J W.
Yelp
My greatest food discoveries have never come from an online rating that read more like a thirteen-year-old's fanmail to One Direction than a restaurant review. Rather, they have come from driving aimlessly around under-explored neighborhoods. So it's appropriate that the best meal I had in Portland was found in this manner. When I spied La Poblana in the parking lot of the gas station on the northeast corner of Cedar Hills and Canyon, I pulled in so fast my tires scarred the street.
Like any taco truck, La Poblana peddles tacos and burritos in a variety of proteins. Nopales and tlacoyotl are on offer on the weekends. But you're not at La Poblana for this stuff - any taco truck or Mexican restaurant will do if you want asada tacos or a plate of nopales. You're at La Poblana for the Pueblan cemitas - their lifeblood, their star, their reason for existing.
La Poblana's cemitas ($7.50) are a hefty tome of a sandwich, built upon a sesame seeded brioche-like bun. This bread both gives and takes - compressing like a goosedown pillow between your teeth, yet resisting your bite with a push as gentle as one breaking from a deep kiss for a short gasp of air. A generous pollo milanesa is tucked into the bun; these thin slips of chicken are fried to a noisy crisp in a delightful breading not too dissimilar from panko. And then, there's the avocado that tastes of clotted cream, the tart and crunchy escabeche, the buttery grilled onions, and the salty threads of quesillo cheese.
Every texture, every density, every flavor, every expression, and everything pleasant about food is managed harmoniously in this sandwich.
This sandwich makes you weak in the knees.
...It makes your eyelids close slowly in bliss, while the corners of your lips turn upward and a tingle crosses the nape of your neck.
...It moves across the palate like Chopin's fingers across the ivories.
...It comes undone in the mouth like a fiddlehead unfurling on time-lapse video.
...It feels.
...It smokes Cubans and drinks scotch.
...It takes you to the symphony.
...It pulls up in a siren red Corvette and revs the engine.
...It draws the drapes, dims the lights, and tears off your clothes.
...It impresses itself permanently into your memory - it is one of three meals about which I will always dream, hoping to someday find something equally perfect.
*** CASH ONLY ***
