Spints Alehouse Closing, Taqueria Nueve to Return, and More!

Spints Alehouse at 401 NE 28th Avenue is closing. In a statement on Facebook, owner Alyssa Gregg said, “It saddens me to say that August 31st will be our last day here at Spints. It has been an awesome journey for me and I want to thank my staff and all the great customers we had along the way. Please join us for drink specials and a plentiful buffet on our last night to let Spints go out with a bang!” Though I only been there a few times, Spints was a fun place, and I wish Alyssa the best of luck in her next venture.

What’s next for the space? According to OregonLive, Dan Hart, owner of Prost, will be opening a German beer bar named Stammtisch.

Stammtisch, German for “regular’s table,” should have somewhere between 15-18 taps (compared to Prost’s 11), freeing Hart up to pour more regional German specialties and rarities.

Expect to see one tap devoted to kölsch, the refreshing beer from Cologne, as well as rotating kegs of German alt, gose and Berliner Weisse (and yes, before you ask, Hart plans to stock woodruff and raspberry syrups).

Hart says he’s particularly excited about tapping kegs from Kloster Andechs, a small, scenic monastery and brewery southwest of Munich that makes “really phenomenal beer,” including a standout Helles lager.

“We want beer afficionados to be able to come in and appreciate some regional specialty beers that they might have had in the bottle but have never had on draft,” Hart said.

According to OregonLive.com, Stammtisch will offer traditional German fare. Hart hopes to have the doors open by November.

Speaking of NE 28th, it was once home to a little restaurant named Taqueria Nueve, one of the most popular Mexican restaurants in Portland. Owner Billy Schumaker closed the restaurant in May of 2008, despite large crowds and positive reviews. Now that social websites like Yelp have made restaurants so much easier to run, Schumaker has told PortlandMonthly that he will reopen the taqueria in the old Beaker & Flask spot on 727 SE Washington & Sandy. Yelpers, start posting those reviews today!!

It’s fun to look back at the prices my the old review. Want to bet they’ll change?

Kingdom of Roosevelt, Eric Bechard’s Portland restaurant is moving. Mike Russell at the Oregonian broke the story that the restaurant will be moving to a new, yet unspecified location. Open since last February, Kingdom of Roosevelt was known for their take on wild game. There was much discussion among many in the community as to whether Portland is ready for dishes such as “Pickled elk tongue with beetroot”, “Fallow Deer Tartare”, Wood Pigeon Liver Custard”, and “Roosevelt Elk with Savoy Cabbage”.

According to Russell, Eric plans to reopen the restaurant in a mystery location (oh my!) at a date to be determined, in a building he just bought. The old location will reopen as Trinket, a brunch restaurant run by ex-Roosevelt employees. This begs the question, who will be running the new restaurant?

Are national park restaurants any good? I had lunch a few months ago at Timberline Lodge. I didn’t really expect it to be good, and it wasn’t. Still, I wondered how the food was at dinner. David Sarasohn at the Oregonian attempts to answer that question in a piece titled “Crater Lake and Timberline Lodges: The specialty here is always the view“, which should kill off any fantasy you may have about a perfect meal in either place.

I’ve discussed the problem of Wi-Fi squatters in coffee shops here before, and there still isn’t a good answer to the problem of people buying one cup of coffee and taking up a table all afternoon. Some shops deliberately use slow internet connections so that customers can’t do much more than check email and surf the net. Others are eliminating electrical outlets, figuring batteries only last so long. A few have put up signs asking patrons to restrict Wi-Fi use to certain community tables. Barista on Alberta politely asks that laptops not be used at the bar.

From NBCNews.com,

But the Perfect Cup in Chicago may have found the perfect solution, one that’s neither passive aggressive nor oblivious to the bottom line. It has plenty of electric outlets and ample Wi-Fi, but to get on the network, you have to enter a password — found at the bottom of your receipt. The password lasts for three hours, ensuring that surfers maintain a steady drip of purchases.

Starbucks is going the other direction. In a partnership with Google, they will be increasing surfing speed by up to 10 times at 7,000 locations across the country, with speeds in Google Fiber cities to increase by 100 times.  Standard speed in Starbucks stores now is 1.5 megabits. The new speed would allow streaming movies.

These days there is a smart phone app for everything, but this one gave me pause.

It allows you to share leftover food with strangers.

Ack! From NPR.org,

The basic gist is this: Let’s say you have some leftover pizza. Snap a photo of it and post it to the app’s database. Strangers in the same geographic market then have an option of trading you for the food — or just taking it off your hands.

Leftover Swap is expected to launch by the end of August and will be available to download for free. Newman said he and Summersett are considering marketing in a few test markets to allow experimentation of the community-building around the leftover share, but haven’t decided which ones they’ll be. Either way, San Francisco health officials are already sounding warnings that users there could be breaking the law since leftovers pose a health hazard.

I’ll share food with anyone I know, but complete strangers? No, probably not.