Scoop: New Bars, New Carts and a Gotta-Have App

Gossip That Draws Faces In Latte Foam.

  1. FUTURE DRINKING: Prost! owner Dan Hart is teaming up with Tasty n Sons and Toro Bravo chef John Gorham and prolific restaurant investment firm Chefstable (whose portfolio includes Ping, St. Jack, Grüner and others) to open a new bar, Interurban, in the former Lovely Hula Hands building at 4047 N Mississippi Ave. >> Janis Martin has applied to reopen Tanuki, her beloved, family-unfriendly, altogether wonderful Japanese bar, in the former Immortal Pie and Larder space in Montavilla, three months after her much-mourned departure from Northwest 21st Avenue. >> Caldera Public House owner Kevin Overby has applied to open a bottle shop, delightfully named Beer Bunker, in the old location of Oregon Bike Shop at 7918 SE Stark St., a block from the Academy Theater.
  1. UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS: Cozy inner Southeast coffee house Cellar Door has opened a new bar called 2nd Story: Small Plates and Spirits on the second floor of its building. Also the venue where Portobello Vegan Trattoria got its start as a nighttime pop-up restaurant, Cellar Door has teamed up with former Higgins pastry chef Erin McBride to create what it calls a “cocktalian gastropub,” pairing wines and cocktails with dishes such as braised pork cheek sandwiches, housemade pickles and, of course, desserts.
  1. NEW CART ALERTS: As summer rolls on, so do the new food carts. Spotted recently were: a vegetarian cart called Uni-Cart selling fake fantasy meats like unicorn and dragon at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Ash Street; Cambodian cart Sok Sab Bai at Southeast 11th Avenue and Clay Street; Year of the Fish, serving fish and chips at Southeast 47th Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard; a Southern food cart called Wooster’s and an Italian cart called Holy Cannoli! at Southeast 52nd Avenue and Foster Road. There’s a whole mess of new carts at bike-friendly “super-pod” Cartlandia at Southeast 82nd Avenue: sandwich cart BLT, hot dog cart Deb’s Blazin’ Grill, a Southern food cart Blues City Greens, and a bike-repair cart called the Bike Rack.
  1. APP-TACULAR: WW’s own MusicfestNW just now entered the 21st century. The biggest little music festival in Portland now has its own iPhone app, on which you can craft a schedule, look at a map of all the venues, get festival updates, Tweet with reckless abandon, or run your MFNW photos through a special filter that makes them look...well, like an advertisement for MFNW. OK, that last one is pretty meh, but we’re still going to use the hell out of this thing next weekend, and not just because we work for the company that puts the festival on.

WWeek 2015

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