New Sellwood spot Monty’s Red Sauce serves up a fresh take on the classic East Coast Italian eatery — and it’s kid-friendly, too.
Since it had been open for two months, I figured when my family headed to Monty’s Red Sauce in the Sellwood neighborhood early on a Saturday evening we wouldn’t have too much of a wait. The 4,000-square foot space, formerly home to Beeswing and Laurelwood Brewing, has lots of seating, after all. But I was wrong! The Portland spin on a New Jersey Italian restaurant was packed; we spied lots of families with littles in high chairs in the large, airy dining room. The wait was 45 minutes to an hour; I put our name in and was told I’d get a text when our table was ready. (Pro tip: They take reservations, I highly recommend making one.) Luckily, Wallace Books was still open, so we walked down Milwaukie Avenue to browse through the stacks of used books. We arrived back at Monty’s 45 minutes later and waited about 10 more minutes for our table.
Despite how slammed it was, our appetizers of garlic bread ($9) and the small butter lettuce salad ($12) came out impressively quick. The garlic bread was a small baguette cut into four spears and my 12-year-old and 10-year-old devoured it. It was buttery and generously covered in grana padano cheese, which my 10-year-old scraped off. The butter lettuce salad with tomatoes, blue cheese, and crispy pancetta and shallots was everything I ever wanted from a salad. It hit my favorite flavor notes: creamy, crunchy, salty and fresh. Even my husband, who doesn’t appreciate blue cheese as much as I do, loved it in this salad.
Both kids ordered from the kids’ menu. My older kiddo got spaghetti with red sauce and grana padano ($9, pictured above), plus two meatballs ($6). My younger child ordered the spaghetti with butter sans the grana padano ($8). My 12-year-old declared the meatballs to be very good and ate a sizable amount of pasta, but ended up taking a fair amount home. My 10-year-old said the butter noodles were very buttery and almost finished them.
I was torn over what to order. Homey, American-style Italian food might be my favorite cuisine. The gnocchi bolognese sounded delicious as did chicken parmigiana and chicken marsala. When my husband firmly decided on eggplant parm ($19), I opted for the penne alla vodka with an added meatball for a bit of protein ($18).
The thing to know about Monty’s is that the portions are very generous. The plate of eggplant parmigiana was covered with a huge slab of eggplant parm and a huge portion of spaghetti with red sauce. My husband and I could have split the plate and still had leftovers. Of course huge portions don’t matter if the food isn’t good. But Monty’s eggplant parm is delicious, probably the best I’ve had in recent memory. And the penne alla vodka was also excellent — creamy, rich and slightly spicy.
Even though we’d all eaten a lot, given how good everything else had been we had to try Monty’s tiramisu. We weren’t disappointed by the big slice. Again, it was tiramisu done right. The ladyfingers were soaked in just the right amount of espresso, and the marsala mousse was not too sweet. One slice was plenty big enough for the four of us.
One of my family’s key markers of a good restaurant is that we already start planning our next visit while we are still there. “I’m coming here for my birthday, and I’m ordering the calamari,” said my husband. “But I want to come here before my birthday, too.”
See you soon Monty’s for top-notch food, great ambience and a kid-pleasing menu. We’ll be sure to make a reservation next time.
If You Go
6716 SE Milwaukie Ave.
Open Sunday-Thursday, 5-9 pm and 5-10 pm Friday and Saturday
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