African Peanut Bowl

African Peanut Bowl

Lunch at Harlow on Hawthorne, Portland, Oregon

These days eating out in Portland is often a choice between a vegan soy-free kale quinoa bowl and a bacon burger on a syrup-encrusted donut; beverages are a choice between a wheatgrass smoothie and a hand-roasted double espresso (or alternatively, a craft brewed anise infused IPA); desserts are a choice between an organic gluten-free amaranth scone or a tiramisu triple-chocolate mousse cake. Restaurants, with the exception of high-end and ethnic venues, veer towards one extreme or the other. Either it’s a meat place whose menu contains meat, meat with grease, meat with another kind of meat, and mac n cheese for your vegetarian friend; or it’s a piously socially conscious vegetarian/vegan place serving raw greens, protein-like substance, sesame dip and whole wheat sunflower seed “bagels.” I’m not against eating healthy or eating delicious. I’m not even against eating meat and I’m definitely not against eating gluten. What I am against is food as doctrine.

Harlow is solidly in the vegan gluten-free kale and quinoa party and normally I would choose an ethnic hole-in-the-wall over a trendy health food destination. But I was meeting my friend Kirsten, who eats 100% vegetarian and is a fellow picky eater; she preferred Harlow, since it’s all-vegetarian, and gives her more food choices than some of the other places I had mentioned. Moreover, we had met there once before and both of us liked the food.

This time, before setting out on my bike, I spent a significant length of time studying the online menu. Last time, I had chosen the “Urban Bowl” with peanut sauce, which was fine, but it lacked a certain something. It was pretty much all vegetables, which was what I wanted, but there wasn’t enough flavor present to compensate for the lack of grains. Most of the other choices would involve much the same thing as the Urban Bowl, only with added grains, so I decided to go wild with the African Peanut Bowl (with rice instead of quinoa, whose texture I find abhorrent, and minus the cilantro, needless to say).

I’m glad I did! I mean, there’s no going wrong with peanuts. And the dish was packed with KALE, which normally I would avoid—in favor of more reasonable greens such as spinach or chard. But the strong peanut sauce flavor overwhelmed the potential nastiness of the kale to a sufficient degree. The brown rice was a satisfying counterbalance to the greens and the peanut sauce. A pleasant foundation for a congenial chat with a friend.

Yes, it was vegan. Yes, it was gluten-free. And it would be nice if more restaurants focused on the health basics rather than scientifically questionable fads. But until then, I’ll be getting my greens, fruits, whole grains and legumes where I can find them, and I can undoubtedly find them at Harlow.