Holden's
524 NW 14th Ave.,
916-0099
Hours: 7 am-5
pm Monday, 7 am-8 pm Tuesday-Friday, 9 am-5 pm Saturday-Sunday.
Inexpensive. Breakfast: $1.25 bagels up to $7 eggs Benedict;
lunch: $4-$8
Picks: Pancakes,
Margot's chicken salad, 6 ounce turkey burger, Bima fish
taco, Chris' Cobb salad, Hello Dolly bars (think seven-layer
bars).
Nice touch:
Instead of chips, sandwiches are coupled with crudité--carrot
and celery sticks and a sweet pepper.
Margot Leonard knows what you like.This one morning I
go into Holden's for a bagel and coffee, the counter-to-customer
greeting is different. "Hey, you changed your hair! It looks
great," Margot Leonard says approvingly, the day after I
spent three hours at a salon to get my mane back to a color
found in nature. It's not surprising that she'd notice,
because I'm a regular. As is 90 percent of the clientele
at Holden's.
Leonard owns Holden's, a Pearl District breakfast and deli
shop that has charmed the appetites of local factory workers
and dot-com CEOs alike. If her name sounds familiar, it's
because Leonard has tempted and satisfied Portland diners
for nearly a decade. She's been a sous chef at Zefiro, a
partner in Armadillo Catering, a McMenamins manager, and
most famously, the co-founder of dearly-departed Bima.
After taking "a tummy tour around Europe with my knives"
and attending cooking school with French cuisine master
Anne Willan in La Varenne, Leonard opened Bima with Chris
Hollern in 1995. Bima came long before Paragon, Oba and
Fratelli and was adored for its tombo tuna tacos, french
fries, dusky lighting and after-work buzz. In the spring
of '98, Leonard and Hollern swung the back of the kitchen
open to establish Holden's, then a grocery and deli. Despite
the influx of All Clad-toting condo-dwellers into the neighborhood,
the groceries didn't sell well. Leonard says that she and
Hollern were too focused on Bima and didn't give the offshoot
proper attention.
"It was like a barnacle stuck on the side of Bima," she
recounts.
But when she had a baby and Hollern had an opportunity
to move to San Francisco, they decided to close Bima. That's
when Holden's went from parasite to, er, paragon.
Leonard took over in January. She got rid of the groceries,
redid the kitchen, fired up the panini maker and extended
the menu to include, among other things, some Bima favorites
such as fish tacos and brownies. The menu now offers full
breakfast, hot lunch, salads and deli sandwiches, as well
as in-house pastries and Noah's bagels. Open till 8 pm Tuesday
through Friday, Holden's has the potential to generate some
casual dinner traffic, but Leonard is careful to keep things
simple.
"I don't want to try to be too many things," she reasons.
"I'd have to buy different foods, hire someone with management
skills so I wouldn't have to be here--and besides, we don't
have a dinner atmosphere," she says. Still, Holden's will
soon issue coupons for evening and weekend discounts to
boost business during the slow times.
The atmosphere in the L-shaped cafe is exceedingly laid-back
and friendly. A small staff of six, including the pastry
chef who turns out Hello Dolly bars, strawberry muffins
and whoopee pies, helps to make groggy mornings pleasant
and lunch meetings low-stress. You can help yourself to
Torrefazione coffee, read the New York Times and
sit in a booth by the often-open garage door that fronts
the operation. Oh, and they handle special requests with
unusual glee.
"I'll do anything for anybody if they ask nicely," offers
Leonard, who says she does all her socializing at work.
A regular's desire for ice cream prompted her to start carrying
novelties, which she occasionally hands out gratis. She
stocks small amounts of sun-dried tomato cream cheese and
hummus--items that are not on the menu--for two customers
who favor the spreads for their bagels. Leonard is not only
magnanimous, but smart: These personal gestures keep people
coming back when they could just as easily frequent Little
Wing, Starbucks or Ken's Home Plate.
And while the company is excellent, the food's not bad
either. The lauded fish taco, with thick chunks of tombo
tuna and Asian slaw, is an incredibly sophisticated item
for a grab-and-go lunch. KNRK's Daria recently gave an on-air
mention to her most beloved grilled-cheese deluxe, the Holden's
Favorite. It's really a panini with prosciutto, mozzarella,
tomato and pesto.
And when the thought of mindlessly consuming another bagel
or pastry with your coffee makes you want to stab someone
with a butter knife, a real breakfast is a galvanizing treat.
The pancakes make duvets seem unfluffy; granola with yogurt
and fruit is of a portion beyond anything you'd ever make
at home. And the breakfast burrito allows you to economize:
Start your day off with it, and you can just eat an apple
for lunch.
Although some of the dishes may sound fussy, they are really
inventive and wholesome takes on the post-war classics.
Leonard knows that her customers number as many warehouse
laborers as web jockeys, and she knows what they like. She
says one of the most popular sandwiches is tuna, her mom's
recipe. "It's what I grew up with," she says. Yeah, us too.
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