It started with smoked brisket and jungle curry.
Two years ago this week, Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom, the Bangkok-born chef behind Portland restaurants Langbaan, PaaDee and Hat Yai, teamed up with Texas barbecue kingpin Matt Vicedomini for a dish at Feast Portland, the annual food and drink bacchanal. Vicedomini, the Long Island native behind powerhouse barbecue cart Matt’s BBQ, handed over some slow-smoked wagyu beef brisket wrapped in pink-hued butcher paper. Ninsom grabbed the blazing curry paste that provides the intense heat for Hat Yai’s mussels, added a little fish sauce to deepen the flavor, then placed the sliced meat, some nectarines, smoked tomatoes and the curry over chicken fat rice.
It was the talk of the festival.
Some restaurants grow on you slowly, dish-by-dish, impressing you more with each experience until you can’t imagine living without them. Eem, the North Portland restaurant born with that brisket jungle curry and our 2019 Restaurant of the Year, is more like a sledgehammer to the face, an only-in-Portland mashup of Thai flavors, Texas barbecue and tropical cocktails. It seems so obvious in hindsight, it’s amazing no one thought of it before.*
*(Two Austin restaurants, Kemuri Tetsu-Ya and Loro, have paired smoked meats with Asian flavors before, and Ninsom himself mined this vein to lesser effect at Kim Jong Smokehouse. But it’s the quality of Vicedomini’s barbecue and the intensity of the Thai curries from Ninsom and Rassamee “Nim” Ruaysuntia that unlock Eem’s full potential.)
The third element, and the “E” in the restaurant’s name between Earl and Matt, is Eric Nelson, the enthusiastic ringleader behind the madcap island cocktail pop-up Shipwreck. Nelson brings a vacation vibe, blended piña coladas and, crucially, management experience from his time running Laurelhurst Market’s bar. Most of all, he keeps things fun. (“Eem,” we should note, is also a romanized version of the Thai word for “satiated,” but it’s sweeter to think of them naming their restaurant like a junior high bowling team. Mine was called “Best Friends.”)
Together, this dream trio tapped into an all-you-care-to-eat buffet’s worth of Portland restaurant trends: Texas-style smoked meats, now found everywhere from scrappy Southeast Portland food carts to upscale downtown hotel restaurants. Tropical cocktails, which borrow the fun and flavor of Tiki while passing on the Polynesian pastiche. A bartender in Nelson who channels his sobriety into creative nonalcoholic cocktails. And, crucially, like our 2018 Restaurant of the Year Canard, it’s all available for less than $20 a dish.
This is no undiscovered gem. A quiet Monday night at Eem might still mean every table is full. And on Fridays and Saturdays, the line to check in might stretch past the white leather clamshell waiting area, out the door and down North Williams Avenue.
Once you snag a table, preferably under one of two Singha beer umbrellas that stretch from the sidewalk to the dining room under two massive open garage doors, you might already have a drink in hand. And if you’re lucky, it might have arrived in a ceramic blowfish, snail shell or surf wave, or — seemingly at random — with its contents lit up from within by a brightly colored light. Some tables around you have probably ponied up for the Daggermouth, a brass-colored bowl of peach-flavored punch made with Aperol, brandy, Korean makgeolli, sparkling wine, decorative orchids and ice that requires at least four people to finish.
It’s all hands on deck in the kitchen as well. Executive Chef Colin Yoshimoto, previously of Poke Mon, chases that same quality fish with fatty albacore tuna slices and fresh summer corn in a fortified tom kha broth, complete with a fiery tomato nahm prik given the thumbs up by Ruaysuntia, the early Langbaan cook and Eem’s resident curry savant. After long threatening to serve a pork steak at his cart, Vicedomini offers it here, only instead of a salt and pepper rub, Eem’s is glazed with fish sauce and palm sugar, sliced into an accordion and served with a pair of spicy Thai dipping sauces and lettuce for ssam-style wrapping. Ninsom’s fingerprints are all over the place: that smart tom kha addition to the albacore, the beets and puffed jasmine rice in magenta-bright coconut cream, the easy blend of smoky-funky-sour flavors rising from the barbecue fried rice.
And it’s possible Eem hasn’t reached its full potential. The green curry sausage with Oaxacan cheese hasn’t reached the explosive heights of its jalapeño-cheddar cousin at Matt’s BBQ. (A beef boudin with crispy wok-fried egg, on the other hand, is pretty darned delightful). Separated from its curry baths, Eem’s barbecue is not on the same level as Matt’s BBQ or its spin-off Matt’s BBQ Tacos; Vicedomini says he plans to centralize his meat-smoking operations by next year. Desserts are too tame for the surroundings.
But the restaurant’s keystone remains the same as it was two years ago at Feast: a natural fusion of Thailand and Texas, smoke and spice. And that brisket jungle curry is still a showstopper. At Eem, it’s joined by another coconut milk-free curry: the elegant sour tamarind with halibut and daikon radish. A white curry with brisket burnt ends mirrors my favorite dish at Hat Yai, one I once compared to eating Elmer’s Glue (in a good way ... trust me). Each comes with its own bowl of fluffy jasmine rice and — in traditional Thai style — a fork and spoon.
Even now, Eem’s most successful dishes are those for which some wise soul seems to have asked, “What would happen if this rich Hat Yai curry had some tender Matt’s BBQ in it instead?”
The answer, at least when you’re at Eem, is that it’s five o’clock somewhere, and life is good.
Lunch and dinner, daily; 3808 N. Williams Ave. Suite 127; 971-295-1645; eempdx.com