Last weekend my husband and I traveled to Portland to celebrate our younger daughter’s birthday with her fiancé. Our family custom dictates the birthday celebrant chooses the restaurant if we dine out, and I was most excited when Jenny pronounced Andina as the spot. I dined there several years ago with a large group and was eager to share it with Harry. Jenny and Josh both visited more recently and proclaimed it as good as I remembered it.

We arrived on a dark, rainy Friday night with Inauguration Day protesters thankfully several blocks distant and Portland’s recent foot of snow finally melted away. Housed in an old warehouse building in the Pearl District, Andina spreads over at least three floors, with the large space broken into smaller rooms providing a cozy atmosphere. After perusing an extensive wine list (offered by both the bottle or the glass) and a host of intriguing, Latin-inspired cocktails from Bar Mestizo, Andina’s lounge, we turned our attention to the menu, which includes a wide range of tapas-style dishes meant for sharing (and available in several sizes, depending on the size and appetite of your group) as well as full entrées.

A little background: Andina was founded in 2003 by Peter Platt, son of a native Oregonian father and Peruvian mother who met and married in Peru and later moved the family back to Oregon. The restaurant features Criollo and novo-Andean cuisine whose aim is to revive native, pre-colonial techniques and ingredients and incorporate them into modern, creative presentations. Ingredients come from organic farms in Chincha, Peru, as well as from Oregon farmers, ranchers and fishermen. Chef Yen Tejada’s Peruvian heritage as well as his wide-ranging culinary experiences in restaurants in Miami, Germany, Italy and Mexico certainly play a major role in what appears on the tables here, and everything we ordered was pleasing to the eye and the palate.

The tapas menu offers everything from vegetarian and vegan soups, salads and vegetable dishes to items featuring seafood, beef and lamb. Potatoes and quinoa feature prominently, their versatility apparent in the ways they are used and the ingredients with which they are paired. We finally settled on three small plates of the avocado stuffed with crab; the causa morada, a timbale of purple Peruvian potato purée layered with a shredded chicken breast salad; and yuca rellena, yucca croquettes stuffed with mozarella and cotija cheeses. Every dish provided a pleasing blend of flavors and textures. We could have easily tried several more items from this part of the menu, but we each decided to order an entrée item.

It was a good thing we restrained ourselves on the first course because each of our mains was very generous in size and proved filling, as well. Though they’d each had the Corderito — the lamb chops — previously and were tempted to try something new, in the end Jenny and Josh both ordered this dish, two enormous chops served with a purple Peruvian potato/two-cheese timbale and a roasted pepper demi-glace.   Harry opted for a different lamb dish, Seco a la Norteña, a falling-off-the-bone lamb shank in a dark, rich, cilantro-black beer sauce with garlic rice and salsa. He proclaimed it the best lamb shank he’s ever had.  I thoroughly enjoyed my Arroz con Pato, a confit of duck leg served with a huge portion of a cilantro-infused rice dish, almost a risotto, with green beans, peppers and corn kernels blended in; all of it was complemented by a sweet-savory passionfruit sauce.

And because, after all, it was a birthday celebration, we managed to save room for a little dessert. Andina is known for its trio of sorbets, the flavors of which change seasonally and frequently. This evening, though, we were tempted by a couple of other sweet treats, both of which completely changed the way I’ll look at quinoa from here on out. The birthday girl ordered canutos de quinoa y maracuyá, crispy quinoa-studded cannnolis stuffed with a passionfruit mousse accompanied by a scoop of mango-lemongrass sorbet and mango chutney and a mint coulis. It was presented to her (and comped) complete with a lit candle and “Feliz Cumpleaños” beautifully calligraphied in the coulis right on the plate.   I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I tasted the Chocolate Andino, a quinoa flour brownie coated in a gold-dusted chocolate ganache and served with a blackberry gastrique and avocado créme anglaise.

I’m eager to return to Andina, preferably with a large group, and further explore that tapas menu. Be sure to check out Andina if you’re in town; the service is excellent, the ambience warm and comfortable, and the food is out of this world.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor