Miss Delta

Miss Delta is a Southern restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Anastasia Corya and Anton Pace opened the restaurant in 2007, and later sold the business to Marcus Oliver, who expanded the Cajun and Creole-menu to include barbecue.

Description
The Southern restaurant Miss Delta, located in the north Portland part of the Boise neighborhood, serves brunch, lunch, and dinner. According to John Chandler of Portland Monthly, the restaurant "is the slightly-less-thrift-store-funky offspring of the original Delta Cafe on SE Woodstock, a joint that earned its rep by dropping huge platters of Southern cooking on its customers for embarrassingly small sums of money". The Portland Mercury Alison Hallett described Miss Delta as a "well-designed little space" with wood floors, exposed brick walls, and "quirky" light fixtures "that suffuse the place with a bourbon-y hue create an atmosphere redolent with both Southern gentility and North Portland chic".

The Cajun and Creole-influenced menu has included barbecue, biscuits and gravy, catfish sandwiches, cauliflower casserole, chicken and waffles, cornbread muffins, fried okra, hushpuppies, gumbo, and po'boys. The Trashy Mac is macaroni and cheese with smoked chicken and pesto, jambalaya, or gumbo. The Meat Sweats is a platter of andouille, brisket, blackened chicken, pulled pork, and spare ribs. Sides have included coleslaw, collards, mashed potatoes with chicken sausage gravy, and red beans and rice. The dessert menu has included marionberry cobbler, sweet potato pie, and Milky Way cake (dark chocolate cake with chunks of Milky Way candy and caramel).

History
Anastasia Corya and Anton Pace, who previously opened the Delta Cafe in 1995, opened Miss Delta in August 2007. Previously, the space had housed Pasta Bangs. Marcus Oliver later became the owner. He purchased the restaurant and expanded the mostly Cajun/Creole menu to include barbecue.

In 2013, Michael Russell of The Oregonian called Miss Delta a "one-time spinoff of ... cult favorite Delta Cafe" and said the restaurant "has seemed to change hands more times than the Mississippi River has tributaries". Like many restaurants, the business experienced difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic, including staffing issues and temporary closures. In 2021, Oliver's book Cool and Kooky Kids Coloring Cookbook was sold at the restaurant.

Reception
In his 2007 review of Miss Delta, Tim LaBarge of The Oregonian wrote, "Don't let the lighthearted interior fool you: Miss Delta is a place for serious eating and Southern comfort." The newspaper's Grant Butler called the fried chicken "stellar" and said the "sides are good across the board". In 2008, Butler said the restaurant "captures the essence of Southern cooking in all its cast-iron glory. Whether it's perfect black-eyed pea fritters or spicy jambalaya with hot sausage, smoked chicken and shrimp, dishes have a calories-be-damned approach. Portions are so large they have their own gravitational pull: The thing separating comfort from extreme discomfort is your own self-control."