Welcome to the Second Edition of Portrait of a Lady on the Internet!

Rambling About Portland's Restaurant Industry

Thank you for being here. For new subscribers, feel free to read my first archived post for a more thorough introduction. 

I’ll copy & paste myself here, just one paragraph, from the first letter: It means a lot to me that reading this newsletter is a priority for any of you, especially knowing how much content there is to consume, how much information-overload, how much social media feeds on our quick attention spans and dopamine-seeking brains.

Again, thank you!

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Back in April, one of my favorite establishments in Portland closed: well-loved Bar Norman. I worked there for two years and it became my go-to spot even on my nights off. I won’t go on about the lifelong friends I made there, the community events and pop-ups, or all of the other benefits of knowing a bar like the back of your hand, but I do feel like the BN closure started a lot of conversations in my friend group.

Bar Norman’s closing came on the heels of fellow Clinton Street bar Baker’s shutting down, (after only eight weeks in business) New Mexican restaurant Pepper Box, (my ideal hangover cure) classic Portland diner Zell’s, vegan Vietnamese Mama Dút, and so, so many others. Wine bars have had a particularly rough go of it – Grape Ape and Mattino’s both closed within months on either side of Bar Norman’s closure.

Restaurants close for a million reasons, but I think Portland small businesses are at a unique disadvantage. 

First off, the city operates like a summer beach town. In the winter, stores and restaurants limit their hours and we hole up at home, but the reality is we’re too large a city to pull that off. Too many people rely on employment and tips from the service & hospitality industry for it to partially close down 4-6 months of the year.

72% of people in Portland live in housing with four units or under, with 60% in single family homes, (I researched!). The city has, for the most part, built out and not up, as the population has grown. Unlike other major cities, Portland allows for many residents, especially those with the most disposable income, to have a backyard, or a porch; space to host friends for dinner; kitchens to comfortably cook in. I love this about Portland, but it also means we’re likely to spend *much* more time at home than those living in small apartments in other cities. We don’t have to go out to dinner & drinks as often if we’re happy to cook & stay in.

The pandemic exaggerated this: as many people found themselves with more income, either from unemployment benefits, stipends, or spending less on vacations and dining out during the worst of the Covid-19 crisis, lots of Portlanders upgraded their homes. For the record, this is kind of conjecture. I don’t think these shifts happened within my age or income bracket, but Dana, who owned Bar Norman, brought up this trend when we chatted a week after she announced BN’s closing. Her friends set up fire pits in their backyards, honed at-home bars, purchased great sound systems, kitchen appliances, or set up their own wine cellars. If you were lucky enough to partake in one of these upgrades, there’s less incentive to leave home. 

The city needs some major consumer shifts, but many of us can’t afford to make them. Though I think it’s fair to ask Portlanders to diversify the businesses they support and consider who needs their patronage most, we can’t blame the individual for a systemic problem.

Ultimately we should all be paid more to work less, government spending should be completely reallocated, public space should be more common and accessible, no one should depend on tips for survival, etc., etc., etc. What are the first steps toward this world so many of us want? Maybe small businesses could get government assistance, especially to get them through increasingly challenging winters - a winter stipend with a required percentage going toward staff? I don’t have a clear or fleshed out solution, but I’m curious if anyone does.

Particularly because Portland is so often regarded as a great food city, and working in restaurants can be ~somewhat~ financially fruitful, (especially compared to cities with low minimum wages for tipped workers) I want restaurants, bars, and other small businesses to have more longevity. 

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Recommendations

In the spirit of this newsletter, here are a few Portland places I’ve been especially loving lately, (sorry to the few not Portland-based subscribers; save these in Google Maps for the next time you visit <3).

I had family in town last week, and took them to Ki’ikibáa, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in the city. I gave them a little shout-out in Time Out magazine’s “The World’s 20 Best Cities for Food Right Now,” linked here.

Also mentioned in that Time Out blurb is Annam VL, a relatively new Vietnamese spot on Belmont. Each day has a different, super minimal menu. I love being given less choices and more direction on what to order, and everything I’ve tried has been perfect.

My dad and I also went to one of my favorite places in the city, though not a restaurant: Fumerie Parfumerie, a perfume shop on Division Street. They have an online store, linked here. Their customer service is always so sweet, helpful, and personal. One time, one of the employees told me that perfume has done almost as much for his mental health as therapy, and I truly believe it. 

Perfume has a huge barrier to entry price-wise, but engaging with your sense of smell in other cheaper ways - smelling more flowers, tapping into aromatics with cooking, going to a store like this to try a few scents at no cost - has added so much to my life. Fumerie also offers samples of almost all of their fragrances, usually between $4 and $7 for 1 ml. When we were there, I got a sample of Parfum d’Empire’s “Un Bel Amour d’Été” and I can’t stop wearing it. Milky and tropical with gardenia and tuberose, but still vegetal and fresh. 

A third round of thank you’s,

Alice