Urban Farmer Portland — Restaurant in Portland

This restaurant is INSIDE the Nines Hotel, you don’t need anything special to access it, you just need to find parking in a structure across the street or use their valet. Then take an elevator to the 8th floor. You’ll turn and walk behind that reception area and poof: there is the restaurant.

There were lots of lounge areas around for groups to drink and talk. The decor was very clean, with lots of plants and felt roomy. The chairs were comfy. There is a coat check available and the restrooms were large and very private, with full doors you could close behind you. Felt very dark compared to the rest of the restaurant.

Although this is a steakhouse, it seems I am cursed with the ability to choke on my steaks in public, so I almost never order it. It’s my own fault, apparently I don’t know how to chew and have had a couple bad experiences ordering steaks, SO I got the halibut and it was divine. The rest of my party enjoyed their steaks and we shared the Mac N Cheese, asparagus, mushrooms and fingerling potatoes. My favorites were the Mac n cheese and mushrooms.

Before we had any of that, we were brought lovely soft corn bread and butter. They were shaped like little Bundt cakes and had little corn pieces in them, just perfect. We also ordered the charcuterie board, which I had none of…it just did not look appetizing. I was severely - like knife in heart disappointed when I found out the “deviled eggs” are just spread across the board like a paste. I wanted to eat an actual deviled egg. No matter. There was a delicious fried egg with the asparagus I was able to snag. My tummy was happy in the end.

On their drink menu, I ordered a fruity pepper, which was a tequila based beverage with a little kick and tajin sprinkled around the rim of the glass. So tasty and refreshing!

Finally, our party ordered 3 desserts! The whoopie pie was too cold to cut/split. The Sundae wasn’t exactly shareable, so I avoided that and finally the Star….lemon creme brûlée. If I wasn’t afraid of being judged, I’d have scarfed an entire one of these to my face. I’d go back just for that!

This is a special occasion place to me, I enjoyed my time here and...

We arrived for our reservation a tad late but within a 15 min window, our bad couldn't find good parking. We were seated and given water.

Although not part of my rating, the art and décor seemed either out of date or trying to hard. The restaurant is inside the Nines Hotel in downtown Portland, both are very chic, mostly.

They then took our drink orders and shortly after our dinner orders. We ordered a "Chef's Cheese Selections" for our first course, it was fine at best. Two of the cheeses were bland and the blue cheese was strong but plain. Not worth the $21 we paid.

We ordered the "18 oz. Dry Aged Bone-In New York" and the "6 oz. Dry Aged Tenderloin Steak". We received them after waiting 90 minutes. It honestly felt like they forgot our order. People that were seated after us received their dinners almost 45 minutes before us. Both our steaks were a tepid temperature. The New York was ordered Mid Rare and the Tenderloin was order Medium. The New York was rare and was practically purple inside, and the Tenderloin was just a little more cooked than the New York. We were pretty frustrated and didn't have it sent back, we didn't feel like waiting longer. Both steaks were under seasoned and the New York was chewy for that cut. Neither tasted or had the texture or being dry aged.

We ordered a "Fingerling Potato Tart" for a side. Again tepid at best. The taste was underwhelming. I had coffee with my dinner, I don't drink alcohol, I had to flag someone down to get a refill and when I finally did the coffee was barley warm thus making it very bitter.

With this kind of price bracket I expected more. The service wasn't great either. They were friendly but that doesn't make up for extremally long wait times on getting the food out and what seemed like being forgotten. They were busy but not slammed. They seemed to be well staffed but I can only see so much. No apologies were given to the tardiness of the food.

Based on everything said here I cannot recommend Urban Farmer. Your time would be better spent elsewhere. I've had better service and food at Sizzler, and that isn't...

I’m so sad to be writing this review because this restaurent had been a favorite of mine for years. I ate here at least once a month for 2 years straight when my husband was going to graduate school in Portland. Yesterday we had brunch there for my moms 66th birthday. We were so excited to be back at UF to celebrate. She ordered the crab Benedict and she said something tasted differently about it but given its reputation we wrote it off as a spice she didn’t like. 12 hours later I was woken up by her violently ill with food poisoning. I still assumed that it must have been something else. That entire day other than the brunch we had coffee that we all drank from the same source and then went to a tapas restaurant for dinner where we all shared plates. She was the only one who got sick. We wracked our brains trying to think of where else it could be from. It had to be her brunch from urban farmer. I called this morning to talk to the manager and let them know what happened. I’m sad to say that the manager (Adina) completely denied all accountability. She didn’t ask any additional questions, never apologized. She said “we served several of the crab Benedict and I haven’t gotten any other phone calls. Hope she feels better.” And that was it. I was a little shocked. I expected her to say she was at least going to look into it and hopefully apologize. I was only letting them know that there may be something off in their kitchen and she should look into it, because we were concerned that others could get sick as well. It could have been a contaminated server, a dish not washed properly, or bad refrigeration for that one dish. But she immediately wrote it off and dismissed me. To me that’s almost worse that the illness itself. Clearly the manager doesn’t care about it’s patrons or food contamination. So after years of being a regular, I’m sad to say that yesterday was my last visit to Urban Farmer. I hope that in the future no one else gets...