Portland's restaurant scene remains at the top of the pack, and when part of your job is giving people suggestions about where to eat, it's safe to say you dine out quite a bit.

The big picture: We've covered restaurants opening and closing in the city all year, which can make it hard to return to the places I love as often as I'd like.

• But there are some meals I can't stop thinking about.

How it works: There are many factors that can make a meal memorable — from the food itself to the people you share it with and how the experience made you feel.

In no particular order, these are my 10 favorite things I ate in Portland this year.

🥐 Cafe Olli

Best bite: Pasteis de nata. The classic Portuguese egg tart — a layered puff pastry with a creamy, delicately sweet egg custard and caramelized top — showcases chef Siobhan Speirits' craft. No wonder why the pastry case is so quick to sell out.

What else I ordered: The pomodoro pizza with stracciatella and cured anchovy remains one of the best pies in the city. Order any of the rotating seasonal salads on the menu and be impressed.

🦆 Chelo

Best bite: For a vegetable-forward restaurant, the duck-leek confit tamale smothered in a rich, chocolate mole sauce was the standout, complemented by the warm, hospitable service on my 30th birthday.

What else I ordered: The squash tlayuda and esquites y almejas — an elevated version of Mexican street corn with clams and cherry tomatoes.

🌶️ Xiao Ye

Best bite: Is there anything better than the mini madeleines? A mix of masa and mochiko flour on a bed of salted, whipped butter and topped with dusted jalapeno — six bite-sized cakes are simply not enough.

What else I ordered: Salted egg shrimp (eat the head whole!) and the casarecce pasta with a mushroom short-rib ragu.

Udon, pasta and sammies

At the start of the year, a series of extreme winter weather systems pummeled Portland and ice rained down from the skies.

The big picture: The impact of that event — when hundreds lost power and were trapped in their homes, businesses were forced to close and potholes plagued the streets — has raised questions about how the city will respond to future natural disasters.

The latest: We asked Sarah Iannarone, the executive director of transportation advocacy group Street Trust, about what the ice storm taught us about our transit system and how to move forward.

• This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What did we learn from January's ice storm?

• "Bad weather events teach us about where the system really breaks down. Safe routes to transit is a gap that we don't ensure that we're going to close for so many people in our region."
• "Using the sneckdown method, storms show us how many trips people could be taking by means other than driving. Those are the places where we should be focusing our transportation demand management efforts."

Climate-related extreme weather events are expected to happen more frequently. What should transportation officials be thinking about?

• Reliable transportation affects all facets of city life, beyond convenience: "It's that lower-wage worker who misses the bus and misses a shift, whose family might miss a meal during that storm that we need to be thinking about through the transportation lens."

Keep reading

🐟 The number of salmon and steelhead returning to the Columbia River Basin to spawn remained flat over the last decade at an average of 2.3 million — above the dismal counts in the 1990s, but still below official goals of roughly 5 million fish. (OPB)

🏘️ Housing advocates are raising concerns as Metro mulls a rollback of a tax that funds eviction prevention and helps people transition from homelessness to housing. (Portland Mercury)

🚌 The Environmental Protection Agency is sending roughly $6.5 million to Oregon so school districts can retire diesel school buses and replace them with EVs. (Oregon Capital Chronicle)

🧑‍⚖️ New laws — including the right to repair your own electronics, lower prescription drug costs and divestment from coal companies — are going into effect on Jan. 1. (The Oregonian)

Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah fall on the same date this year for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Flashback: Hanukkah last started on Christmas night back in 2005 — the only other time the two have aligned in the last 50 years.

• Hanukkah has started the night of Christmas Eve twice in the last 50 years: in 1978 and 2016.

How it works: The first day of Hanukkah comes on the 25th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, which is based on lunar cycles with the occasional "leap month."

• Jewish calendar days begin at sundown, meaning 25 Kislev starts this year on the evening of Dec. 25, when the first candle is lit.

💬 Our thought bubble: This year's "Chrismukkah" is both a simple celestial coincidence and a blessing for people who take part in both holidays, giving us a rare chance to truly blend and share end-of-year celebrations and traditions with our different family groups and loved ones.

What's next: The next Hanukkah-Christmas alignment doesn't come back 'round til 2035.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Hanukkah begins on 25 Kislev (not 24 Kislev), and to include additional detail about when the first night of Hanukkah is celebrated on the Gregorian calendar.