Fair Weather’s shrimp and grits begin with a mystery — there are no shrimp or grits to be seen. Instead, a poached egg rises from a swirl of greens, an alabaster island at the center of a stormy sea.
Now, this might not be the best dish at Fair Weather, the recently returned brunch spot inside the old Jacqueline space. But it might be the coolest. Cut into that egg, mix the greens through the shrimp and grits and surprising cache of tomato-garlic sauce beneath, and what was once mostly green turns red, like a catalytic experiment in a high school chemistry class.
For those lucky enough to experience it, Jacqueline’s early brunch has become a thing of legend. Starting not long after the seafood restaurant opened here in Southeast Portland, the menu lasted just long enough to catch our notice, landing on our best new brunches list in 2017. Four years later, owner Derek Hanson brought it back as Fair Weather, a pandemic pivot that stuck around for a few months — again, just enough time for its yeasted waffle with hazelnut-praline butter to crack our year-end best dishes list in 2021…