República
Restaurant · Pearl
100 NW 10th Ave, Portland, OR 97209
Highlights
Mexico-forward tasting menus telling cultural stories with local ingredients
Mexico-forward tasting menus telling cultural stories with local ingredients
"This Pearl District tasting menu restaurant takes a foundation of Mexican ingredients, culinary techniques, and historical context to concoct dishes like sablefish in the style of pescado zarandeado, or salmon aguachile with black garlic and rhubarb. On a past visit, duck breast arrived over a duo of moles, incorporating apricots, squash, and pistachio to bring out the wild gaminess, butteriness, and sweetness of the bird. Servers will often talk through the personal, creative, and historical lineage of each dish as it lands at the table, giving the overarching meal a sense of place and dimension. The meal is $128 for seven courses and $150 for 10, with reservations on Opentable." - Brooke Jackson-Glidden
"At this Pearl District tasting menu restaurant, the team delivers the nuance of Mexican cuisine in an imaginative way, while acknowledging and interrogating the impact of colonialism. Menus change frequently; in a past meal, chef Jose “Lalo” Camarena served steak aguachile with insight into its Japanese influence. On the palate, it murmured of tartare and tataki, mustard notes blending with mirin, tobiko providing a pop of brine among the tomato water. With a crack, diners smacked open a mushroom cloud of masa crisp to reveal “what the Spaniards brought and tried to destroy,” including amaranth, a religiously and culturally significant crop, burned by colonizers. Alongside the dishes, beverage director Miguel Marquez gives the wines selected the same level of context, provided with each tasting pour." - Katherine Chew Hamilton
"Tableside lamps illuminate artfully constructed dishes at this Pearl District tasting menu restaurant, which uses pre- and post-colonial Mexican dishes as inspiration for a parade of dishes. For example, the corn masa beverage atole becomes a sauce for celery root gnocchi, while infladita here arrive filled with rajas and requesón. Reservations are essential here." - Katrina Yentch
"There aren’t many places in town to try food highlighting Mexico’s culinary history—while also managing to be fun, modern, and delicious. If you want to have the kind of transportive experience found in contemporary Mexico City restaurants, República’s seven- and ten-course tasting menus offer a great approximation closer to home. You’ll get small bites made with Mexican and Indigenous ingredients like annatto, palo santo, and plenty of corn, alongside dishes that draw from ancient Mayan times. Come here for a special occasion and add on a wine pairing that features pours exclusively from BIPOC, female, and LGBTQ+ winemakers, with a focus on Mexican and Mexican American producers. photo credit: Caroline Harper Food Rundown The menu at República changes frequently, but here’s a taste of what you can expect when you visit. Scallop, Foie Gras, Strawberry, Tobiko This show-stopper begins with a foie-infused masa cone that gets filled with a “ceviche” of seared foie gras and scallops poached in chile de árbol-infused ghee. If that wasn’t enough, this mixture then gets tossed with strawberry aioli, put in the cones, and garnished with tobiko. Pollo, Repollo, Prawn, Carrot Honoring Mexico’s Filipino influence, this chicken soup deconstructs sopa de ombligo and comes with one-bite cabbage rolls of chicken, prawns, and jalapeño served with chayote and chochoyotes, a.k.a. masa dumplings, for a light, comforting soup that’s an edible history lesson." - Krista Garcia
"This sophisticated tasting menu restaurant in Portland’s Pearl District explores the personal and cultural influences on Mexican cuisine through history, filtering many of those food stories through a Pacific Northwestern lens. In practice, that means ceviche courses may use Oregon albacore, topped with a cracked buckwheat oblea; or, foie gras and scallop taquitos may arrive topped with Oregon strawberry “pearls.” Tasting menus start at $128 for seven courses." - Michelle Lopez
