Reviewing Mother’s Bistro: Comforting traditional home-cooked food in downtown Portland.
When thinking back to what fuels our love for food, the majority of people can attribute their adoration back to the days when their mothers would cook meals for them. These universal memories of mothers toiling away in the kitchen belong to everyone. Family and food are intertwined, and a mother’s cooking not only shapes one’s palate but it is the first introduction to cuisine and builds the foundation of one’s relationship with food for the rest of one’s life. After all, the best meals in life are cooked by our mothers.
Mother’s Bistro appeals to that sentiment expertly. The influence of a mother’s home cooking is represented everywhere in the restaurant. Opened over 20 years ago, the 200-seat restaurant is a Portland institution that specializes in slow-cooked, braised dishes. Like our moms, they believe that good food takes time. At its core, Mother’s Bistro is about celebrating mothers and the comfort food they’ve raised their children on.
The first thing you notice about Mother’s Bistro is the striking decor. Beautiful chandeliers with dark gold fixtures and large windows in the dining area invite people-watching. The classic antique accents give the restaurant a dreamy quality that reminds you of home. Paintings reminiscent of Raphael’s Madonna and Child fill up the walls, along with contemporary photographs of mothers and their children.
Mother’s Bistro’s warm color palette emits calm and comfort with beautiful rich greens, browns, and golds transforming the space. These earthy hues add sweetness to the very busy restaurant. Patrons don’t even mind waiting for a table during the lunch rush because there are just so many lovely furnishings for the eye to focus on. The restaurant’s attention to detail is apparent through cute touches, such as coffee mugs that boldly order “Call your mother.” There are sweet little traces of maternal adoration all throughout the establishment.
The menu begins with a “Mom of the Month” feature. Voted for on the restaurant’s website, a winning mother is selected each month to work with the Executive Chef and Owner Lisa Schroeder to create a special menu for the restaurant. Shroeder spends the afternoon cooking in the mom of the month’s kitchen. By exploring the way they work and their inspirations, she works with the mom to draw from their creativity and showcase their talents to curate a menu of three or four dishes for the month. The winning mom also has a short biography accompanying the menu that she has created. I really enjoyed going on the restaurant’s website and browsing through past mom of the month winners to check out the interesting menus they curated.
My table ordered the Greek frittata, which came with an open-faced three-egg omelet, spinach, feta, kalamata olives, tomatoes, garlic, roasted potatoes, and whole wheat toast. We also had the sausage egg scramble, which consisted of pork apple sausage, cheddar, and roasted potatoes. The delicious dishes came with house-made jam that tasted simply phenomenal!
I had the Migas, a Tex-Mex dish served with scrambled eggs, corn tortillas, onions, bell peppers, chili powder, garlic, and melted cheese. Migas means “crumbs” in Spanish, and the dish is said to have been created by thrifty shepherds who, rather than throw out stale corn tortillas, would fry them up with an egg. The end result is the perfect staple of an extraordinary brunch.
All the food at Mother’s Bistro was delicious, as was the Texican Coffee I enjoyed. The drink contained Smirnoff vanilla vodka, Kahlua, Tuaca, coffee, and whipped cream. With such great dishes and a warm ambiance, it is no surprise that Mother’s Bistro consistently tops the list as one of the best restaurants in Portland. After all, the restaurant is so much more than that; it is a love letter to moms everywhere. It’s difficult to truly encapsulate love, family, and nostalgic cooking in a bona fide manner. Still, Mother’s Bistro succeeds in this extraordinary challenge with tenderness and lots of mouth-watering omelets!