Ox Portland

Ox sits on NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, a twenty-five-minute walk from the Oregon Convention Center. The room runs smart and elegant, focusing on South American and Argentinian grills.

Ox outclasses the neighborhood's typical grill spots by treating live-fire cooking with a level of rigor usually reserved for white-tablecloth rooms. While the address feels industrial, the wood-fired kitchen produces a range of flavors that makes the trek from the city center feel brief. You come here for the heavy, smoky focus of the grill, which stands in sharp contrast to the lighter, vegetable-forward menus that dominate the restaurants closer to Powell’s City of Books. It is a more demanding environment than its casual neighbors, but the execution justifies the precision required in the kitchen.