Secret Portland (Oregon): The Unique Guidebook to Portland's Hidden Sites, Sounds, & Tastes

Rating:
Summary: Nothing too secret about this guidebook.
Review: Having greatly enjoyed Secret New York and Secret San Francisco from the same series, I was looking forward to reading Secret Portland. But this one doesn't stack up to the other two. I confess that I am a Portland native (now living in San Francisco), so may be more picky than a visitor reading the book, but it does not have the same insider flair that the New York and San Francisco books have. The other two were written by people who live in the cities they wrote about. It is obvious that this author does not live in Portland and has not spent much time there. The information is standard for any guidebook of the city.

In addition to only covering the "sites, sounds, & tastes" that you can find in any hotel room visitors' guide, this book is full of several small, but irritating, errors. For example, while the book includes a truly secret Portland gem, Martinotti's Italian cafe and deli, it misspelled the name as Marinotti's. Another, more confusing example: under "Secret Luxury," the author praises the RiverPlace Hotel as "small, elegant, personal . . . more like a posh home than a hotel" and, under "Secret Al Fresco," describes the hotel's restaurant Lucere as "European" and "chi chi." But under "Secret Rooms with a View," the author describes the same hotel as "a fairly standard, but pricy, modern hotel" and misidentifies the restaurant. Even more confusingly, several listings misidentify the neighborhood, for example, listing many downtown locations in southwest Portland as being in the "Buckman" neighborhood -- a neighborhood across the river in southEAST Portland.

The nail in the coffin was the author's tip on how to pronounce the name of Portland's river, the Willamette: "Want to sound like a local? Make sure to pronounce it "will-uh-met," with the accent on the "uh." Wrong-o! As any Portlander will tell you, it's Will-A-mitt, damn it!