The 40 Best Restaurants in Portland You Need to Try
No. 12: Jacqueline
Take away the $1 oysters. Take away the Dungeness crab toast. And you’d still be left with a pitch-perfect Portland seafood restaurant, a charming place that takes its bivalves and crustaceans seriously, but never itself. With Bill Murray’s iconic “Life Aquatic” character Steve Zissou gazing out from behind the bar, Jacqueline pairs raw hamachi with charred pickled pineapple and shrimp ceviche with ground cherries and mezcal. Even the noodles are tasty — of the many corn and chanterelle pastas I tried around town last year, the version with Jimmy Nardello peppers at Jacqueline was my favorite. And that’s before you get to the cedar plank trout, the lobster roll, grilled swordfish “al pastor” or other satisfying mains.
The Oregonian
Portland’s Top 50 Restaurants
“Six years after opening, it’s still tough to snag a table at this seafood-focused, Life Aquatic–inspired spot. The obvious draw: dollar oyster happy hour daily, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Stick around for dinner, where options might include hamachi crudo with charred pickled pineapple, seasonal salads boasting the likes of black sesame tahini, and rotating whole fish, perhaps fried branzino with salsa macha. Pastry chef Darla Shaffer, formerly of bespoke bakery business Mama Box, concocts beautiful, delicate desserts. Watch for pineapple tres leches cake in an umbrella-garnished glass, petite key lime pie with torched meringue and blueberries, or fig leaf–tulsi tea ice cream.”
Portland Monthly
The 38 Essential Portland Restaurants 2022
“When Jacqueline opened on Southeast Clinton, it slowly became known as a Pacific Northwestern seafood restaurant, a place for $1 oysters and Dungeness crab toast. Both are still available at Jacqueline today — the former during happy hour, the latter on the dinner menu. However, this restaurant is far more than just its blockbusters. Meals here should start with a flurry of raw dishes, some that feel like Jewish deli standards reimagined: Juniper-cured salmon with green tomatoes and pickled mustard seeds, miso-glazed black cod with fingerlings and onion cream. A hamachi crudo, salty and bathing in mam nem, gets a six-foot lift from a chiffonade of lime leaf. The restaurant’s family-style tasting menu, at $90 per person, is worth every cent.”
Eater PDX
Portland's 40
Best Restaurants
"...the crab toast, a slice of golden griddled bread topped with a mountain of Dungeness and Calabrian chiles under a cascade of saffron hollandaise -- glorious and borderline indecent."
The Oregonian
40 Best Restaurants
“Three years in, this is now Portland’s most interesting seafood restaurant, and one of our favorite date-night destinations as well.”
The Oregonian
Diner’s Guide to Oregon Seafood
“This cute SE Clinton seafood cove gets its name (and aesthetic inspiration) from Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic. At the driftwood-clad bar, beneath a painted portrait of Bill Murray, diners sip rosé and down oysters from Carbajal in Washington to Oregon’s Nevør.”
Portland Monthly
Best Restaurants 2019
“If you're observant, it's possible to spot men with bulging forearms hauling large tubs of oysters to the kitchen, as if there were a portal to Netarts just beyond view”
Willamette Week Restaurant Guide 2019
10 Best Dishes of 2018
“Sure, a hundred Portland brunch spots beat this overachieving Clinton Street seafood spot to the simple idea of topping Dungeness crab with Hollandaise sauce. But once you’ve tried Jacqueline’s, you might be ruined for the rest. Here, a thin, buttery slice of griddled baguette supports an impressive amount of lump crab dripping with some downright impudent saffron-infused Hollandaise. Calabrian chiles, petite fennel fronds and edible flowers keep things interesting. Time it right, and you can gorge yourself on $1 happy hour oysters before attacking this toast.”
The Oregonian
15 Essential Portland Seafood Restaurants
"The interior is cozy with its portrait of Bill Murray from The Life Aquatic on the wall and other nautically themed decorative touches throughout, and the food is just as thoughtful. Family-style options like cedar-planked whole trout or the prix fixe “Let Us Cook For You” family style dinner put together by the chef for the table are great for groups."
Eater PDX
Top 10 Best New Restaurants 2017
"Here, owner Derek Hanson (Laurelhurst Market) and his team balance a cast of crudos, shellfish,
fish and fish stews with some
role-playing seasonal veggies in an
upscale reboot of the seafood shack."
The Oregonian
Top 50 Restaurants #20
"Portland has always been more a river town than a coastal one, but until recently you'd have to send your guests to one of the mid-tier fish halls downtown. Now, head down to the year-old Jacqueline on Southeast Clinton Street, which has evolved into Portland's best home for seafood."
WILLAMETTE WEEK
15 Must Try Dishes
This Summer
"What better way to stay cool than by slurping a dozen oysters on ice? And for just $1 a piece, six days a week, it’s always the best two hours of our day."
The Oregonian
15 Biggest
Openings of 2016
"Derek Hanson (Laurelhurst Market) and his team balance a cast of crudos, shellfish, fish and fish stews with some role-playing seasonal veggies in an upscale reboot of the seafood shack."
The Oregonian
Jacqueline Rises
to the Top
"Jacqueline adds to the small
but growing pool of restaurants
that do our finned friends justice."
PORTLAND MERCURY
POWER RANKINGS
"Portland's best new oyster bar. Beautifully shucked Northwest bivalves run you a buck during the 5-7 p.m. happy hour."
The Oregonian
The Best Oyster
Bar You Have
Never Heard of
The Oregonian
The Best Healthy
Restaurants in Portland
"...this adorable corner bistro is one of the best seafood restaurants in town. Nearly all the fish and shellfish here is certified sustainable, ranging from small plates like smoked scallop ceviche with sprouted coriander to family-style feasts like whole cedar-plank-roasted trout with grilled lemons, skyr, and spicy harissa. And instead of treating the aquatic bounty with the usual greasy fry-up or butter-based sauces, preparations here hew to grilled, roasted, or raw, with a heavy emphasis on seasonal vegetables and herbs."
Bon appetit
The 38 Essential Portland Restaurants
“Considering the abundance of wild, exquisite fish found in the Pacific Northwest, knockout seafood restaurants should be plentiful in Portland; still, the whimsical Jacqueline on SE Clinton feels like the standout for creative, accessibly priced seafood. During happy hour, dollar oysters are fresh and briny and great with white wine; during dinner, a bright yellowtail crudo is just as delightful as the Oregonian-must-order Dungeness crab toast.”
Eater PDX
50 Best Restaurants
“Jacqueline is the neighborhood seafood restaurant every Portland neighborhood wishes it had…”
Willamette Week Restaurant Guide 2018
Portland’s 50 Essential Sit Down Restaurants
"At this seafood cove, beneath a painted
portrait of Bill Murray, one can slurp down
$1 happy hour oysters, dig into whole
roasted trout, or devour hyper-seasonal creations lavished with morels and sea beans. It all goes
down smooth with a small, carefully curated wine list and potent quality drinks."
Portland Monthly
Best Restaurants 2017
"Eater Portland’s 2017 nominees in the
Restaurant of the Year category serve up everything from creative Northwest seafood plates in a neighborhood setting, to a boundary-pushing chef’s counter in the middle of a modernist kitchen."
EATER PDX
15 Seafood Spots
Worth the Deep Dive
"...crudo shows off the kitchen’s creativity, with a shrimp ceviche popping with green strawberries and Fresno chiles, or yellowtail with salted kohlrabi."
Portland Monthly
Great Spots to Eat
on Divison/Clinton
"At the driftwood-clad bar, beneath a painted portrait of Bill Murray, one can slurp down $1 happy hour oysters accessorized with house tarragon vinegar, jalapeño hot sauce, and red Tabasco."
Portland Monthly
Portland’s 10 Best
New Happy Hours
"Under the gaze of a red-capped Bill Murray from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, enjoy $1 oysters, $2 Rainier tallboys and $5 Campari-spiked Bill Murray specials. The formula is straightforward and we can’t get enough of it."
The Oregonian
Jacqueline is Reviving
the Cioppino
"Southeast Clinton Street's Jacqueline is the first Portland restaurant in years to make cioppino a trademark, even if the stylish hall of spicy-smoky cocktails, delicate butterfish and shiitake-bottarga salads may seem an unlikely home for an updated take on a dish often eaten with the help of pliers. But Jacqueline's cioppino is the best I've had in a restaurant."
WILLAMETTE WEEK
Like the Best
Dinner You Never
Got to Eat...
"Amid the parade of seasonal, salad-forward restaurants to hit Portland recently, Jacqueline knows how to counterbalance its more subtle delights with signatures like the chicken and cioppino that pack a wallop. As every record exec has known since they invented pop music, you lure them in with the hits and then seduce them with the deep cuts."
Willamette Week
Seafood Focused
Jacqueline Now Open
"It really gives the cook the chance to get the full picture and take a lot more pride in what they're doing," Hanson said. "...My hope is that when it comes times to hire servers, we can hire more cooks that we can cross-train, learn front of the house and become more well rounded employees and more invested in the company as a whole."
The Oregonian
17 Most Anticipated Openings
"...seafood-heavy menu (life aquatic? Get it?) with farm-to-table Pacific Northwest-style food, from veggie plates to pasta to oyster crudo. "Portland is so meat-heavy, masculine," says Hanson. "We want to do something lighter."