Lincoln

Our fave Happy Hour, goes to 7. Onion Rings are amazing, and menu changes often.
However, I’m here to talk about our «Valentines» reservations last Thursday. One of the Owners, David, greeted us — whisked my wife and I to OUR table (that we had our first date at 5 years ago) and congratulated us on our anniversary.
Last year on Valentines dinner night, co-​owner Jen met with my wife and put together an impromptu vegetarian plate.
If you’re looking for a local place, with a personal touch and a nationally renowned Chef at a reasonable price (and even better happy hour), make Lincoln your go-​to.
Also great for in and out of town guests.

I have wanted to try this place for some time. On our anniversary, my husband set it up. When we came in, each person greeted us with «Happy Anniversary!» and upon sitting we were given a glass of bubbly.
The owner David came over and was beyond accommodating. I gotta say, in all the positive experiences I’ve had in Portland restaurants (really, the service industry folks in Portland are consistently nice unlike other places I’ve lived — I’m looking at you Southern California) he takes the cake. Came over and spoke with us, explained the menu and was a overall great guy. It would have been hard not to like the meal after that.
But man, oh man, did we like it. We went with the pasta taster because we struggle with making choices. Each one was fancier than the next and all excellent. The pastas were all hand made and had names that I will never remember. Just trust me, they were good.
I’d highly recommend this place for special occasions because they really did make us feel special. I’m gonna go heat up the leftovers now!

We enjoyed the food, service and ambiance at Lincoln. We ordered the humus, bread, cabbage salad, the gnocchi and squash. All were prepared perfectly with flavors out of this world. We’ll be back!

The cornmeal onion rings were delicious, but the rest of the meal was a bit underwhelming. We sat at the bar where they serve a full menu. We had the cornmeal onion rings, octopus, and assorted bread to start, which were all good. One of my friends and I both ordered the gnocchi with lamb ragu. The bartender told us they were different than typical gnocchi because they had a bit of chew, but that they were still good. That should’ve been a warning to us because… They. Were. Not. Good. They were flat and tough. They lamb ragu was good, but there wasn’t much of it in the bowl. My husband had the seafood bread stew, which he really liked. Unfortunately we were still hungry after spending $ 100 for 2 people to have a couple of drinks, appetizers, and an entrée.
I think Lincoln could be really good if they would ditch the odd gnocchi, add more meat to the pasta dishes, and make the portion sizes a bit larger,

The food was surprisingly delicious despite the inaccessible menu and awkward host. It’s really loud so I don’t recommend coming with a large group if you want to hear anything. Also, bring your phone so you can google at least one word per item on the menu. I’d recommend that the chef either start cooking the gnocchi more, include a description of how it is prepared on the menu, or take the item off the menu rather than have the waitress warn that it is really really al dente (aka undercooked) and that people often send it back. I changed my order because she made it sound like hard little hockey pucks, which sounds doesn’t sound good to me. I’d also recommend they put signs on the bathroom doors.

We had delicious appetizers including one that was scallops, cured salmon, quince, and cauliflower purée and was absolutely delightful. The other dishes we had were short rib tartar, pork three ways with beans, roasted chicken with shoestring fries, and a vinegary endive salad all of which were delightful. The atmosphere was very nice with large windows dim lights (in a good way) and awesome music, they played a variety of hip hop including Tupac. All around our experience was very good and we would recommend checking this place out if you haven’t already.

Best service we have ever received!! nSwank restaurant and we had out children with us who have food allergies they treated us like royalty! Highly recommend!

Upon walking in and without knowing it, I was greeted by and seated by the manager, David. I appreciated that customer service. I was solo and took a seat at the bar for happy hour. I went with the $ 6.00 bartenders choice cocktail which was made with spiced vodka, lime juice, syrup. It was decent but no taste that resonated with me. I was kind of expecting it to be spicer (and hoping) so it didn’t really quench my palate. It was also a sadly small portion.
I started with the open faced sandwich with has cheddar, Apple, and brown butter. This was amazing, to say the least — Cheesy and salty but sweet from the Apple. The Melted cheese over the bread is amazing, with a touch of balsamic to add some acidic flavors and really reel in all of your tastebuds. My favorite dish I tried.
The pig ear was not so great in my opinion. It comes fried — was too fried for me and too chewy. All I tasted was oil. The combo just didn’t work. The plate itself was rather boring; there was no presentation to decorate it which made the dish look even more unappealing. I only had a few bites and sent the rest back.
My last happy hour taste tester was the baked eggs, after hearing that they have been a consistent favorite on the menu. It comes with two eggs baked in a skillet with a cream sauce and olives and topped with breadcrumbs. The olives were interesting. While there were bread crumbs on it, I think it would go better with a side of bread toast to dip in the dippy eggs. The baked eggs were a ⁷⁄₁₀ for me. Good but not incredible. I think they needed some more herbs and spices for a unique flavor.
All in all, it’s a great happy hour spot and they have an extensive list of foods from their true menu that are priced much cheaper. Not sure if I’ll be back here but glad I tried it.

This place was pretty darn good. I would be tempted to go 5 star, but they didn’t seem staffed well enough and as a result things took longer than i wanted. The food was great tho. Great Brussels Sprout and grape dish, onion rings, and steak. The gnocchi was AMAZING

Reviews are all over the board on this place, but even so it’s been on our list for quite some time. We were greeted immediately and sat right down.
Service was spot on. We waited for nothing. Our server knew the menu well and had great recommendations. So many recommendations that we couldn’t decide what we should order. She was so confident that she suggested dishes we needed to try, so we did!
Our meal was spectacular. The appetizers, the drinks, the pastas and the meat dishes. There were four of us and we were sharing all over the place. Everything was prepared well and great portion sizes, no one left disappointed. We even topped the night off with dessert, which was also great.
I have had my share of disappointing meals in this town, but this was NOT one of them. Some of the things people complained about I just didn’t experience. Pasta was done well, staff was great and its a place we would definitely return too.

Great food. Had the flank steak and pork loin salad. … Good and rich flavors. Friend had the half chicken also good. Will definitely come back. Needs a more selections for micro brews though other than that food is good and reasonably priced.

I wanted so badly to love Lincoln. I had been dreaming of my dinner here for weeks before I found the time to go, but to my dismay the meal ended up being less than satisfactory.
The service started out really strong. The server and miscellaneous staff that we interacted with were courteous and quite welcoming. I got a really in-​depth introduction to the menu and felt prepared to fall head over heels in love with my meal. My server even helped me enough to steer me away from something I’d have been unhappy with– a gnocchi that is more of a polenta than an actual pasta dish.
Here’s where things went sour: firstly, my cocktail was JUST alcohol. I went for «The Wendell Berry» based on a recommendation. It was basil infused vodka, some sort of rosé and orange bitters. Sounds great. Turns out, it’s more of a shot. No balance. No boisterous flavor. I couldn’t even taste the basil in the «infused vodka» in the slightest. It was awful and I had to tone it down with water multiple times. I’m the sort of guest that feels obliged to drink something purely because I don’t want to be the jackass that sends it back. I hated every moment of that cocktail.
Secondly, the dishes were each pretty subpar. The assorted breads were decent and I liked the honey hazelnut spread but the chickpeas didn’t really fit and weren’t memorable. The cucumber, celtuce and tomatillo salad had way too much mustard. That’s a pretty powerful flavor and it masked everything else. We also had a little gem lettuce salad with boysenberries and it was way oily. Oil is good and great and all but it was totally drenched.
The pasta was a hard choice as Jenn Louis is known for it– we went with the rye lasagnette. I hate to say it but the pasta definitely wasn’t cooked well. Everyone that tried the dish agreed. The texture was really off. I couldn’t believe it but no, the pasta was not good. The last dish we shared as a group was the chicken with arugula and crispy potatoes. Honestly… It was a completely letdown. The chicken was very obviously undercooked. It was SO pink. We almost sent it back but just wanted to leave at this point. The menu also boasted arugula as a part of this dish and there were maybe four pieces of raw arugula strewn next to the soggy «fried» shoestring potatoes. I’ve never had shoestring fries that were soft. They definitely looked crispy but looks can be deceiving.
Lastly, I’d like to point out that my meal here took over 2 hours. TWO HOURS. We only had one drink each. The service was so incredibly slow and its because they had no support staff. The two servers were running the food for the whole restaurant. This experience as a whole was mind-​boggling. I’m sorry to say it wasn’t a good meal.

We’d been meaning to come to this restaurant for some time. Finally made it in and we weren’t disappointed. We met the owner/​chef Jenn Louis and she was so approachable, actually, we didn’t realize it at first, but then her enthusiasm for the food made it clear who she was.
We enjoyed some amazing food from each part of the menu, the soft shell crab with gooseberries was amazing!, as was the salad special. The vinaigrette was really great with the feta. Next we moved on to the appetizer special and then the stracciatella, duck breast fried fava pods, pickled cherries. All of it was crazy good!
Dessert was also the special of the evening, bourbon soaked plums from last summer with a crème fraîche, a white chocolate with pistachios bark of sorts, with fresh currents and two poached rose buds. You couldn’t eat the rose buds, instead you sucked the sweetness out of them. They had been poached in the liquid used to poach pears. YUMMY.
Definitely everyone should come and enjoy a fantastic meal and experience at the Chef’s counter, you won’t be disappointed.

Enjoyed an awesome meal here during their happy hour (5−7PM, Tue-​Fri). It’s not a really cheap happy hour, but it allows you to try a whole table-​full of different plates for about the same price we would’ve payed for just two entrees. Great service, and really quiet when we were here around 6 on a Friday.
Some of the items we ordered:
Poutine morel mushrooms, asparagus, fontina 10
Completely not like poutine at all and really delicious all the same! Dense with flavor and textures.
Baked eggs cream, olives, herbed breadcrumbs 6
So great that we kept wondering how we could replicate this dish for daily home consumption.
Stracciatella rhubarb, ginger, strawberry 8
Basically a cheese plate with tiny bits of everything, and totally worth it. I’d never had cheese quite like that — it was in some weird state between fresh mozzarella and cottage cheese, and perfectly paired with the rhubarb.
Rye lasagnette spinach, garlic, chilies 10
This was the one disappointment. It just felt too much like eating health food, as this very firm pasta had even more of a stiff grain flavor than whole wheat, and was not backed up by enough complementary flavors and textures to balance it out.

Fantastic service made the food even better — my daughter and I asked to sit at the counter and we were richly rewarded with awesome service and great suggestions for dinner — we even had the opportunity to meet the owner and he was so knowledgable and friendly!
When you go — you must try the gnocchi! We found it to be the lightest and fluffiest we have ever experienced — truly amazing — also try the bread plate — my daughter thoroughly enjoyed the honey/​hazelnut dip for the bread — can’t wait to go back !

I came here with a friend after already having a few glasses of wine, so I just had water, while she ate and drank. The bartender was very understanding about that. My friend got a really great cabernet — which she let me try — and a small pasta dish.
I can’t really speak for the rest of the menu, but the place was stylishly posh and the service incredibly good.
The neighborhood is up and coming with lots of little shops, restaurants and wine bars, so this is a must-​stop-​in spot if you are coming from somewhere like TeSoAria (down the street) or heading there after. At least, trying a second wine bar or restaurant is what I like to do when I’m out for the evening and it’s close by.

I was super excited to finally dine at Lincoln. Sadly, I was disappointed by my first dining experience there.
Cheese plate — Good. Your average cheese plate.
Octopus on the plancha — Good. The octopus was cooked well but did not pair with the bitter radicchio on the plate.
Bulls blood beets — This dish was horrible. The beets were super overcooked. They were hard on the outside and gummy on the inside. They were so massacred I really couldn’t even tell they were beets anymore. The dill and burnt butter sauce did not help at all. Blech. Nothing seemed right. I doubt anything could salvage this dish. Scrap it and start new.
Spaccatelli with smoked tallow, speck, sherry — Mediocre. The homemade pasta is excellent. But, the sauce seemed disjointed in flavor. It tasted off.
Popcorn panna cotta with caramel — Unusually delicious. You must eat all the layers together to get the full effect. Definitely pairs well with the recommended Viognier.
I must point out that the customer service we received from the friendly and knowledgeable waitstaff was excellent. Her personality saved our evening at Lincoln and is the sole reason we will give this neighborhood restaurant a second try.

«Maybe, just, I don’t know, walk over there en masse and flip their table over?»
«I can’t tell, is the table bolted down? Could we do that?»
The other party took the last order of Popcorn Panna Cotta and your group is plotting their revenge. Sanjay and Ari you’re good friends with, and you know this is meant as more of a thought exercise than an actual plan, but Solomon and his buddy Bill are wild cards. You consider what you know of your not-​date Liz — how far would she be willing to go to enact vengeance over dessert? You’ve got to admit you’re pretty satisfied with your second choice, the hot fudge sundae — but what if after-​meal treats just don’t *mean* as much to you as they do to other people?
You cast your mind back through the night’s events, looking for a basis for comparison: there was a lot of pork, and everyone seemed to appreciate its presence, so at least you can rule out your dinner companions as being Kosher. You’re not sure if that has any bearing on the schemes to pay back the people at the other table in increasingly violence and confrontational ways, but nonetheless, noted. Pasta and Pig is an incredibly agreeable combination, and you file that phrase, ‘pasta and pig’ (or ‘pasta and pigs?’) away as a possible future foodcart name.
Basically everything that appeared on your table was above reproach, and believe me you’re not unwilling to reproach when the situation calls for it. Even the Bull’s Blood Beets, which (nearly) everyone expressed dismay at learning that the dish contained no actual bull’s blood. («It’s an *heirloom cultivar*,» Ari insisted, and although you weren’t sure her use of ‘cultivar’ was entirely correct here, you decided not to call her on it.)
Actually the best plate ended up being composed almost entirely of vegetables: Brussels Sprouts and Carrots. It seemed far too healthy to be a viable choice, until Liz pointed out the ‘schmaltz’ — definitely not kosher, but yiddish tendencies, interesting. They were baked in said animal fat to some sort of delicious level of perfection usually reserved for non-​vegetable matter, and you’re already absolutely sure you’ll be ordering it again the next time you come.
«I don’t know why we even bothered to order desert,» Solomon points out sips of his digestif, «nothing could possibly top the octopus anyway.»
You’ve had better octopus, barely, you think, but it’s going to be hard to accurately describe the transcendence of that experience. You make a mental note to do Sol a favour and one-​up him on the tentacle matter sometime in the near future. But you’ve already had that bar set unreasonably high — for poor ignorant Solomon, this really might be the best cephalopod he’s had, and it was pretty good, let’s be honest with ourselves.
The conspiracy to teach your fellow restaurant-​goers a lesson evaporates when they finish and clear out — safe to assume they spent more time enjoying their dessert and less discussing what other people were eating. But you all seem comfortable with that, and as you slide your arm around Liz, she glances over and grins at you, and you fiddle with your spoon in your now-​empty sundae dish.

The food delightful.
–Pork loin ($ 28) was tender and well paired with the beans and radicchio.
–Hot Fudge ($ 8) Sundae was really the best I’ve ever had. No too sweet, slight bit of salt on the almonds really brought the flavors together. Sooo good.
–House made Rosemary Citrus Soda ($ 3) was really refreshing.
The service was wonderful.
–Friendly, prompt, great recommendations.
–Food came out quickly but wasn’t as hot hot as I’d have preferred.
The parking was a tad difficult in the area.
–Circled for about 15 mins before finding something.

I wanted to like Lincoln, but sadly, I did not.
Everything was very disappointing and my biggest problem with the restaurant is the laughably small portions and the prices. For $ 100 for two people, we had very mediocre food that wasn’t worth even near that much.
The drinks were the best part of the meal. They have a small cocktail and beer menu, and a long wine list. We had the Citrus Spritz which is $ 18 and serves two people. It was sweet and refreshing. The Old Tom was also good and was surprisingly strong.
For our appetizer, we had the Thyme Flatbread with Crispy Pig Ear and Pickled Green Tomatoes ($ 14). This appetizer was so disconnected, and terribly disappointing. The flatbread was soggy, oily and overly salted. It also tasted nothing like thyme. The pig ear was good, but it had no connection with anything else on this plate. The pickled green tomatoes were too few, and there was also some shaved onion and fennel. It was really difficult to eat, the plate was covered in oil, and the flavors weren’t good.
For dinner, we had pasta dishes. I had the Pumpkin Cavatelli and my husband had the Bucatini. Both dishes were $ 18 and were ridiculously small portions. I thought maybe I had accidentally received the Appetizer version of the dishes. The Bucatini was incredibly boring. The Cavatelli was good, but not worth the price. The pasta was cooked nicely, and the rabbit ragu was good, but you would never tell the cavatelli was pumpkin.
I’ve been to many fine dining restaurants and have never been more disappointed in the price to portion ratio. I understand the pasta was fresh, but it was very mediocre.
We had planned on drinking more and definitely ordering dessert, but I didn’t want to give the restaurant anymore money. The service was pretty good, it was attentive but it was pretty cold.
The atmosphere is really nice, but the restaurant was absolutely freezing inside.