TG

I don’t know how TG and I became friends. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was some cosmic joke. She’s got these doe eyes—the kind where you swear you can see the ocean if you look long enough—brimming with wonder and unwavering belief that magic is real. She loves Disney with the kind of devotion that makes me roll my eyes so hard they nearly get stuck. And yet, here we are, sitting across from each other, talking about food like it’s a shared religion.

TG has called Portland home since 2007, and if there’s one thing she knows, it’s the food scene. “It’s just…different here,” she says, hands wrapped around a steaming mug at Huber’s Café, the city’s oldest restaurant. She swears by their Spanish coffee, a fiery spectacle that makes my cynicism flicker just a little. “Portland does food in a way that’s unpretentious but still elevated. Like, we’ll take the basics—Indian, Mexican, homey American diner food—and somehow make it feel new.”