In Portland, Screen Door is the place to go to when you want to enjoy the best of Southern soul food. Screen Door offers a fusion of South Carolina cuisine with Creole and French cooking from New Orleans. You can also rest assure that all of the produce and meats you eat here is local, natural, and organic; gathered fresh from the garden. What a way to make us feel less guilty about eating rich and savory soul food yess??! Even though the foods look and taste heavy, they don’t feel heavy in your stomach. It’s a win-win to eat here!

Our first dish is the crispy fried buttermilk-battered chicken. There is no way you can have the full experience of soul food without ordering some basic fried chicken. In fact, this chicken was all natural boneless breast and thigh, topped with tasso ham gravy and served with mashed potatoes and collard greens. This already feels like a handful to say, but the simplicity of the dish surprises your taste buds at first bite. The chicken is cooked to crispy perfection and invites you in to the juicy, tender and moist chicken inside. The perfectly seasoned skin just peels off easily from the savory chicken. Mashed potatoes were smooth and creamy and the gravy served well as the medium that bonded the two. I didn’t even have time to enjoy the collard greens because I was so wrapped up in the chicken!

I have never tried crispy fried oysters before, but here I did! Served with gribiche dipping sauce, these oysters were MOUTH-WATERING. Again, Screen Door knows how to fry their food well because the thick and crispy skin on these oysters were just as perfect as the fried chicken’s. Full of flavor and seasoning, the crunchy skin just totally breaks to juice out the moist and soft oysters inside.

I don’t think pictures can do justice to how soft and juicy and savory and juicy and more juicy these oysters were!!!

This was probably my favorite dish just by default because of the mac and cheese. Forget the main protein which was the crispy fried catfish. It was all about the mac n cheese for me!!!! Baked to perfect cheesiness, this mac n cheese was so packed with cheesy flavor and thick with creaminess.

Again, orgasm in my mouth with each bite!!!

I couldn’t decide on which restaurant I wanted to blog about first from my Portland trip, but I defaulted to Screen Door for my never dying love for soul food. There is literally NO soul food in SoCal so forget about the 626. Any chance I can try soul food in another city or state, I am all fours for.

Happy Tuesday for now! Stay tuned for more Portland restaurants 😛