Day 3 of the Portland Foodie tour - and today we are traveling by bike! We registered for Bites by Bike, a tour run by Portland Pedal Bikes. Our tour guide Scott, set us up with bikes, helmets and a safety demo before we headed to our first stop; World Cup Coffee. This establishment, obviously a coffee shop, also roasts coffee beans from around the world. We got a behind the scenes tour of the roasting process and got to stick our head in a bin of roasted aromatic "Puddle Jumper Espresso" beans which smelled so amazing that it made you want to rub your face all over the beans. The people in charge of creating the descriptions for the coffee use essential oils of different smells to relate these to the batch of coffee. We had fun smelling the essential oils and guessing what they were, there was; potato, peas, coriander, smoke and many more.
Along the way we had fun biking around the city seeing the buildings, the parks and all of the different restaurants and pubs. The next stop was an amazing Deli which offered a variety of smoked meats and salami, we were presented with a spread of in house made bread, salami and cheese as well as sweet and salty roasted hazelnuts. Everyone devoured the board, as we hadn't had any food yet that day!
Next stop was Two Tarts Bakery, which was described as a small but delicious bakery. We were served Hubba Hubba cookies, which were blackberry butter cream icing sandwiched between a vanilla bean shortbread cookie and Chocolate Starburst cookies which were a chocolate nib shortbread sandwiched with delicious chocolate ganache. YUMO!
We rode around the Pearl District of Portland, looking at the overhanging trees, neat funky buildings and artsy shops. We stopped at Hot Lips Pizza for a slice of thin crust pizza with sharp cheddar cheese and broccoli. We also got a taste of the in house made raspberry Italian soda, which was a flashback to backyard raspberries picked right off of the bush.From there we hit up the Portland State University Farmers Market where everything was bright and fresh and a lot of neat pumpkins and late fall veggies. After the market we cycled over to Cacao, a drinking chocolate shop which serves drinking chocolate and imports specialty chocolates from around the world. Jenny bought some really aromatic and flavourful Earl Grey Chocolate, while Nicole and I sampled the Bacon Chocolate and the Peanut Butter Chocolate.
Us at the end of our bike tour with full happy tummies.
After the amazing bike tour, we were full but not too full to pass up a French Dip Sandwich from Big Ass Sandwiches, a food cart. The French Dip, has a freshly baked bun with slow cooked roast beef, swiss cheese stuffed with hand cut french fries and served with home made Au Jus. We decided to share the sandwich, and when we ordered the dude told us that he "couldn't split the sandwich 3 ways". We ensured him this was fine as we were just going to take turns enjoying it.
We decided that a sandwich of this size requires you to close your eyes so you can fit it in your mouth.
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