Welcome to April 2026’s review of top 5 posts for the month. It was all about restaurant/eatery openings but spanned a range of places: fine dining, fast food, a food cart pod, a brasserie, and a single dessert cart on Sauvie Island.
A new restaurant and bar called Say When opens today, offering “blue collar French food and drink.” It’s from the same folks who brought you Sit Tite in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood, which offers “blue-collar East Coast Italian fare.” I had a chance to chat with co-owner BJ Smith over the weekend to hear more about Say When, and here is what I learned.
Painful and tragic: The flagship Elephants Deli burns. There’s plenty of news outlets reporting on this, but I’ll share the news releases (first, second) produced by Portland Fire & Rescue. Essentially:
“At 1am on the morning of March 10, 2026, Portland Fire & Rescue responded to a commercial fire at the Elephant’s Deli at 115 NW 22nd Avenue in NW Portland. This was a fire that was human caused on the exterior of the structure that extended to the interior of the building and into the elevated roof structure resulting in significant fire damage.”