Farm-to-Table Dining Guide: Lunch

The restaurants listed here represent just a sampling of Portland’s many fine eateries. For a more complete list of restaurants, please visit our partner directory.

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Not your everyday pizza joint, Hot Lips Pizza delivers its pies by bike or electric car and uses loads of local ingredients. Its five locations also happen to turn out some of the best slices in town. The pepperoni is great, but the real draws are the seasonal pies. Try the organic pesto and tomato in summer, or the butternut squash and Brie in winter.

Downtown’s Chef Naoko Bento Café has made a name as a great place for a healthful lunch. Walk up to the counter at this Japanese spot and choose from rice bowls and multi-dish bento meals featuring locally sourced grilled chicken or ginger-marinated wild salmon. Each entrée comes with Asian vegetable preparations, such as miso-marinated eggplant and gobo root salad with light sesame dressing.

You get more than a locally sourced and eminently affordable lunch when you stroll into one of the three locations of Elephants Delicatessen. You can pick up a sustainable sack lunch in which all of the containers, utensils and napkins are either 100 percent biodegradable or recyclable. And inside that lunch sack? Try the turkey or tuna mini-sandwich — served on a house-made buttermilk roll — and a cup of tomato-orange soup.

For a deli experience that resonates of the bustling streets of New York, make a beeline for Kenny & Zuke’s, downtown near Powell’s City of Books. Meats are cured and smoked in-house, and the flavorful pastrami is a must-have. Taste it on fresh rye bread in the Reuben, in the pastrami and egg salad, or on the decadent pastrami burger. Wash it all down with an egg cream — if, that is, you still have room after tackling these huge portions.

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Politicos from nearby City Hall and Francophiles alike love Carafe, an airy bistro not far from the waterfront. Lunch in the charming black-and-white-tiled dining room promises such French classics as local mussels in silky crème fraîche broth and savory sandwiches like the juicy Oregon Country Beef burger with Camembert. Chef Pascal Sauton’s daily specials highlight the region’s finest, from halibut cheeks to heirloom tomatoes.

At the West End’s Clyde Common, the spare, contemporary dining room echoes the food from the open kitchen — simple, Mediterranean-informed fare that focuses on the flavors of the season. Think tender house-made tagliarini pasta with herb and nettle sauce or steamed clams with fingerling potatoes and a touch of chili pepper.

Traditionalists in the mood for a juicy burger and fries would do well to make a stop at Café Castagna before exploring the Hawthorne district on the eastside. Dine on the patio or inside this lively, casual bistro. Enjoy a refreshing butter lettuce salad or one of the city’s best burgers, served with wispy french fries.

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Well before Portland earned a national reputation as a culinary destination, Chef Greg Higgins was leading the charge for sustainable, organic cooking at his Cultural District restaurant, Higgins. Sit in the elegant dining room or wood-paneled bar and enjoy upscale dishes — wine-steamed mussels touched with lemongrass, say — or more casual but equally fabulous fare in the form of a beloved sandwich piled with house-cured pastrami.

When you’re exploring the Pearl District, the best place to see and be seen is the sleek, sexy dining room at Bluehour. The Bluehour Cobb is the namesake dish, but regulars also enjoy the niçoise and Caesar salads, the French omelet with Italian black truffles, and the Dungeness crab sandwich. If you’re really hungry, opt for the prix fixe lunch, which concludes with your choice of dessert or cheese plate.

Another Pearl favorite for lunch is Giorgio’s. The gracious and refined atmosphere created by Italian-born owner Giorgio Kawas is the perfect setting in which to enjoy sumptuous signature pastas like the pappardelle with roasted wild boar ragù.

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$ Average entrée less than $14         $$ $14-$20         $$$ More than $20