So. Much. Mercury.

America’s latest food sensation is raw tuna. Poke, the Hawaiian dish of cubed, marinated raw fish, usually served with seaweed, onion and sesame seeds, is showing up everywhere from grocery store deli counters to Beverly Hills hotel restaurants. In 2014, Yelp declared Da Poke Shack in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, the best place to eat in America. Fast-casual joints serving build-your- own poke-and-rice bowls are opening all over Los Angeles — and, now, Portland.

Poke-mania hits Portland: Where to find the city’s best raw tuna

How Sebastian Cisneros became Portland’s most interesting chocolate-maker

Cisneros, a lanky 31-year-old with a shy but warm demeanor, is both a chocolatier, making flavored chocolate bars, and a chocolate-maker, producing bars from cacao beans. His childhood story explains much of his philosophy: his one-ounce square bars, packaged in white cardstock sealed with wax, evoke vivid memories and, with ingredients such as fernet and bee pollen, not a little confusion.

Read more at the Oregonian.

Review: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915

The ostensible subject of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play is a group of performers, three black and three white, attempting to create a play about the Nambia genocide, in which Germans killed at least 65,000 members of the Herero people through starvation, forced labor, execution, and medical experiments. As we watch the company’s increasingly tense rehearsals, we realize there’s much more going on.

Read more at the Oregonian.

Jim Parker has a lot to answer for

Though there are some prior examples of cheesy Tater Tot recipes (one, submitted to Taste of Home’s Quick Cooking in 2003 by a reader in Tennessee, involves four different dairy products and a crushed-potato-chip topping), the first mention of proper Tater Tot nachos in any media was in 2006, with the opening Oaks Bottom Public House in Sellwood. The man responsible: Jim Parker, a prolific publican and former journalist who opened the pub with New Old Lompoc owner Jerry Fechter.

The secret history of totchos

Everything’s better on banh mi

Ng says he started receiving orders from non-Asian restaurants in the early 2000s, mostly for Franco-Vietnamese “mini-baguettes,” best known in the United States as the foundation of bánh mì, the sandwich that shares their name. An Xuyen now supplies custom products to a number of customers, including hamburger buns to Foster Burger, pan bread to Sen Yai and bun dough to Steamers Asian Street Bistro, but the baguette remains a favorite.

An Xuyen’s Southeast Asian breads are the foundation of some of Portland’s best sandwiches