Happy birthday Bridgetown Bites! That’s right: Bridgetown Bites turns eight years old today. On July 3, 2017, I launched this website with the desire to write about the Portland food and drink scene. It’s grown and changed over the years, but the mission remains the same.
In honor of these eight years, I thought I’d put together eight things I’ve enjoyed learning about over those years, in Portland food and drink. In some cases, I’ve changed my attitude about long-held beliefs. NB: This list is by no means comprehensive.
Welcome to another roundup of top 5 posts on Bridgetown Bites: April 2025 edition. This time it was pretty much all about openings: restaurants, a bar, and a food cart pod. Nice to see that two cuisines we don’t see too much of here in Portland—Greek and Puerto Rican—were of interest to readers.
As far as traffic goes, numbers gained ever so slightly compared to last month—unique visitors stayed about the same and we had a 2% gain in page views. On the other hand, compared to this time last year we have an increase of 78% for unique visitors and 92% for page views. It’s good to see this kind of growth.
As always, thanks for reading, sharing, commenting, and sending tips!
The new food cart pod Brooklyn Carreta is open in Portland after months—no, years—of preparation and construction. I stopped in for a sort of soft opening at the end of March and was very happy to see the place (mostly) complete. The people seemed to be enjoying the final product.
At the writing of this article they are in what they call “Sneak Peek Weeks”; the grand opening will be later in April.
Looking through the front door at Pleasure Mountain.
I thought I’d take a little time to share some of the restaurants opening in Portland in 2025 that I am particularly looking forward to. As we move further away from the pandemic—though COVID is not gone, by any means—I have hopes that its volatility that affected the city’s restaurants for too long is truly in the rearview mirror. And that other issues (like break-ins) can be addressed by our new city council. This year’s list includes a public market, a new coffee shop, Indigenous fine dining, and more.
Welcome to our end-of-the-year roundup of top posts on Bridgetown Bites in 2024. Aside from our Thanksgiving article, the top posts were about openings and closings—restaurant, cafe, bar, and food cart news. And topping the list this year is a double-header: East Portland’s Wooden Chicken Pub! It if hadn’t been for this duo, the closing of 3 Doors Down would have taken spot number 10.
From an analytics POV, traffic had a healthy increase from 2023 to 2024. With 205,100 unique visitors up from 106,000 last year, that’s an increase of 93.3%. Page views were 142,000 last year and 265,000 this year, which is an 86.6% increase. I’m proud of the hard work that has gone into nurturing this site, and serving as a quality resource for those interested in Portland food news—all as an independent shop.
And while Bridgetown Bites is run by one person, our tipsters and readers who pass on news are invaluable to my work here, so thank you very much, friends! Additional thanks to all who read the site, comment, share articles, and send feedback. I look forward to continuing to bring you Portland food news and views in 2025.
So without further ado, here are the top 10 posts on Bridgetown Bites in 2024.
