On the edge of the northeast corner of the Hollywood District lived Hot Lips Pizza. It closed back in March 2023 and a number of people expressed sadness about that. But according to city documents, a new pizzeria is opening in there: Fusion Curry Pizza. Update: They are open for business.
As I mentioned last week, I was off the blog for an extended time, but I still thought it would be interesting to see what was popular in April. Understandably, numbers were down but still there were about 9,500 page views and 6,500 unique visitors. Could be worse!
Some updates: Denizens Cafe is getting the old OG Ben & Esther’s space ready, and you can invest in them. Alux is up and running. Sandy O’s has applied for a liquor license. Locals have been posting about their love for the food and drink at Three Fifty Cafe and I enjoyed trying their food the other day. And The Heist is getting close to opening.
A few days ago, James Helms posted on social media the news that the Rocky Butte Espresso Bar, which closed in late 2022, has a new location … as well as a new concept and new name. Along with coffee there are plans for food, and a projected opening is unknown at this time. The new name is Denizens Cafe.
Getting to this a little later than I’d like, as I’ve been buried under a massive pile of client editing work in April. I love it, but it’s a lot right now. Anyway, March 2023 was a good month for the blog. Close to 8,900 unique visitors arrived and a little over 14,000 page views were generated, which might be a record at this point in time.
News of bars, restaurants, and food cart pods were the name of the game in May. Thanks, as always, for reading!
It’s fun to see what was popular on the blog last month—and there was some variety this time (most often it’s all about Portland restaurant news). A few posts on specific kinds of food (galette des rois, soup, dumplings), some restaurant news, and events (the dumpling fest and soup fest). Big thanks to Reddit, Facebook, and PDX Eater for their linkage—it really drove traffic to the site in January, with over 10,000 page views.
Last year around this time I wrote about the Galette des Rois, the traditional French king cake to honor Epiphany aka Three Kings Day (January 6), and where it was available in Portland. In 2022, accessing this delicious cake—sweetened almond cream surrounded by buttery puff pastry—was limited. Happily, there are addition options this year, which I want to highlight.
It’s 2023! And though we are in a new year, I’m looking back at the top 10 posts of 2022. I realize that the last time I did this was … 2017.
It was, as usual, interesting to see what got the most traffic in 2022—meaning, what readers were particularly drawn to. It’s no surprise that restaurant news was the main driver, and summer seems to be a bit of a theme.
Over 55,000 visits were recorded, and almost 35,000 of those visits were new to the site. Not bad for this modest operation.
Last year I remember coming across something called the “Portland Strawberry Museum” and wondering, “what the heck was that?” I mean, what a great name! Is there some kind of museum dedicated to strawberries in Portland? Turns out it was a month of Saturdays in June of celebrating the strawberry, from Brittany Sigal’s Zuckercreme (then a popup). It is back this year for the entire month of June at her space in Montavilla.