Noble Rot - Portland

Friendly professional service, a sophisticated crowd and great food. What more could you ask for?

This was our first visit, and overall we were impressed. Initially, the hostess showed us to a large table directly underneath a loudspeaker that was emitting electronic music — not unpleasant, but not something that we would want in our ears during dinner. On request, she moved us to a table on a partially-enclose terrace, which did not have the piped music, and from where we could see the sunset. This was a big improvement; we would not have enjoyed eating inside the main body of the restaurant. We had several starters: roasted hazelnuts, onion tart, burrata, and cucumber salad. They were all good, but the first three all had too much added sweetner. Carmelized onions are sweet-enough by themselves; there is no need to add sugar and balsamic. Similarly, the burrata came with flakes of what looked like melted and refrozen sugar on it, and the hazelnuts had been drizzled with honey. I don 't expect to find such a heavy-hand with the sweeteners in a Portland restaurant. The cucumber salad was probably my favorite item: beautifully presented and with a surprising complexity of flavours. I would order all of these items again, but would enquire about added sweeteners from the waitstaff beforehand. For mains, I had the seared salmon, which was very good —a tad too black on the outside, but just perfect inside. It came with some creamed corn, which was really tasty. My companions both had the lamb T-bone, which they told me was excellent too. Now we were high on the restaurant! Unfortunately, desert was disappointing. There wasn 't anything interesting on the desert menu, but hoping that the deserts would be better than described, my companions tried a Chocolate Brownie and a Crème Brûlée (both just OK), and I tried the Peanut Butter and Jelly , which the waitress described as bread pudding with a fruit drizzle and peanut Butter ice cream. The last was a bust; I didn 't eat it. It was more of a cake than bread pudding, and the fruit did taste like jelly.

Sit outside for the best experience. Everything was excellent.

The food was incredible and the onion tart must have been the best part of the meal. I'm very glad we also got the chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream as a perfect end to the night

Amazing dinner, setting, service and overall experience