguette served with pickled daikon, carrots, cucumber, cilantro.

I was at first surprised by the choice to put fried chicken on brioche but it quickly became apparent that the choice was entirely calculated. The fried chicken turned out to be extremely juicy and the shiny brioche did play its part well, holding together despite the deluge. Flavor-wise, it added a light buttery note but that was fine given that the star of the dish was nestled inside it. As far as the chicken itself went, the meat was, as mentioned, quite moist, which was surprising since I didn’t detect the saltiness or spices that would have come from a brining. I chalked it up to local farm freshness. Unfortunately, the normal fried chicken crunch was overshadowed by this high moisture content which had the side-effect of causing the breading to adhere to the chicken minimally and slide off. Still, it tasted great but the textural miss was a bit surprising given that Chef Chris Pizzulli brings to Runner & Stone years of experience from the Blue Ribbon restaurants, famous for perfecting fried chicken in its various incarnations.

The mackerel on the long-fermented baguette loaf also lacked some compositional finesse but was tasty none-the-less. On the one hand, the French-style baguette was excellent: firm with a thin crust, airy interior, and chewy texture. But the nutty, robust bread and strong fish flavors were an odd pair that lacked a logical bridging flavor. As I ate it, I imagined how flavors like tarragon, dried cranberries, or even something like a lightly sweet miso or creamy plum sauce could brighten up the dish. The delicately pickled vegetables were good but not enough to balance the potent fish and bread.

I also enjoyed a few of the bakery’s pastries and viennoiseries: a coffee cake crumble, an almond croissant, and a palmier. All three were excellent variations of the butter, flour, sugar theme. Although the croissant was less flaky than I’m used to, its thick bottom layer provided a needed foundation for the delightful house-made almond paste smeared inside. Ideal for dunking in coffee, the thin palmier (made from cutting the cross section of a roll of puff pastry layers folded inward) was crisp and glazed with butter on all sides, giving it an almost candy-like shell. My favorite of these three pastries was the coffee cake square.

I’ve always been intrigued by the delicate structural balance achieved in coffee cakes. They are paradoxically both whole and sliceable into coherent units but also in a constant state of near chaos, ever threatened by the specter of small crumbly avalanches. Miraculously, they make it to our mouths held together as much by faith as eggs or gluten. Runner & Stone’s version veered towards the bready and buttery side of the spectrum, which meant it was a little denser, moister, and less prone to such spontaneous disintegration. Also an excellent coffee companion, finishing this little treat provided absolutely no challenge whatsoever.

At this point, there was simply no longer any room in my stuffed belly for anything else (sorry you delicious-looking rye and caraway brownie), so I grabbed one of the freshly baked sesame semolina loaves to bring home. Truth be told, it actually took me a few minutes to choose the semolina from the collection of extremely tempting baked goods on display: spelt pretzels, walnut levain, potato levain, French baguette, olive spelt ciabatta, whole wheat seeded, and their famous and massive dark Bolzano miche (a sourdough made with rye, spelt, cumin, coriander and fennel) which features the restaurant’s mill stone logo on it’s crust. Although not available on the day of my visit, I’ve seen a variety of rye and buckwheat explorations mentioned on their website as well as loaves with pear, fig, and blueberry additions.

Besides this seasonal experimentalism, head baker Peter Endriss (formerly a baker at Per Se and Bouchon bakery, Amy’s Bread, and Hot Bread Kitchen) approaches bread making traditionally and holistically, believing in natural leavening, long fermentation, and using only local eggs, local high-fat butter, and locally grown and milled whole organic grains (from Farmer Ground Flour in Ithaca, NY and Champlain Valley Milling in Westport, NY, among other suppliers).

At home, when it was time to put the semolina to the test, I decided to take a cue from the tuna melt semolina sandwich I saw on Runner & Stone’s lunch menu and try mine with fish as well (in spite of my earlier misadventure with the baguette). Sliced and toasted under a layer of goat cheese and topped with locally smoked Delaware River eel (from Delaware Delicacies in Hancock, NY), gravlax, and mackerel (all on different pieces), the bread proved excellent. The finely ground semolina lifted the heavy fish flavors with a lighter, airier density and gentler sweetness than the yeastier baguette. Although, to be fair, the tried-and-true garnish of lemon juice, red onion, pickled capers and dill probably helped balance things out too.

What I sampled at Runner & Stone was just the tip of the iceberg. Since eating there, I’ve heard good things about the dinner menu, which features intriguing dishes like house-brined and smoked duck pastrami, orecchiette pasta with housemade sausage and broccoli rabe, grass-fed steak with kale chimichurri and housemade buckwheat dumplings. The creativity and dedication to quality local ingredients of Chef Pizzulli and Baker Endriss make return visits to Runner & Stone a must-do pleasure.

[Runner & Stone, 285 Third Avenue (between Carroll & President Streets), Brooklyn, NY, 718-576-3360, Bakery Hours: Mon.-Thu. 7:30AM-10PM, Fri. 7:30AM-11PM, Sat. 8AM-11PM, Sun. 9AM-9PM, Lunch: Mon-Fri 11:00AM-3:00PM, Brunch: Sat & Sun 11:00AM-3:00PM, Dinner: Mon-Thurs 5:00PM-10:00PM, Fri & Sat 5:00PM-11:00PM, Sun 4:00PM-9:00PM, www.runnerandstone.com]

(Matt Bierce, 6/23/16)

[Editor’s Note: Our recent Facebook post praised Elizabeth G. Dunn’s A Call to Carbs in The Wall Street Journal (5/19/16). Ms. Dunn wrote that the “revolution afoot in bakeries across the country” suggests “it might just be OK to love bread again.” The growing awareness that “freshly milled whole grains rich in nutrients as well as flavor are a way to good health” is reflected by our expanding directory of craft bakeries, which offer baked goods and naturally leavened breads, made from scratch and hand-crafted, with the mindful sourcing of ingredients often including local grains and fruits. Contributing writer Matt Bierce had the pleasure of lunching at one of the three in Brooklyn included in our directory. (FWB).]