Black Bear Diner

Ben and I took a nice trip to everyone's favorite: Black Bear Diner. We looked up a nearby place serving bread pudding, and this one popped up. We checked it out and the reviews were neutral. The bread pudding was spongey and mushy and didn't have enough "bread" texture that real bread pudding has. The thing that made this one good were the things that came with it. They poured a delicious caramel pecan sauce on top of the BP and threw on a scoop on vanilla ice cream for good measure.

The truth is, the topping tasted really good, but their job was to mask the fact that the bread pudding didn't taste that great. If we could've taken that sauce and the BP from Moon & Sixpence, it would've been bread pudding heaven...

Moon and Sixpence photo

Mission #1b - Moon and Sixpence

This english pub always has BP on the menu. It was pretty good. Fresh, and a giant sized portion. A good amount for two people to share. It's pretty "bready", and has a nice whiskey sauce. Laura also noted it seemed to have a lot of butter as well. But I'm cool with that.

On a scale of 1 -5, I'm giving it a 3.5

Welcome!

As we begin this adventure into the world of Portland's bread pudding, it might be wise to start with answering the question: What is bread pudding. Courtesy of our friends at wikipedia, we have this nice definition:

Bread pudding is a dessert popular in British cuisine, Puerto Rican cuisine, Mexican cuisine, Argentina, Louisiana Creole and that of the Southern United States, as well as Belgian and French cuisine. The French refer to it by the English name "pudding" without the word "bread" and the Belgians call it Bodding or broodpudding, which literally translates as bread pudding. In Spanish it is also referred to as "Capirotada," "Migas" and "Pudín de Pan".^[1][2] It is made using stale (usually left-over) bread, suet, egg, sugar or golden syrup, spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, mace or vanilla, and dried fruit.

While Ben is at work this afternoon, I'll be spending the day inside, plotting out our future bread pudding quest locations.

Mission #1a - Lolo Restaurant

This place on Alberta St, supposedly has some good Bread Pudding. Unfortunately, it is not always on the menu. So this one will have to wait. Lesson: call ahead.