Miss Delta | |
---|---|
Restaurant information | |
Established | 2007 |
Owner(s) | Marcus Oliver |
Previous owner(s) |
|
Food type | |
Street address | 3950 North Mississippi Avenue |
City | Portland |
State | Oregon |
Postal/ZIP Code | 97227 |
Country | United States |
Coordinates | 45°33′5.9″N 122°40′31.1″W / 45.551639°N 122.675306°W |
Website | missdeltapdx |
Miss Delta is a Southern restaurant in Portland, Oregon.[1][2] Anastasia Corya and Anton Pace opened the restaurant in 2007, and later sold the business to Marcus Oliver, who expanded the Cajun and Creole-menu to include barbecue.
The Southern restaurant Miss Delta, located in the north Portland part of the Boise neighborhood, serves brunch, lunch, and dinner.[3] According to John Chandler of Portland Monthly, the restaurant "is the slightly-less-thrift-store-funky offspring of the original Delta Cafe on SE Woodstock, a joint that earned its rep by dropping huge platters of Southern cooking on its customers for embarrassingly small sums of money".[4] The Portland Mercury's Alison Hallett described Miss Delta as a "well-designed little space" with wood floors, exposed brick walls, and "quirky" light fixtures "that suffuse the place with a bourbon-y hue create an atmosphere redolent with both Southern gentility and North Portland chic".[5]
The Cajun and Creole-influenced[6] menu has included barbecue,[7] biscuits and gravy,[8] catfish sandwiches,[9] cauliflower casserole, chicken and waffles,[10] cornbread muffins, fried okra, hushpuppies, gumbo, and po'boys.[11][12] The Trashy Mac is macaroni and cheese with smoked chicken and pesto, jambalaya, or gumbo.[13][14][15] The Meat Sweats is a platter of andouille, brisket, blackened chicken, pulled pork, and spare ribs.[11] Sides have included coleslaw, collards, mashed potatoes with chicken sausage gravy, and red beans and rice.[16] The dessert menu has included marionberry cobbler, sweet potato pie, and Milky Way cake (dark chocolate cake with chunks of Milky Way candy and caramel).[6]
Anastasia Corya and Anton Pace, who previously opened the Delta Cafe in 1995, opened Miss Delta in August 2007.[6] Previously, the space had housed Pasta Bangs.[17] Marcus Oliver later became the owner.[18] He purchased the restaurant and expanded the mostly Cajun/Creole menu to include barbecue.[19]
In 2013, Michael Russell of The Oregonian called Miss Delta a "one-time spinoff of ... cult favorite Delta Cafe" and said the restaurant "has seemed to change hands more times than the Mississippi River has tributaries".[16] Like many restaurants, the business experienced difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic, including staffing issues and temporary closures.[20][21] In 2021, Oliver's book Cool and Kooky Kids Coloring Cookbook was sold at the restaurant.[22]
In his 2007 review of Miss Delta, Tim LaBarge of The Oregonian wrote, "Don't let the lighthearted interior fool you: Miss Delta is a place for serious eating and Southern comfort."[23] The newspaper's Grant Butler called the fried chicken "stellar" and said the "sides are good across the board".[24] In 2008, Butler said the restaurant "captures the essence of Southern cooking in all its cast-iron glory. Whether it's perfect black-eyed pea fritters or spicy jambalaya with hot sausage, smoked chicken and shrimp, dishes have a calories-be-damned approach. Portions are so large they have their own gravitational pull: The thing separating comfort from extreme discomfort is your own self-control."[25][26]