Tim Callinu and Lucky Strike

MySpace is so cool. I hear so many complaints about it, but I shamelessly love it! I've met so many amazing people from that site who are now actual flesh and blood friends of mine. I've been exposed to so much awesome art and music from pretty much every continent on the globe.
Today I got a friend request from "Lost Dominion" who is Tim Callinu, an artist in Portland, who could be my next door neighbor for all I know! I don't know him, but here's some of his art.




artwork by Tim Callinu


LUCKY STRIKE



In other news, I finally found the best Chinese restaurant in Portland: Lucky Strike! It's a bit of a trek getting to it, located at 123rd and Powell, but well worth the journey. Lucky Strike is the closest to authenticate Sichuan cuisine I've had in a Portland Restaurant. I am lucky enough to have some friends who have cooked me authentic Sichuan, specifically Chengdu, style food and it is delicious! From what I've been told, most of the Portland Chinese restaurants serve Americanized versions of Mandarin cuisine: syrupy sweet deep fried morsels or stir frys drowning dispassionately in a bland, translucent gravy. Sichuan cuisine is bold, spicy, smokey, and complex! The Sichuan peppercorn and salty black (broad) bean paste are the most important and unique ingredients to this cuisine and have been absent at every PDX restaurant except for this one. The Sichuan peppercorn is a bizarre flavor/ experience unlike anything else. It is both a flavor and a sensation. It has a bit of a floral flavor that numbs the tongue and mouth. After eating one, inhale with your mouth and you can feel the sensation of the tiny pores on your lips and tongue opening up and cool air pleasantly shooting into them. Ask the server to bring you one to taste alone! It's such a special spice that's so rare to these parts!
I had the pork and cabbage dumplings, the dan dan noodles, and the Guinness Pork Ribs. All three dishes were out of control delicious! Check it out and bring friends so you can try out a few different things!