He Who Saved Portland For Me.

The title kind of explains why I wasn't able to post for the past few days. I was up in Portland for my cousins wedding. While waiting for the wedding day, my parents and I were a bit lost in this foreign town. However, we managed to find a savior in Downtown Portland who managed to give us a huge load of information on the best places to dine in the city. This man's name is Jacques and he is the foodie and wine connoisseur behind the counter in "Portland Wine and Cigar."

My parents and I wandered into the store late at night on our first night in Portland because we ate a lot on the road an my mom wanted to have a glass of wine in the room. It didn't happen that we wandered into the store and Jacques began to tell us about places to eat; we were actually wondering if there was a place for dessert in walking distance from that store. When we asked him he began to give us a lot of great information about the city including a place called "Standard Bakery" to go for breakfast. However, he told us that there is no place to have dessert at all which is sad.

Jacques did direct us to a restaurant called Ribolita who makes the best flan he's ever tasted. He also bet that if it wasn't the best flan we've ever tasted, he'd pay for it; he even called the restaurant for us. Unfortunately, they didn't have any tables in the restaurant, however, when we went to the restaurant, the hostess kindly packed up two servings of the flan in it's presentation as it would be on the plate. It turned out after we ate it that it was the best flan that we'd ever eaten.

The next morning, we went over to Standard Bakery to have some of the best almond croissants of all time which Jacques had recommended and we headed back to the wine shop to thank him for the great flan. He was happy that we liked it and we started talking about how much he liked the city since he wasn't originally from there. Eventually, he told us about his meal the night before at Hugo's. It was his first time there and he said it was one of the top 5 restaurants he had ever eaten in. Judging from the fact that he has eaten in some of the best restaurants in the world while touring and selling wine.

After he told us about Hugo's he told us all of the best places to eat in Portland, including Miyake, Street and Co., as well as Ribolita, for the best Italian (I'm usually very skeptical of Italian restaurants, though when we went there for the flan, it smelt pretty good). So I have to thank Jacques for his help and hospitality and he really saved us from eating poorly over the period of our time in Maine (THANK GOD!).