An editor's guide to eating around town

Portland's food scene is a beautiful thing, but it can also be confusing. There are more food carts than people. Chefs tattooed with butcher diagrams incongruously serve soy- & gluten-free vegan BLTs. Lucky you, then, that local editor Andy Kryza is here to help you bring home the real culinary bacon.Favorite Restaurant: It took Ox all of about five minutes to ascend to the top of Portland's meat scene, and for good reason: the Argentinian-style grill's perfectly cooked meats rank among the best in the region. Best Late-Night Eats: Late-night noshing around here is pretty much limited to diner grub and bacon-wrapped hot dogs (not that there's anything wrong with bacon-wrapped hot dogs), which is why Luc Lac totally rules. You can launch a preemptive strike on your hangover with cheap (and delicious) banh mi, pho, and other Vietnamese goodness until 4a.Best Cheap Eats: In the land of food carts (nearly 800 in operation), Cartopoa on SE Hawthorne is king. You can score killer burritos, poutine, and wood-oven pizza, but don't miss the pulled-pork-stuffed fried pies from legendary Whiffies. Best Sandwich: You gotta love a place whose name is also what people will call you once you eat there, and if you want a hamburger topped with pig fat, or griddled mortadella w/ provolone & peppers, you need to get to one of the two Lardos. Best Dish: Seafood joint Riffle NW does some of the craziest stuff with fish since Piranha 3D, but, unlike that movie, it's really good. Case in point: Oregon Coast Petrale Sole covered in urchin sauce and served alongside its own deep-fried skeleton. Which you actually eat. And is delicious.Best Italian: Concordia's Firehouse is actually in an old-school dalmatian shelter, and uses a cozy kitchen to fire out goods from all over the Boot. It's like a tour of Italy without having to work on some dude's farm. Best Thai: Hitting up Pok Pok's original location is a rite of passage (don't forget to have a tamarind whiskey sour), but lost in all of the media hoopla is the seriously incredible northern Thai at inconspicuous Samui Thai Kitchen. Just ask the owner to give you whatever she'd be having. It'll be weird, and it'll be delicious. Best Mexican: Eating untested Mexican is like playing Russian roulette with your stomach, so make haste to one of the two La Bonitas and get ready for the best carnitas and shredded beef in town. Adventurous types can get down on high-end lengua (tongue) and cabeza (face). Best Food Cart: Like I said, there're about 800 of these suckers in the city, but Grilled Cheese Grill heralded the golden age when it stuck a burger between two thick-cut grilled cheese sandwiches and called it the Cheezus. Best Burger: I have to break this one into categories. If you want the best traditional burger, hit up Stanich's. If you want something insane, go to Burnside Brewing and get the Friday-only Ultimate Burger: a patty cooked in duck fat, a burger-sized hunk of pork belly, and, depending on the season, either lobster or crab. Most Gut-Busting Dish: Big-Ass Sandwiches delivers on their promise, loading bread bombs with a mountain of meat before cramming French fries for good measure. But if you can eat the Quadzilla at Skyline, you're not even human -- I tried and failed, as you can watch above. Best Fine Dining: One of the best aspects of PDX's food scene is that most of our upscale places have rooms tucked away where you can just kick it and eat happy hour food. Case in point: Bluehour, where haute cuisine is served in a chandelier-filled dining room while the cocktail lounge produces cocktails and $5-$7 mini-entrees. Most Romantic: Raven & Rose is set in a super-intimate renovated carriage house that's on the historic registry. It's like taking your date back in time, but not literally, because then it would be totally illegal to date her. Best for Partying: Departure has one of the best rooftop patios in town, and the high-end Asian fusionery eventually morphs into a futuristic club full of randy minxes. Best for Work: Arabic fusion joint Levant has this badass private dining room that's perfect for small meetings. Best Lunch: Downtown's Hot Pot City may not have a website, but what they do have is an all-you-can lunch buffet that's under $10, making midday the ideal time to check out this cross between a Mongolian grill, a dim sum-ery, and a Korean BBQ. Best Brunch: Portland's so horny for brunch that most everywhere has a 2hr wait. Equinox is a hidden gem where you can score high-end eats and hair of the dog cocktails without the wait. Just don't tell anyone. Wait... dammit!Weirdest Food: The donut burger's become something of a weird staple, but Portland's The Original claims ownership of it, and's probably responsible for a spike in national diabetes. Best Wings: The name suggests you might find hippies chomping granola, but instead you'll find yourself chomping wings slathered in housemade sauces at Fire on the Mountain. El Jefe (the spiciest) is a thing of masochistic beauty.Best Donuts: See those people waiting in huge lines at Voodoo? Those are called tourists. And those are Froot Loops on top of a donut. Blue Star's dough rings come in flavors like Fried Chicken, and many of their sweets come with full shots of booze in the middle.