Menu
Around Portland Tours
  • Book Now!
    • Custom tours and corporate events
  • Bike Around PDX
    • Bike Around Portland
    • Hike and Bike: Columbia River Gorge Hidden Waterfalls
    • Food Carts of Portland bike tour
    • Doughnuts, Coffee and Street Art bike tour: Local Secrets
    • Street Art PDX Bike Tour
    • Cannabis Culture Bike Tour
    • Rent bikes and trailers
  • Walk Around PDX
    • Multnomah Zen: Hike the Columbia Gorge Waterfalls
    • Forest Park: The urban hiking tour
    • Best of the City walking tour
    • Macabre Ghost History of Portland, Oregon Eastside walking tour
    • Portland, Oregon city tour: Parks, plazas and views
    • Chocolate and Coffee walking tour
    • School tours
    • Sunrise, Doughnuts and Coffee on the Aerial Tram
    • Craft Breweries of Portland walking tour
    • Oregon Coast Adventure full-day hiking tour
    • Wy’East Mountain and Columbia Gorge Waterfall adventure
  • Story
    • News and media
    • Story of the city
Around Portland Tours

Montelupo: Everyday pasta. Every day is wonderful.

Posted on December 2, 2021December 22, 2021

02 December 2021

on a blond wood picnic style table, wide white bowls filled with radiatori style pasta and a root vegetable focused dish. the radiatori style pasta is covered with a bolognese sauce and parmesan and herbs and is in the foreground

Montelupo‘s reviews are a confusing place to spend time, and I spent several occasions wandering through the reviews before making the decision to visit, so I’ll spare you: yes, the pasta is outrageously good (although according to one or two people there are aberrations to this universal awesomeness); yes the bread comes cold, although it is very good bread. On a chilly day like the one we visited, warm bread might be a welcome thing, so if it’s something you need, skip the otherwise obligatory Italian bread with olive oil. Or take the whole kit and caboodle home and everything can be served at the temperature you desire. Also: yes, everything comes out at once, with the exception of dessert. I too am a traditionalist and love the appetizer first, but that is not to be your Montelupo experience.

Unless you have reservations, you’ll sit outside, in a spacious but oddly college campus-like tent. I half-expected to be told about the reunion cocktail hour by my very young wait staff. All these things being said, I absolutely loved Montelupo and would go again.

on a blond wood picnic style table, wide white bowls filled with radiatori style pasta and a root vegetable focused dish. the radiatori style pasta is covered with a bolognese sauce and parmesan and herbs. the root vegetable dish is topped with radish slices and some kind of green. there are colored plates; a pink and slate grey one are empty and a dark blue one has wedges of bread and a little container of olive oil.

It’s not just the very classically made, perfectly cooked and seasoned food. It’s the tiramisu. Absolutely, 100 percent, you must go with expectation of having this as your last course. I eat a lot of tiramisu; I worked an Italian restaurant in college (yes we served warm garlicky bread, I ate it as lunch with a giant side of marinara sauce many days, writing about it makes me hungry), visited Italy with a friend whose husband grew up there, so I have eaten far more than my share of tiramisu and prepared it too. This is absolutely the best. (There is probably better in Italy; but not in Portland.)

As experiences go I would recommend inside dining, unless you have a big group or are like me and don’t think far enough ahead for reservations. The very good market inside includes both to-go, heat-at-home entrees and pasta and sauce to cook and serve later, as well as some staples like olive oil and salt.

Montelupo, 344 NE 28th Avenue, is located on what once was known as “restaurant row,” a dense collection of great establishments spanning inner NE and SE 28th Avenue. They’re open early for coffee, 8 a.m. daily, and dinner is served 4 to 8:30 p.m. daily.

read more

  • Bike Around Portland
  • Blog Around Portland
    • Beer
    • Coffee
    • FAQ
    • Food
    • Things to do
    • Weather
  • Custom tours
  • Gifts
  • Multnomah Falls
  • Our favorite tours
  • Stories and poetry
    • Black Lives Matter
    • What is new
  • Walk around Portland
  • Who we are

Tours: 503-998-3170

Find us at 833 SE Main Street #124, Portland, OR 97214.

We have tours every day. Contact us for more!

©2023 Around Portland Tours | WordPress Theme by Superb WordPress Themes