Broder Hash
While I was otherwise occupied over the last few months, I missed some interesting local news. I’ll catch you up!
From OregonLive, Shiraz, the Persian restaurant at NW 11th and Everett St., has closed, and is renovating before planning to reopen as “Piattino“, an Italian restaurant featuring antipasti. As I recall, before Shiraz, this was the location of the Everett Street Bistro.
Another story from Oregonlive, Troy MacLarty, owner of the very popular Bollywood Theater restaurant on NE Alberta, is opening another location complete with a 700 square foot Indian food market.
The new restaurant, in the D-Street Village development on Southeast Division Street at 30th Avenue, is roughly three times the size of the Northeast Alberta Street original. The kitchen at Bollywood Theater 2 will be about the same size as the entire first restaurant.
With the extra room, MacLarty plans to build a large outdoor patio, a serious Indian food market and some extra kitchen space to expand into catering. If we’re lucky, the new location will become the perfect lab for new dishes and flavors the former Lovely Hula Hands chef brings back from his street food research trips to southern India.
If you haven’t been, here is my one sentence review: great, real Indian food at very reasonable prices, but beware of lines.
Lightbar has opened on SE Morrison and 14th. “What is a lightbar” you ask? From PortlandMonthly,
Owned by Alex Carlson, Lightbar is one answer to Portland’s pet problem: Seasonal Affective Disorder, sometimes known as the Winter Blues, caused by the lack of sunlight thanks to our often gloomy weather year-round.
… The Vibe: Designed by Portland’s Fix Studio, Lightbar’s high ceilings white walls, and clean lines are lit by colored LED lights that shift moment to moment, and light therapy boxes are perched on individual tables and booths, ready to shine for Vitamin D-starved customers.
Diners and drinkers are welcome to stay awhile and soak in the “sun”, tap into Lightbar’s free WiFi, and take in the entertainment…
Really? Really!? Good lord. Read more from PortlandMonthly here.
Most likely you’ve seen the BrewCycle - a kind of people pedal powered mobile bar that roams around Portland. According to NewSchoolBeer.com, the people behind it will be opening a tap house at 1425 NW Flanders – on the same block as Mellow Mushroom Pizza. The location will be the official stop and start of the Brewcycle tours, and will feature 24 taps.
If you haven’t heard, Patanegra, the Spanish tapas restaurant which suffered from location anxiety because of its hidden location behind St. Honore in NW Portland, has closed. However, Eater says that chef Jose Chesa who has been getting lots of attention for his Spanish tapas at Ciao Vito on NE Alberta, is opening a restaurant in the same space, which will be called Ataula. Chesa’s Facebook description says “A tapas-centric style restaurant with a modern and welcoming atmosphere that transports you to the rich and ever-evolving culture of ‘tapeo’. Ataula’s all embracing menu by Chef Chesa will feature regional specialties from different areas of Spain.”
The new restaurant will be at 1818 NW 23rd Place. The bad news – Ciao Vito is losing a good chef.
Pasta Allegro, which opened in the oft maligned location at NE Fremont and MLK, is looking for diners. A recent press release says, “Pasta Allegro has been open since late May. We are featuring a ‘build your own entrée’ concept, in addition to some predetermined entrees. Guests can choose from 50 ingredients to come up with their perfect meal. Our fried calamari has been a hit, and we would brag that it’s the best in town.”
There you have it. In the past the space over the years has been 1. Terroir, 2. Belly and 3. Carpaccio Trattoria.
Last September Caprial and John Pence opened Basa Basa, a chicken wing restaurant in The Ocean complex in SE Portland. According to Eater, it has now closed. “It was a fun concept, and we really enjoyed it,” John Pence told Eater PDX. “Our customers enjoyed it, but it wasn’t going in the direction I wanted.” The direction most likely being, making money.
I recently enjoyed breakfast at Broder Cafe, the wildly popular SE Swedish restaurant. Willamette Week notes that they are planning on opening a second restaurant in the old Gotham Tavern spot at 2240 N. Interstate Ave. The new restaurant, named Broder Nord, will have 93 seats.
Remember Gotham? Sniff. I know, I know, move on.
Sidenote: When I was a youngster, one of my parents favorite restaurants was Scandia on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It was quite swanky, and as with any upscale restaurant, you had to wear a jacket and tie to get a table. If you forgot, which dad did one time (and only one time), they would loan you both, but the jacket was bright plaid, and the tie was bright yellow. Let’s just say you never forgot twice. The food was, as they say, fabulous. <end sidenote>
If you were a photographer and were offered a chance to show and sell your photographs in a coffeehouse, you probably would be happy. You’d work out the standard deal, whereby the coffee shop got a percentage of all the photos sold; it’s a win-win for everyone. Well, not so fast. A local photographer offers the following in a recent Facebook post:
Artists, friends of artists, internet at large, what do you do when someone is trying to screw you over?
I recently hung five photos in a café downtown for a First Thursday show, and when I came to pick up my photos at the end of the month, they had lost them. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and gave them a couple days to look for them, but when they finally admitted to not having them and I asked to reimburse me, they refused! They didn’t even apologize for losing (trashing?) my photographs.
I signed an artist agreement with a manager of the café (who later resigned, so no longer works there), but they’re not honoring it because the owner himself didn’t sign it. It got to the point where the owner just kept saying “Well, you can talk to my lawyer.”
I was selling my photos for $25 each, so I’m asking for $125 total. To take this guy to small claims court, it will cost me about $90, which I honestly barely have.
So for $125, the owner of Cafe Theobroma at NW 10th and Flanders, is apparently willing to stiff a local artist. Nice. I certainly won’t be recommending their coffee shop any time soon.
Last but not least, the 2013 Reader Survey has been languishing while I’ve been jetting back and forth from the bay area. It is still open – To reward you for completing the survey, I am awarding a random participant a $250.00 gift certificate to Timberline Lodge and to a second person, a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of their choice. All you have to do to be eligible is answer 20 of the questions. Please take a moment and check it out here.
This original post is by Food Dude. For more on the PortlandFoodandDrink scene, go to Portland Oregon Food and Drink, or go to our review page.