Top 5 Posts on Bridgetown Bites, May 2024

Google’s “helpful” content update continued to wreck havoc on the blog, but the good news is that it put a fire under me to implement an alternative strategy. Good news: things are better in June. The numbers for May? 8,800 unique visitors and a little over 11,000 page views.

As for the top five posts May, it was a fascinating mixed bag: the real estate angle on food cart pods, some openings, closings … and Salad Week post from 2022 about where to get a big salad in Portland!

Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing stories from the blog.

5. Where to Get a Big Salad in Portland

The Hercules Salad at Garden Monsters food cart in Portland, Oregon.

Over the years, I’ve heard people ask, “So where can I get a big salad in Portland?” If they are a New York transplant, they are probably thinking of those chopped salad and panini spots that were (are?) ubiquitous in Midtown Manhattan. Or the kind of “Big Salad” referred to in Seinfeld. But really—sometimes you just want a big salad, no matter where you come from.

4. There Be Monsters Is Closing This Weekend

The bar at There Be Monsters, now closed.

Sometimes Portland food news comes my way in the places I least expect. Through a folk music mailing list I subscribe to, I learned that the neighborhood pub There Be Monsters in the Buckman neighborhood is closing. Saturday, May 4 is their final day of service.

3. Benditos Latin Fusion Has Opened in the Old Blossoming Lotus Space

Benditos Latin Fusion in Portland, Oregon.

I gotta tell you—I regret not eating at the vegan restaurant Blossoming Lotus while it was open in Irvington; it closed on Wednesday, April 3. I’d often drive by and wonder about it, but that is a moot point now (and a good reminder not to wait on these things). The news I’m sharing with you is that about two weeks after Blossoming Lotus closed, another restaurant opened at that location: Benditos Latin Fusion (“bendito” means “blessing” in Spanish).

2. 99 Ranch Market to Open in Mill Park’s Plaza 205

This may have been in the works for a while, but thanks to a tweet tip from Iain MacKenzie (@maccoinnich), I’ve learned that east Portland will be home to a 99 Ranch Market. It looks like it’s going to open in the old Office Max space (EDIT: not the Hometown Buffet space, as I originally suggested—big box store spaces, they all look so similar). The projected opening is Q2 of 2024, so springtime next year.

1. 3700 NE 82nd Avenue: Goodbye Rip City Food Carts Pod?

Rip City Food Cart Pod at 3700 NE 82nd Ave, in Portland, Oregon.

There’s a little food cart pod over at 3700 NE 82nd Avenue (the northeast corner of 82nd Avenue and NE Beech) called Rip City Food Carts—I mentioned it back in September 2022 along with a bunch of other Portland food news. Currently, it’s home to the Salt & Pepper Peruvian food cart (there used to be a Mexican food cart there, too, but it left a few months ago). And now it looks like, via an Early Assistance permit listing (set up May 2, 2024), that the pod could go kaput—with a mixed-use building going up in its place.