New Seasons Market

I recently took a little trip to Oregon to visit some friends in Corvallis. On the drive down, D and I were able to stop off at one of our favorite easy places to eat in Portland: The New Seasons Market grocery store.

This place is great for so many reasons, starting with being easily accessible from I-5. Second, it is chock full of all of the organic, fancy, conscientiously made natural market type delicacies that we are used to breaking the bank for in Seattle, but at prices that are significantly cheaper than what we are used to. And third, they have an excellent deli/sorta restaurant/salad bar/fresh food area that is full of variety and delicious things.

To start this particular visit off in an extra nice way, we were greeted upon entering with a butter tasting extravaganza. There were probably a dozen or more butters, ranging from Parmesan butter from France, to local goat butter, to vegan butter. They were set out for sampling with pieces of delicious bread.

Look at all that butter!

After eating perhaps more than a recommended daily amount of butter, we set off to the hot foods section. D ordered the "farmers plate," which is an often changing plate of food made from the in season produce and animals of local farms. On this day, it was a pulled pork sandwich made from local, organic, humanely raised pork and all sorts of salads and fixins. Not vegetarian at all, but the "right" way to do meat, IMHO, if you're going to do it.
I had an excellent plate of food from the "build your own" wok station, a sort of salad bar full of Asian food inspired ingredients that you pile into a bowl then hand over the counter to a nice employee who adds some sauce and cooks it up. I had green and purple cabbage, bell peppers, edamame, fresh tofu, bok choy, baby corn, water chest nuts, peanuts, broccoli, fresh ginger and garlic all stir fried with some noodles in a spicy red coconut curry sauce.
They had maybe a dozen sauces to choose from, and at least half of them were vegan.

The New Seasons Market has a clean, pleasant eating area that felt calm and relaxing where you can take your fresh meal and sit down.

I always look forward to eating here, and there are always more than enough vegetarian/vegan choices to keep me standing around hmming and hawwwing for a long time before ordering.

New Seasons Market
Multiple Locations
http://www.newseasonsmarket.com/