At Salt and Straw, taste Portland in all its creativity, weirdness, civic-mindedness, and of course, deliciousness
Text by Martha Cheng
Images by Sera Lindsey and courtesy of Salt and Straw
Spot any of Salt and Straw’s four locations by the lines. People come from near and far to sample small-batch ice cream veined with sharp Rogue Creamery blue cheese and studded with sweet Bartlett pears from nearby orchards, or churned with honey balsamic, black pepper, and jammy ribbons of Oregon strawberries.
Inspired by seasonal ingredients and quirky themes, the Portland menu of Salt and Straw has 12 set ice cream flavors, including pear and blue cheese and honey lavender, plus five that change monthly.
In 2011, Salt and Straw founder Kim Malek left her marketing career working with Fortune 500 companies including Starbucks and Yahoo to realize her dream of opening an ice cream shop. She wanted her business in Portland, where she had lived in the mid-1990s. “I was struck by the community feel that I experienced when I was there,” she says. “It’s really close-knit, where they take you in and hold you up. Portland has a pretty innovative and artisan scene as well. I had a good sense of how our ice cream might be part of that.” Kim strives to make Salt and Straw a gathering place that also supports Oregon farmers and makers. “To have a strong business, it needs to be part of a strong community—the two have to invest in each other for it to really work long term,” she says. Salt and Straw has since expanded to Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco, where it works with each local community to create city-specific menus.
“Portland has a pretty innovative and artisan scene. I had a good sense of how our ice cream might be part of that,” says Salt and Straw co-founder Kim Malek.
Kim had the vision, while Tyler, her cousin and co-founder, brought the flavors. When Kim suggested maple bacon, Tyler retorted that even Denny’s offers the clichéd combination. Instead, he introduced new ice cream flavor pairings such as candied bacon paired with a brown ale reminiscent of maple, and a bone marrow with smoked cherry. Today, the Portland menu has 12 set flavors, including pear and blue cheese and honey lavender, plus five that change monthly. Sometimes the menu celebrates seasonal hallmarks, like spring flowers or summer corn and fresh peas. Other times it highlights Portland craftspeople, like local chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Sometimes it’s quirky fun, as in Halloween flavors that attempt to capture the essence of a ghost (including wisps of peaty Scotch). Other times it makes a statement, like when Salt and Straw made ice cream from spent brewery grains and leftover baguettes otherwise destined for the trash to highlight that 40 percent of food in the United States is unnecessarily wasted.
Every flavor tells a story. For locals, these are stories of where they live. For visitors, they become fleeting, melting memories of Portland.