Merc Finds Portland's Best Brunch | The O Ranks Arrosto a Top Cheap Eats Spot

ARROSTO—In its Cheap Eats column, The O this week singled out Arrosto, the new Italian Riviera-style chicken rotisserie inside Providore Find Foods by the Pastaworks folks, for its $12 quarter chicken with sides. Restaurant critic Samantha Bakall says "it's plenty" for one person, and while the chicken is "tender and lemon-scented," the baby arugula salad is what "we would go back for," for "its bracing lemoniness with a zing of anchovy, the chicken-y crunch of the breadcrumbs, and tang of hard cheese." It was a "perfect salad if there ever was one."

EXPATRIATE—The Merc critic Andrea Damewood declared Naomi Pomeroy and Kyle Webster's Expatriate "the best brunch in Portland," for its dishes which invoke "the soul of Southeast Asia—funky and fishy and without pretense." She'd eat the congee, a bowl of "dashi, Chinese celery, fried garlic and shallots, fish sauce ponzu, and an oversize poached duck egg," every morning, and the David Howitt cocktail—"a frothy blend of bourbon, a whole egg, crème de cacao, cinnamon syrup, Averna, whole milk, and Extracto cold brew"—is unlike anything she's ever sipped.

As a bonus, Damewood weighs in on the recent brunch changes at Beast, too, saying it remains "tried and true": smoked spring salmon is "beautifully plated" and the Beast hash "had a beautifully executed buttery sauce béarnaise."