Restaurants in Camas

Located in a historical two-story firehouse, Touché’s stately dining room charms with a grand piano, a long mahogany bar, and the smell of wood-fired pizzas and steaming lasagna. An elegant staircase leads upstairs, where you can play a post-dinner game of pool or enjoy any entree from the menu while peeking out the room’s large windows to look down at the streets below. The dinner menu is served alongside wines by the glass and bottle from Italy, Argentina, and France, finished by desserts such as silky vanilla crème brûlée and rich chocolate pots de crème.

Portland Prime's claim to fame is its steaks. Each highly marbled piece of USDA Prime beef is aged for 28 days before it’s cooked to achieve maximum flavorization. Wood-fired ovens sear the juices of diver scallops and ahi tuna steaks inside blackened crusts, and locally sourced ingredients enrich every dish, including seasonal desserts. The eatery’s expansive wine list boasts 140 bottles and 40 wines by the glass, which helped it to win Wine Spectator's 2011 Award of Excellence, which is only given to establishments at which it's truly enjoyable to watch other people drink wine.

Originally opened as the Top Hat Drive-In in 1953, Sonic has grown into a burger-franchise mecca that today operates out of 3,500 locations across the country, making it the nation’s largest chain of drive-in restaurants. Sonic specializes in made-to-order American classics—including burgers, hot dogs, milk shakes, and marshmallow Ford Thunderbolts—which customers order and receive without ever having to leave their cars. Unique menu items include toaster sandwiches stacked on thick slices of texas toast, as well as the brand’s signature tots and fresh limeades.

Sonic’s numerous awards include a 2011 Zagat survey ranking it among the top five fast-food restaurants in three categories: Best Value Menu, Best Milk Shake, and Best Drive-Thru. The benevolent eatery has also donated more than $2 million to public schools throughout the country through their program Limeades for Learning, which helps to fund educational projects and retirement plans for classroom guinea pigs.

When the owners of Que Pasa Cantina renovated the restaurant a few years back, they looked to Mexico for inspiration. As a result, the cantina feels like a portal to Mexico itself—tin and glass stars dangle from the ceiling, portraits of poppies decorate walls, and vibrant, striped blankets counterbalance dark woodwork. As for the menu, it strikes a balance between traditional and original. Among traditional options, margaritas contain hand-measured proportions of tequila and fresh lime, and posole brims with hominy, roasted chicken, and spicy tomato broth. A handful of the contemporary entrees rank among the most popular. In particular, the chicken enchilada casserole merges carrots, corn, and cheese into a stick-to-your-sides entree that’s as comforting as a nap in a bed of mashed potatoes. The restaurant keeps eight Mexican beers on hand and four beers on tap.

Mack and Dub’s pork-free, southern-influenced fare was created as an homage to the flavors of their childhood spent in the neighborhood where their two restaurants now stand. Mack & Dub’s Breakfast Club tends to morning and midday cravings with specialties such as fish and grits, pancakes, and Angus beef burgers. Just a few blocks up the road, Mack & Dub’s Excellent Chicken & Waffles serves a hearty menu of southern fried chicken, smoky kebabs, and chicken and waffles. Several dishes feature a barbecue sauce originated by Mack’s grandfather, whose grill prowess garnered him local fame and a restraining order from multiple cows.

For more than 15 years, from within the same walls, the Karam family has owned and operated three restaurants, each evolving from the last. Dissatisfied with early permutations, the family remade and refined their eatery until both the menu and character better reflected their Lebanese heritage, transforming it from a pizzeria to an international café to their current iteration, Karam Lebanese Cuisine.

Inside Karam's walls decorated with lively frescoes, the scent of fresh-baked pita bread wafts through the dining room. The kitchen's emanating warmth hints at the chefs' made-from-scratch Middle Eastern creations, such as the shawarma plate with tender cuts of lamb that rest atop a fluffy bed of basmati rice. To create vegetarian-friendly fattee, chefs layer bread with strips of roasted eggplant, garbanzo beans, yogurt, and pine nuts never tested on animals or pines. Diners can accent meals with glasses of tea freshly made from herbs grown in-house.