8-10-2013 Alberta Street Festival and Bite of Oregon

We live only a few blocks from Alberta Street.  Alberta street has a bunch of interesting little restaurants, bars, and shops.  The last Thursday of each month they have a street fair and they also hold this street festival.  It is HUGE and spans about 20 blocks.  There were tons of vendors selling handmade art, jewelry, food, etc.  There are also plenty of corporate outreach like the power company, car companies, home energy auditors, etc.  There is a real green focus here in Portland and a lot of the booths were about energy saving, electric car sharing, renewable energy opt ins, etc.

After that we caught the bus and headed downtown to the Bite of Oregon. It was a pretty big event, but honestly it was mostly fair food and food trucks.  They did have a chefs table but that food wasn't vegetarian and the portions were small and it didnt look all that great.  The trouble with the Bite event is that Portland is an outstanding food town and it is hard to compete with the restaurants when you are operating out of a carnival atmosphere.  The band didnt really resonate with us so we headed over to get some dinner.

We went to Luc Lac.  This is a very popular, inexpensive Vietnamese place....it is so popular that they have a very particular way to operate.  They have it in 3 rigid steps that are written down.

1. order your food at the register
2.  get your number and step aside
3. At the appropriate time the "guy" will tell you where you can sit.  You get your own silverware and water and everything.

This place can get very crowded and has a great happy hour from 4-7

crispy vege eggrolls

Peanut tofu with rice (replace pic)

Anyway, you can order the main dish with either noodles, rice, or on a sandwich....your choice.

After that it was getting late so we played a couple of games of pinball and cara shopped at a resale shop and then we headed home.