The Rest of Me: Portland Pizza Tour

We had the pleasure of visiting Nostrana for the first time and it was incredible. Not be biased but this has by far been my favorite place yet! I want to go back and order every single item on the menu. The pizza was very traditional Italian - thin, crunchy crust that tasted like a delicious Italian baguette, house-made mozzarella (made fresh daily), rich herb flavors and a mix of Italian meats. Collectively we ordered and tried the Salumi (finocchiona salami, tomato, provolone, house mozzarella, oregano, honey, Mama Lil’s peppers), Diavola (spicy sausage, house mozzarella, provolone, tomato, Mama Lil’s peppers) and Alla Fiama (tomato, red onion, Mama Lil’s, wild oregano, spicy oil, black olives). I enjoyed all of the different flavors of each pizza. I was most surprised at how well the honey drizzle on the crust of the Salumi worked. We also were so surprised that we all loved the Alla Fiama so much since it was a cheese-less pizza, it actually had some of the best flavor of them all. The pizzas came with traditional Italian pizza scissors to cut our slices. I thought that was really fun to have control of as well.

The atmosphere was lovely and looks exactly how I wish my kitchen looked. Complete with a brick pizza oven. It was relaxing and open and the service was great. Bonus perk is that Nostrana is in a little square with other businesses and they have their own parking lot which is a really great surprise from the normal Portland street parking we are used to. It was just a fabulous evening.

The dessert menu looked so delicious and was so reasonably priced that we decided to get dessert as well. We tried the marionberry sorbet and the burnt orange gelato. They both came served with a shortbread cookie. The burnt orange gelato was my favorite, the flavor was rich and the gelato was so creamy. It was an overall culinary delight and it will be very hard to beat in my opinion.