Pok Pok, my favorite restaurant in Portland, is the Oregonian’s restaurant of the year.

> Why is Pok Pok our Restaurant of the Year? Because Ricker, 43, has smashed the mold with cooking rarely encountered outside its home turf. You’d have to look hard in this country, let alone Portland, to find a similar collection of dishes so deep and rigorous and able to change our preconceptions of what this food can be. These aren’t simple formulas readily found in cookbooks — they rely on one man’s determination to wander, discover, deconstruct, hunt down ingredients and test, test, test to hit as close to perfection as possible.

Congratulations, Andy.