A few weeks ago my husband, daughter Jenny and her boyfriend, Josh, and I finally made it to another Portland restaurant we’ve been eager to try for a long time. The Country Cat Dinnerhouse & Bar, located on S.E. Stark Street just off of 82nd Avenue in the Montevilla neighborhood, features what it calls American heritage cuisine in a friendly, unpretentious dining room and large bar. Owner/executive chef and butcher extraordinaire Adam Sappington (a James Beard Foundation semi-finalist in 2012, 2013 and 2014 for Best Chef Northwest) and wife and co-owner/executive pastry chef Jackie Sappington opened the place in 2007 and serve up brunches (daily 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and dinners (5 p.m. onward) featuring seasonal comfort food inspired by Adam’s Missouri roots and local ingredients. Adam’s skills as a nose-to-tail butcher appear everywhere on the menu (the 1,000 pounds of beef jerky he makes annually even show up as a garnish in the bar’s Bloody Marys!), and Jackie’s pies, pastries and desserts provide a lovely, sweet balance to all the savory. We’ve already determined we need to return for The Cat’s legendary brunch one day, as we didn’t get to try the restaurant’s much-lauded skillet-fried chicken and the buttermilk biscuits (350 hand-cut and -made daily). We started with a few appetizers, especially enjoying the housemade ketchup (great flavor!) with The Cat’s version of onion rings: shoestring-sliced, deep-fried and eminently munchable. I followed up with a fresh greens salad with a light, refreshing vinaigrette, and then it was on to the main course. I would note that the weather all that week in Portland was unusually hot — 90 degrees or more each day — and our entrées could not be labeled light fare. Each proved delicious, with a great melding of flavors and textures. I’ll just let the pictures and the brief descriptions speak for themselves; let your imaginations fill in the blanks with superlatives: I chose the Red Wine Braised Beef with butter-braised potatoes and wild mushroom steak sauce. Harry ordered the beautiful Roasted Garlic and Fennel Lamb Sausage with carmelized squash, peppers, sweet onions, olive oil croutons and romesco. Jenny couldn’t resist one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, The Whole Hog: brined and grilled loin, roasted belly and braised shoulder on a bed of South Carolina grits. Josh got the Smoked Duck Crepe with Walla Walla onions, dried cherries, corn and blackberry vinaigrette. For the sake of this blog (of course), I had to try dessert. Unfortunately, the hot weather and demand had knocked out the restaurant’s freezer, so my first choice of the raspberry sorbet gave way to the pudding trio: crème brülée, chocolate and butterscotch. It provided a wonderful finale to a great meal, but I’m determined to revisit The Country Cat in cooler weather and delve into more hearty and delectable fare, including Jackie’s pies. The restaurant also offers a full bar and some signature cocktails to accompany the great eats. Travelers passing through Portland International Airport can now sample some of the restaurant’s fare at The Country Cat @ PDX, just opened this year in the North Lobby of the D & E concourses just past security. It offers both sit-down dining and grab-and-go items and bar drinks. I may just have to ensure extra time to drop in the next time I’m at PDX. For those not in the area, the Sappingtons’ cookbook, Heartlandia: Heritage Recipes from Portland’s The Country Cat will be available in bookstores and on Amazon starting Sept. 1. — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor