Each year, when the first rain arrives after the cherry blossoms bloom, Portland’s streets and sidewalks become coated with little white and pink flowers, soggy and wilted petals like snow. It’s a phenomenon chef Ryley Eckersley, best known in Portland for his tenure at Quaintrelle, wants to evoke at his incoming restaurant, Äniks: He steeps a chawanmushi-style custard with toasted hazelnut shells, topping it with fresh crab and little medallions of squash like flowers; he drowns it all in hazelnut dashi. “All these small, delicate items,” Eckersley says. “Some things last for a week and a half, and then they’re gone.”
Äniks, opening this April within the former Opal
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