Hollywood Wine & Espresso Closed – And More

From the good folks behind Hollywood Wine & Espresso –

Bittersweet message here.
Hollywood Wine has been sold, and will be closed for a couple of weeks.
Will reopen as “Magnolia’s Corner, inc.”

This is just a brief “heads up”
I will get more information to you soon…
I also intend to personally contact as many of my longtime friends, customers and trade, as I can…though it might be a while

The “bitter” is missing all of the friends and the good times…
The “sweet” is maybe a bit of time to go fishing….
Thanks again, and really sorry for any inconvenience…
Dennis

On a brighter note, most of you are probably familiar with Whiffies Pie cart at the NE Hawthorne and 12th food cart pod. I couldn’t help but thinking off them when I read this article at Huffington Post.com on The Top New Foods Of 2010:

Fried Peanut Butter, Banana and Bourbon Sandwich

Think about it, and please join my campaign to get Whiffies to make some of these pies, to help get our children through this cold, arctic winter. Tweet @Whiffies today! If he breaks down and makes some, I’ll post here – (You’ll probably need to show your secret PFD decoder ring. What? You don’t have a ring? Look in the box your PF Flyers came in. Yup, dating myself again.)

Another bit of news: According to a tip, Russell Street BBQ over on um, NE Russell, will be opening a second location on SE Tacoma in May. Tacoma is the street that turns into the Sellwood Bridge.

David Miller over at OPB, is doing a weekly short story show called The Speakeasy. They are concentrating on bringing a selection of short pieces about Portland, and one of the things covered in the section called “Secret Portland – Radio Visits to the Best Stoops and Stops of the Area”, was an exploration of Tigard’s H-Mart with Willamette Week’s Arts & Culture editor, Kelly Clarke. Scroll down the page to the first episode. It’s at about 18 minutes in, but the whole show is good listening.

I agree with her about the Kimchee isle. It’s amazing. And Kelly, you need to do more radio; really good.

A Japanese restaurant called “Japanese Bistro by Sushi Hana” (I think) is opening in the space on NE Alberta and 23rd, recently vacated by Wine Down East. Other than that they have three other stores in Vancouver and Tigard, I don’t know anything about the restaurant, but they are going to have to sell a lot of food to pay for that space. Best of luck to them.

Another reason to buy local: this undercover video of Smithfield Foods. Not for the faint of heart. By the way, the food safety bill mentioned in the article has passed.

That’s it for now. I wish everyone a happy and profitable 2011!