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Portland Food and Drink

Throwing Ourselves On The Grenade of Bad Food to Save You

You are here: Home / Portland Food and Restaurant News and Discussion / It’s Official – Balvo to Close

It’s Official – Balvo to Close

Last Update August 8, 2009 14 Comments

Remember, you read it here days ago!

From Oregon Live:

A couple of months shy of its first anniversary, Balvo will serve bowls of rigatoni with red sauce for the last time Saturday, Oct. 14. The restaurant is scheduled to reopen for dinner on Wednesday, Oct. 18, with a new, still-undetermined name, more formal decor and Chris Israel at the helm as executive chef. Balvo is one of three restaurants in the Bruce Carey Restaurants group, whose partners include principal Carey, chefs Kenny Giambalvo and Israel, and Saucebox frontman Joe Rogers. The reorganization shakes down like this: Giambalvo, who split time between Balvo and Bluehour, will now focus solely on head chef duties at the latter; Israel retains his role as exec chef at Saucebox but will spend the bulk of his time at the re-imagined place on Northwest 23rd Avenue.

So what went wrong at Balvo, the gleaming glass restaurant that drew criticism for inconsistency and branded merchandise upfront?

“The original concept for Balvo was everyday Italian, with a familiar menu and a neighborhood vibe,” Carey says, “but I think I underestimated the level of sophistication among diners in this town as well as the number of places that are already doing this kind of food and doing it well.”

You can read the details [link no longer valid]

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Category: Portland Food and Restaurant News and Discussion.

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Reader Interactions


14 comments:

  1. singingpig says

    September 28, 2006 at 9:40 am

    Food Dude and the others:

    You were right. I was wrong.

    Reply
  2. Cuisine Bonne Femme says

    September 28, 2006 at 9:48 am

    I love how Portland Food and Drink with its all volunteer crew can come up with more, quicker, and substantiated gossip than many unnamed “professional” media outlets in town.

    Reply
  3. Food Dude says

    September 28, 2006 at 11:21 am

    singingpig: I owe it all to my readers/writers. Such a great group of people out there.

    Now the big question is, were is Tommy Habetz? Let’s speculate…

    Moving to Seattle to join the emperor?

    Nope. He’s not that stupid. Michael has already said he’s going to “kill the restaurant”. I guess he needed to do more research for his book ;)

    So where will Tommy end up?

    Reply
  4. extramsg says

    September 28, 2006 at 11:55 am

    Why speculate? Why don’t you call and ask him. Just a thought.

    Reply
  5. Food Dude says

    September 28, 2006 at 12:02 pm

    Um, ’cause that takes the fun out of it. Geeze, what do you think this is… a serious news site?

    Reply
  6. Pork Cop says

    September 28, 2006 at 12:10 pm

    Told ya so……(Insert gloating emoticon) New Zefiro = Bad Idea. Zefiro was only really good for about 3 years. It was all about the people who worked there.Chris is great tho’.Whatever it is ..it’ll be good!

    Reply
  7. grapedog says

    September 28, 2006 at 12:19 pm

    In my opinion, Balvo failed for two reasons: Portland is absolutely swamped with Italian restaurants, high-end, mid-range and affordable. Unless Balvo had something the other guys didn’t, it was doomed to fail. Secondly, I haven’t been to a restaurant on NW 23rd in years due to a severe lack of parking in the area. Why hassle with parking when there are so many other good places in the area? Heck, I could zip into Basta’s private parking lot and eat wonderful Italian food with very little effort. Who needs more stress in their lives?

    Reply
  8. Food Dude says

    September 28, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    Actually, Balvo has free valet parking

    Reply
  9. crazy Sasquatch says

    September 28, 2006 at 1:04 pm

    I suppose my Balvo mug, t-shirt, key ring, beer-cooz-e, collectors plate, and limited edition glitter thong are all collectors items now. I wonder how much I can get for them on Ebay? The one time I walked in there to see how their barista skills were, I was so amused by the Hardrock cafe merchandizing that I really didn’t even pay attention to my coffee. I was just blown away by the big orange B I had to buy every tiem that was emblazed with it.

    Reply
  10. Food Dude says

    September 28, 2006 at 1:10 pm

    I was hoping to get the B Ball to hang from my living room ceiling;)

    Here’s a bit of wild speculation. Might the new restaurant have some sort of German influence?

    Reply
  11. sidemeat says

    September 28, 2006 at 1:34 pm

    Der Bungalow Schadenfreude anyone? Plus they get to keep the big orange db ball.

    Reply
  12. martyn earplug says

    September 28, 2006 at 2:00 pm

    I was thinking that 4 days isnt very long to rebrand a very branded restaurant, roll out a new menu, new kitchen crew, retrain the staff. I’ll be amazed to see how that flows on opening day.

    Reply
  13. sidemeat says

    September 28, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    I was just coming back to ask that very question. Unless your new branding agency is Kinko’s, and even then, four days to erase your history and start fresh without moving? The Hiroshima shadow of that big orange ball will last at least a couple of good rains. Thank goodness this is in the hands of proffessionals.

    Reply
  14. hoonan says

    September 28, 2006 at 4:33 pm

    I saw Tommy Habetz at Apizza Scholls last night. He looked happy to me.

    Reply

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