Beast featured in ELLE

When you’re living abroad you tend to miss the strangest things from your home country. The things I crave most (aside from people and places) are the things I rarely gave notice to before moving to Tokyo. Things like boxed macaroni & cheese, television, Nestle Toll House chocolate chips, grass to sunbathe on, sliced turkey or whole wheat bread. The other night I surprised some fellow American friends with homemade cookie dough. I had to ride my bike to two different grocery stores to find all the ingredients, but it was worth it. We practically finished off the dough before it made its way to their microwave oven. You get the idea. I also really miss magazines. For me, these days any English language magazine, no matter the subject, is a slowly savored treat. They’re just so expensive here that I never bother buying them. I’m talking $10.00 - $25.00 for magazines ordinarily costing around $4.00 in The States. But with Driscoll off to LA for work, I decided to go ahead and splurge on some mags for entertainment purposes. One of the magazines I bought was ELLE. Somewhere between catching up on clothing designers pushing for sustainability in fashion and Madonna’s latest whatever, I saw a full-fledged article on Portland’s Naomi Pomeroy and her restaurant, Beast! I couldn’t believe it. I asked myself, “Is this the same Beast I get those emails from?” I was heading over to have dinner with some friends, so I brought the mag with me and upon entering their apartment, promptly shoved the article in their faces (so much pride), “Look!”
“Oh that’s great, Bonnie,” they said. Right then I realized that being from NYC, they must see their local restaurants featured in magazines all the time. Still, it’s fun to see Portland making its way to the notable map. It may not be the biggest city (most people here seem to think it’s all Nike and countryside) but it sure has a lot going for it including–speaking of things I crave–all those fantastic restaurants! Don’t get me wrong, the food here is amazing, but all those Portland restaurants are such a piece of home.