Small Bites: Ancestro Brunch Returns, Feast Utopia, Camp, and More

Ancestro brunch returns with delicious dishes like this with eggs, tortillas, filling, and mole.
You could eat brunch there this morning. Photo credit: Ancestro.

Ancestro brunch returns. As they said, “dinner is taking a little nap for now” (it may return periodically) and they are focusing on brunch at the moment. Head there—they are inside Commensal Fermentation—Thursday through Sunday from 9am to 1pm for their delicious brunch offerings. 3901 N Williams Avenue, Suite A, Portland

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Get Ready for the 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival

miso-jorinji-portland-fermentation-festival-2019-oregon
Jorinji Miso is some of my favorite miso made here in Portland. Scene from the 2019 Portland Fermentation Festival.

It’s almost that time again—time for the 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival, aka Stinkfest, as it is lovingly called. This celebration of all things fermented, fizzy, and alive has been going on since 2009 (with a break during the COVID pandemic). Here are the details about this year’s Festival.

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Small Bites: Proof Pizza, Bialy Bird, Stinkfest, and More

Photo credit: Proof Pizza.

Proof Pizza, a Beaverton pizza cart, is opening a brick & mortar in Portland. They’ll be keeping the truck in Beaverton and expanding eastward to SE Portland, bringing their popular Chicago-style thin crust tavern pies with them. Look for them to be open initially the first week of September—a late night service window and pickup/delivery. Then in October they’ll have the full bar and restaurant up and running. The location? The old Pepper Box Cafe, which closed in 2023. 932 SE Morrison Street, Portland

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The 2024 Portland Fermentation Festival Is Almost Here

Kimchi from the 2019 Portland Fermentation Festival in Portland, Oregon.
Kimchi from 2019’s Portland Fermentation Festival.

I was happy to learn that the 2024 Portland Fermentation Fest is back this October, offering all sorts of wonderfully fizzy, funky, and stinky food and drink, all thanks to friendly bacteria and their metabolic partying. Think yogurt, sauerkraut, kombucha, pickles, tempeh, and more, all beautifully featured right here in Portland. It’s pickling and preserving season, too, so this is a great time to learn about this form of food preservation, or grow your appreciation of it further. Note: As of the afternoon of October 10, tickets are sold out.

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Four Things I Learned This Week (August 25)

Ice cream in the old Hemp Bar space? A Bridgetown Bites reader emailed me to ask about what’s going into the old Hemp Bar space in the For Mrs Noble building (did you know it won the 2021 DeMuro Award?) in FoPo. He said, “Looks like someone is painting an ice cream sign next to what was once Hemp Bar.” I did some research and came up with a big ol’ goose egg. Do you know what’s going on there? Comment here or shoot me an email. 6258 SE Foster Road, Portland

Milo’s City Cafe has new owners. Albert Escobar and his wife, Maria Elena Diaz, are the new owners of Milo’s City Cafe, a breakfast/brunch/lunch spot on NE Broadway on the southern edge of Irvington. I mentioned in May what was explained as a “temporary” closure of Milo’s, but as Albert explains in an article in The Oregonian, “the closure was more permanent than advertised.”

More from Albert: “The previous owners, Jeff and Pam (Munden), they just walked away,” Albert said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I thought we were going to be shut down for a month. I know a lot of people here, customers, the neighborhood, are going to be sad.’ In my heart, I didn’t want this to be over.” Read more about it in the O. 1325 NE Broadway, Portland

French bakeries in Portland visual roundup. The Alliance Française of Portland put together a nice Instagram post of their favorite French bakeries in the area. All are great sources of delicious pastries, including the sweet almondy Galette des Rois in January.

The Portland Fermentation Festival is back! Stinkfest returns after a COVID-induced three year hiatus (here’s what went on in 2019) and will take place again at Ecotrust in NW Portland on Thursday October 19, 6pm to 9pm. The general public has two ticket options: $15 for just the fermentation tasting (starts at 7:30pm), and $30 for the tasting plus the keynote (starts around 6pm), this year by Kirsten Shockey, co-founder of The Fermentation School (Kirsten is based in southern Oregon). These prices above are for tickets you buy ahead of the event; they go up to $20 to $35, respectiverly, if you are paying cash at the door. Read more about the festival and buy your tickets via this Eventbrite link. 721 NW 9th Avenue, Portland