The Portal Pizzeria — Restaurant in Harlan

I prefer to dine at local restaurants when I travel and there appeared to be few options in Harlan. The Portal is downtown conveniently located only a couple of blocks from the Harlan Center where I was attending a conference. The interior is a bit stark with lots of hard surfaces. The menu was what you might expect at an Italian restaurant, with several choices of pizzas and calzones. Several appetizers were also listed but I didn't check them out. There were sandwich choices along with some basic Italian entrees like lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs and even steak. I ordered the baked spaghetti since it had some veggies in it and it turned out to be quite good. My dining companions got pizza and they too were pleased. It is the thin crust variety. For dessert we shared a HUGE chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with caramel and chocolate. It was delicious and easily served three of us. My only real complaint is there is a sign as you entered stating no alcohol. What I didn't realize until after my meal is there is an upstairs bar that also serves food where I could have enjoyed a glass of wine...

This place is actually one of the nicest restaurants in Harlan county. It's super nice, it's just one of those places where you can come dressed up or dressed casually and the staff there are always really nice and friendly. It's really clean. The food is to die for. There is a bar there but it's kept separate from the dining area, it's upstairs so that way children aren't exposed to ppl drinking alcohol and that's ALL ABOUT the Harlan county way, this is the Bible belt of the southern region and ppl just don't believe in having alcohol and other things that are bad for kids around them. This is a perfect place to take a date, friend, or family...

Just passing through. Dine in available amidst restrictions; just have to keep table between groups yourself. They weren't marked off or anything and it was self seating.

Service was okay. Waitress brought us by two orders of someone else's food hoping it belonged to our table. When our food arrived, the subs that were hot at one point, were now cold and missing some things and a little anemic looking. However, my chicken, bacon, ranch calzone was fantastic and I have zero complaints about it.

If I came through again, I would recommend the calzone (perhaps the pizza is great too since this was good) and not the subs....and I'd probably...