My Favorite Portland Chain Is Affordable, Wholesome, And Has A Sauce No One Can Forget

Dotted throughout my hometown of Portland and its suburbs, found in food carts and storefront windows, is one of the city's best chains: The Whole Bowl. The menu is just as small as each location's footprint — you can get a rice bowl (12 or 16 ounces), an oatmeal cookie, a bag of chips, and a drink. The bowl is wholesome and filling, packed to the top with brown rice, black and red beans, avocado, sliced black olives, Tillamook cheddar, sour cream, medium salsa, cilantro, and Tali sauce, all for either $9 (12-ounce) or $9.50 (16-ounce). On the side is just about every type of hot sauce you could ask for.

The Tali sauce, however, is the source of much speculation. It's tangy, garlicky, nutty, and cheesy (from nutritional yeast, which is different from active dry yeast) and has inspired many online dupes. Another Oregon chain, Cafe Yumm!, has a similar sauce, but The Whole Bowl's is tangier and more complex. If the latter chain sold the sauce in stores, I would always have one on hand. Instead, I usually pick up a bottle of Cafe Yumm's at the airport when I head back to my current home of Los Angeles.

Altogether, the bowl is a cheap, healthy, and delicious meal, and each ingredient plays an important role. The brown rice paired with the beans makes it hearty with a complete protein, the avocado brings creaminess and a heart-healthy fat, the black olives add a hit of saltiness, and the cilantro tops it off with a fresh herbaceousness.

Many Portlanders will have The Whole Bowl on their list of most-visited restaurants. The chain is an institution that, like my favorite fresh-fried donut shop here, Pip's, both embraces and defines the Portland ethos of originality and quality. When I was last living in Portland and had very little money, The Whole Bowl sustained me on days when I didn't have time to cook at home. Affordability has always been a hallmark of the chain — back when I was a regular, before the recent nationwide inflation of food costs, bowls were around $5.

The first Whole Bowl opened as a food cart in 2001, predating Portland's modern food cart boom which started around 2009 when the Cartopia pod on Hawthorne made it cool. Cincinnati native Tali Ovadia, shop owner and creator of her namesake Tali sauce, started the cart following a buyout of the software firm where she worked. What started off as a pushcart now has 12 locations in the Portland area and one in Cincinnati. Thanks to the menu's simplicity, nothing has been lost in the chain's expansion. I hope someday we can get a location somewhere in LA, but until then, I have to stay satisfied with my roster of restaurants serving my current comfort food: bean and cheese burritos.