"the downturn in the economy is seperating the chaff from the wheat in the Portland food scene"

It would be pretty rad if this was happening. Unfortunately, it's not. The recent "closing of crap-to-closing of under appreciated gems" ratio is no better than it has been in the past several years. It would be lovely if you could connect strings-of-words to coherent ideas, Patrick.

What recent closures are you talking about, A cat? I'm curious to which ones you considered "under appreciated gems." And the wheat/chaff ratio I'm speaking of here is "closing of crappy/mediocre restaurants-to-excellent eateries with staying power."

And the chaff is chaff for any number of reasons, only a part of which is the taste of the food--lousy service and management play their part too.

The last 3 restaurant closures I've read about on blogtown have been Mercato, Rocket and Chesterfield.

I've never been at the former (though Patrick's review depicts a restaurant with a lot of ambition and little substance), but his/Storrs' assertion that the Rocket's high-priced gastronomic ambitions were too much for this economy and food scene is mos' def 'chaff worthy'.

I've been to the Chesterfield several times and while I did like it, I always noticed I was one of maybe ten people there.

I would love to read a list of the unjust closings though, cat!

Yawn... Michelle, if you actually read Leather's closing statement, you would notice that it was a mea culpa that any service worker wishes their owners could make. He miscalculated, there was a closure, and he took full responsibility for the consequences. Classy as fuck.

If you'd really like to do a comb-through of the past years' closings and evaluate the "wheat" and "chaff", just let me know. I'm game. As it stands, you're assertion that failure="chaff worthy" is tautology of the highest degree. Not sure how much anyone could get out of such a "discussion"...

Also, the tautology comment applies to you to Patrick. Just look at your statement:

"And the wheat/chaff ratio I'm speaking of here is "closing of crappy/mediocre restaurants-to-excellent eateries with staying power."

Fail=Fail. Huh, quite an argument.

Mercato served Italian food that you might get at the airport in Rome...I'm actually glad they closed.

As a local food service 'insider' I can say that Mercato was serving SHIT food (as in, almost every ingredient was purchased from Cash & Carry - I saw Codrin Borlovan, the owner, shopping there ALL THE TIME); SHIT service; and were NOT paying their vendors. Nuvrei pastries dropped them because they never paid their bill - I heard from my friend who worked at Mercato that they owed more than $3000 to Nuvrei pastries. LAME!!! Also, the owners were morons.