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Cheese & Crack Snack Shop
Restaurant in Portland, Oregon, U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Cheese & Crack Snack Shop is a restaurant in Portland, Oregon, United States. The business started as a food cart on Hawthorne Boulevard before moving into a brick and mortar shop in the southeast Portland part of the Kerns neighborhood in 2014. Cheese & Crack serves charcuterie, macaroni and cheese, sandwiches, soft serve, and sundaes, among other food and drink options. The restaurant has garnered a positive reception, particularly for its ice cream. Cheese & Crack was included in The Oregonian's 2022 list of Portland's best food carts of the past decade and ranked seventh in Yelp's 2023 list of the city's 50 best restaurants.
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Description
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Cheese & Crack Snack Shop operates on 28th Avenue, near East Burnside Street,[1] in the southeast Portland part of the Kerns neighborhood.[2] It is a queer-owned business described by Thom Hilton of Eater Portland as a "social media sensation" with long queues and "high-profile" customers, including Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph.[3][4] Cheese & Crack has a seating capacity of 26 people.[5] Its interior contains concrete walls, an open kitchen,[6] and pictures of the country musician Dolly Parton.[7][8] For Pride Month, Cheese & Crack has displayed a cardboard standee of the country singer Reba McEntire in the window.[3] Eater Portland said the indoor and outdoor patio space has a "rustic charm".[9]
Menu
Cheese & Crack serves charcuterie on stainless steel trays. Boards include house-made crackers, capocollo and roasted turkey meat,[10] and cheeses such as brie ganache, as well as honey, jam, and oatmeal raisin cookies.[11][12][13] The sampler plate has a sliced baguette, butter crackers, Dijon mustard, marionberry jam, olives, and pickled cucumbers.[14][15] The sampler's cheeses include blue cheese from Hooks, brie brûlée, cana de oveja made from Spanish sheep milk, and cheddar from Seattle-based Beecher's Handmade Cheese.[1][15] Charcuterie packages have also been available via take-out, most frequently during the COVID-19 pandemic.[9][16]
Cheese & Crack's macaroni and cheese is composed of Gruyère and white cheddar (from Tillamook) mornay and an herb sauce with chives, garlic, lemon, and olive oil.[17] The restaurant has also served biscuit sandwiches for breakfast, a ham sandwich with ham from Tails & Trotters and herb butter, as well as potato chip "nachos" with mornay and pickled lentils.[5]
Among dessert options is soft serve in ice cream cones with chocolate ganache on the bottom to prevent leaking; toppings include chocolate cowboy hats, colorful sprinkles,[3] and varieties of "dust" such as beet, espresso,[18] matcha,[12] and strawberry.[11] Vanilla soft serve is also the base for sundaes; varieties have included banana pudding (with Nilla Wafers), caramel cornflake, and raspberry birthday cake.[12] Another sundae has cookie, ganache, and marshmallow.[18] Drink options include beer, wine (including Prosecco on tap),[19] frosés, and frozen lemonades.[11][13][20]
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History
Cheese & Crack was established in 2012 by business partners Nathan Hall and William Steuernagel.[21][22][23] The restaurant started as a food cart on Hawthorne Boulevard before moving into a brick and mortar shop in 2014.[3][11][24] The restaurant operates in the space that previously housed Black Bike Cafe, an outpost or sibling establishment of Black Cat Cafe.[25][26] In 2020, a man wielding a bat demanded Hall to remove a Black Lives Matter sign displayed in a window.[27]
Cheese & Crack has served special dishes for select holidays. On April 20, 2020, for the cannabis holiday "420", the restaurant offered a Munchie Cone.[28] For Halloween in 2022 and 2024, the Eye Scream Sundae had purple ube pudding as "witch goo", chocolate cookie as "dirt", vanilla soft serve, raspberry sauce as "blood", and a gumball resembling an eyeball.[29][30]
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Reception
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Willamette Week ranked Cheese & Crack fourth in a 2016 overview of Portland's best soft serve.[18] The newspaper's Andrew Jankowski recommended the restaurant in 2024 as an option for late-night dining.[31] Michael Russell included Cheese & Crack in The Oregonian's 2022 list of Portland's best food carts of the past decade.[21] In 2023, Yelp ranked the business seventh in a list of the city's fifty best restaurants.[32]
Maya MacEvoy included Cheese & Crack in Eater Portland's 2020 list of the city's "top-notch" macaroni and cheese.[17] In 2023, the business was included in an overview of recommended establishments on East 28th Avenue's "restaurant row" by Thom Hilton and Nick Woo and a list of recommended eateries near Laurelhurst Park by Olivia Lee.[9][11] Hilton has also described Cheese & Crack as a "dairy palace",[33] and the website's Brooke Jackson-Glidden recommended the restaurant for a late-night sundae in 2023.[34] Local drag performer and entertainer Carla Rossi recommended Cheese & Crack in a 2023 dining guide of Portland published by Eater Portland.[35] The website's Michelle Lopez and Janey Wong included the restaurant in a 2024 overview of "supremely tasty" ice cream in the Portland metropolitan area.[12]
References
External links
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