Miss Dish
Aalto Expands! Poland Retreats!

by CARYN B. BROOKS
cbrooks@wweek.com

GENTLE READERS,

Just this past weekend Miss Dish sat at the Aalto Lounge at Southeast 34th and Belmont with her dear friends Professor Rage and Lady Incisive discussing change. Belmont itself has done more transforming lately than Darcelle in a month of Saturday nights. Take the Aalto: It began primarily as a wine bar with some upscale nibbles on the menu. But the vision is expanding, and starting March 30 the place is adding a small dinner menu that will include such things as penne pasta, smoked trout chowder, spicy boiled prawns and (for all those former Vat flies) roasted game hen. Meanwhile, next door, the spot that previously housed the Moderne furniture store Sit Babe, Stay will morph into a Stumptown Roasters coffeehouse. And on the other side, the former site of the dethroned Majestic Cleaners is waiting for an eatery to fill in.

All these metamorphoses make it seem as though it's easy to up and start a restaurant. To quote the precocious Alicia Silverstone in Clueless: "As if!" Just ask Dionizy Baran, the mustachioed proprietor of the Taste of Poland cart downtown at Southwest 5th between Stark and Oak. If you haven't had his food, you're missing out on some of the best pierogis and bratwurst in the city. Miss Dish likes to visit Dion (the nickname he goes by) and was excited when he told her a month or so ago that he was going to open a restaurant. A few weeks back she checked in with him and found Dion slightly distraught. "I almost cry," he told her. It seems that he thought he had locked into a spot near the Convention Center but now someone with more money was trying to outbid him, even though his contract was already approved.
"I dream about this place many eves," he told Miss Dish. Dion says he owned an eatery in Poland called The Elk for 11 years before he moved to America in 1986. Running a restaurant in a country known for intense land battles, populist insurrection and shortages galore must have been extremely challenging. How did it feel to be met with America's form of bureaucracy? "This place, coming here, was easy for me," says Dion. While Dion is now dealing with lawyers and trying to negotiate contracts, in his motherland he was paying off people under the table and over the table. "In America, everything is straight. In Poland, everyone is looking for the easy." This week Miss Dish visited Dion again and found out that his deal near the Convention Center was off even though his lawyer tried to help, but now he's looking around for other spots. There's one he's considering near Milwaukie.

In the name of capitalism, Miss Dish calls out to any landowners out there with a good space to let: There's a man who makes wicked potato dumplings and he needs a good deal. It's easy to find him most days during lunchtime.