Blossoming Lotus, My foray into Portland was outstanding!

This is one of those, "It can only happen to me," kind of posts.

I had a wonderful lunch in Portland, OR at the Blossoming Lotus and took some amazing pictures with my brand new iPhone 4.  I'm used to the iPhone 3 grainy pics and these new pics showed amazing detail of the food.  Unfortunately, as I type this from the Apple store on the Upper West Side I found out that Radio Shack sold me a DEMO phone.  Although I could see the pics on the camera, they wouldn't open and they are lost and gone forever.

So now a quick word picture and hopefully my next photos with the new phone will meet with better success.

Blossoming Lotus is a nice bright airy restaurant in a fairly residential neighborhood.  To me it was quintessential Portland vegan, with the waitstaff appropriately tattooed and pierced.  I wouldn't have it any  other way.  The service was friendly and although they were out of Avocado, which was highly recommended as an addition to the Spicy BBQ sandwich, I didn't think the sandwich lacked for anything.

I have been eating a ton of BBQ lately that has been KC sweet and it was a nice change to enjoy the smokey in your face "this is BBQ" flavor.  The whole sandwich just worked, flavors melded and most importantly in a sandwich, (we had the whole wheat bread), it stayed together bite after bite.  I never had soy curls before and our waiter and I seemed to concur that it was a west coast product.  I found it to be a "gardein" like "meaty" substance that held flavor well.  Apparently this is a dried product that is reconstituted.

Both sandwiches were colorful with bright orange carrots, brown soy curls, and bright green lettuce.

Spicy BBQ Sandwich $8 seasoned soy curls sauteed with red onion and smokey whiskey ginger BBQ, served warm on grilled whole grain bread or in a whole wheat tortilla with romaine, tomato, sprouts* and lemon wasabi aioli add avocado for $1

The eye opener in the Thai BBQ sandwich is the surprise of the crunchy noodles.  It was a great contrast to most squishy filled wraps.  With a really nice Thai sauce and a bit of a spice kick, was a great lunch wrap.  It too held together nicely which to me means that it wasn't overstuffed.

Crispy Thai BBQ Wrap $8 thai spiced bbq soy curls, crispy rice sticks, carrots, cucumber, red cabbage and romaine, with sweet ginger sauce, wraped in a whole wheat tortilla

I also had a delicious and refreshing smoothie with rice milk and fruit that was a nice compliment to the food.


I had a wonderful picture of a display case with amazing looking desserts.  We had a chocolate chai and a chocolate mint piece of pie.  Yes, that's 2 pieces.  I'm not a dessert person, I keep saying, but places like this can cost me another 45 minutes in the gym for each meal.  They were raw and outstanding desserts.  

Once again I apologize for the lack of photos.  Thanks Radio Shack but thanks Apple genius Allen for getting it all back together.