• THESE COULD BE IN YOU

This one's for the broke, the bummed, and or/the chronically underprepared: Charming Old Town cocktail bar Central has teamed up with House Spirits to provide some last-minute Valentine's Day salvation to one lucky Blogtown reader. Central is offering dinner for two at their Loveless Valentine's Day Dinner—wine/cocktail pairings included!—plus a bonus bottle of House Spirits' soon-to-be-released Volstead Vodka.

VALENTINE'S DAY IS SAVED! Maybe. All you have to do to win: Leave a suitably heart-warming (or devastatingly bitter, I don't really care) explanation for why you and your partner/lover/friend of choice could really use a fancy Valentine's Day night on the town*. 21+ only need apply; make sure there's a functional email address attached to your Blogtown account, so I can reach you if you win; I'll pick one lucky winner at winner at 5 pm on Monday.

I'm posting the menu after the jump. You can also buy your way into this amazing-sounding dinner—it's $55 per person for the prix fixe dinner, plus $35 for cocktail or wine pairings. (And if you can afford to do so, please don't enter this contest, ya jerk. Let's let somebody broke have something nice for a change.)

*I will ban the first person who uses the words "capitalist holiday" in the comments, I swear to god I will.

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According to the Portland Business Journal,

The Einstein Noah Restaurant Group on Monday said it will offer several kettle-style boiled bagel varieties at its Portland-area Einstein Bros. Bagels stores following its acquisition of Portland-based Kettleman Bagel Co.

The Denver-based restaurant chain in November announced that it had acquired the smaller, Portland upstart. In a news release Monday, the company said it would rebrand the five Kettleman locations as Einstein stores over the next five months

But as part of the transition, it is inviting Portland consumers to visit the company's Facebook page — Facebook.com/einsteinbros — through Feb. 13 to vote on their favorite flavor of boiled bagel. The company will announce the top flavors on Feb. 13, three of which will be added to the menu of Einstein's Portland locations.

But click on over to their Facebook page to find the survey, and it's completely buried in posts like this one:

I like good bagels too, but the foodie anguish on display in the comments over there is a tiny bit hilarious.

• via

The location will stay a coffeeshop—it's been sold to the people who run Anna Bannana's in St. Johns and Northwest—however, anyone who's ever walked by Star-E Rose and had to step over customers sprawled out playing banjos or spotted one of its patrons or literally hanging from the tree outside knows that the coffeeshop has a whole community of its own.

For several years, the cafe got a lot of its color from its insane neighbor Clown House and after the clowns got booted from living on Alberta, Star-E Rose was still somewhat of a haven for the folks who didn't fit in on the street's sleeker establishments. It's last hurrah is scheduled for next Tuesday night, January 31st, but "arts, music, and moments of spontaneity lasting all week, come by and pay your respects" will last all week, says Star-E Rose "employee and participant" Hollie Sundin.

The cafe will be closed for about six weeks for renovations before becoming an Anna Bannana's location.

Yo, Is this Racist? is a totally enjoyable website that smartly explains why racist things are, in fact, racist—and, whoops, Pix Patisserie made the cut a few days ago:

Gwen asked: Yo, this photo is from a dessert place in Portland, Oregon advertising an event called “Dim Sum Yum Yum” where you sample a bunch of different desserts. Leaving aside the stupid name (the connection to dim sum is tenuous at best; there’s not even a cart!) this is ridiculously racist. So yes, I know the answer already, but I want the satisfaction of reading your response.

Southeast Division is continuing to fill out nicely as a culinary destination, and after the successful opening of Wafu, another new venture is nipping at its heels: It's Bhap Sang PDX, born out of Han Ly Hwang's popular food cart Kim Jong Grillin', which went up (literally) in flames last April. In early fall of last year, Hwang spoke publicly about plans for a new, brick 'n' mortar location—originally the plan was that it would open in October or November of 2011 at SE 49th and Division, but whether they're on plan B, C, D, or Z, a new deal is done. Just yesterday a lease was signed for a space just a scootch down the road at SE 28th and Division. Word of mouth is a projected opening for mid-February or early March, but the official date is, understandably, TBD.

• Bhap Sang PDX

Oregon's proud cheese factory will be cutting 50 jobs in its namesake town: Tillamook Cheese announced last week that they're slicing 50 of the 438 jobs at their famed Tillamook, Oregon factory.

In a press release sent out Friday, big cheese Harold Strunk spelled out why the factory is making the cuts:

"Because our distribution network was in Tillamook, we would literally make cheese at our factory in Boardman, then ship the cheese back to the Tillamook factory to age, then ship the cheese to a facility in Mountain Home, Idaho, to be shredded and sliced, then ship the cheese back to the Tillamook factory to be warehoused and distributed to our customers, and then in some cases the cheese would be shipped back to Idaho to our customers there."

• Nobody puts baby in a corner!

• Ano Lobb
• Chioggia Beets/Space Aliens

As the market announced in October, this January 6th will kick off an every-Saturday market at Shemanski Park (in the South Park Blocks), where from 10am to 2pm 35 vendors will sell seasonal veggies and all sorts wintery things like hot soup. There will also be a covered area with heaters, for people who enjoy not freezing while they shop. Yay for local food all year long!

UPDATE: People are noting on Twitter that there's a couple other farmer's markets that run during the winter in Portland, though they're not markets run by Portland Farmer's Market, which is the nonprofit that runs the bigger farmers markets in town. Portland Farmer's Market runs six markets and there are nearly 40 other markets, including year-round ones at People's Co-op and up in Hillsdale.

UPDATE! THE APPLICATION PERIOD FOR THIS POSITION IS CLOSED! THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST!

Woe be unto us! It's my unfortunate duty to announce that our beloved Tony Perez will no longer be able to perform his weekly duties as the Merc's chief food critic, due to overwhelming pressures at his REAL job over at Tin House Publishing. (He's kind of a big deal over there.) HOWEVER! There are two pieces of good news here: 1) Tony will still be joining us now and then with his always excellent food and drink coverage, and 2) Some lucky person out there will become the Mercury's new chief food critic! HERE'S THE AD ANNOUNCING THAT!

WANTED: FOOD CRITIC/REVIEWER

The Portland Mercury is looking for a new food/restaurant/drink critic to add to our stable of great writers. COULD THAT BE YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW? Let's find out:

The successful candidate will have extremely strong and snappy writing skills, a passion for food and drink, and an intimate knowledge of the Portland restaurant scene. Reporting skills are a definite plus, as is prior food criticism experience.

Duties include writing one restaurant review per week for the print edition, and publishing at least three blog posts per week on Blogtown. This is a FREELANCE position which allows the candidate plenty of time to have other employment, and this person can choose their own hours—as long as deadlines are met.

Pay is $100 per week, and meals eaten for review purposes are paid for (within reason of course) by the Mercury.

Interested parties should email editor Wm. Steven Humphrey (put "FOOD CRITIC POSITION" in the subject line) and include the following:

• A cover letter describing why you're so awesome.
• A resume that includes pertinent experience.
• Up to six published food writing clips (blog posts are acceptable, as are PDFs and URLs). No published clips? NO PROBLEM. Send in a 600-word review of a place you've eaten at recently.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012.

From Facebook:

Hello fans of Foti's Greek Deli! We have an announcement to make that is both happy and sad. Foti and Jill will be retiring at the end of this month and Foti's Greek Deli will be closing. However, their nephew Pantelis Kosmas will be opening a second location of the Mad Greek Deli in their place, exciting!

Foti and Jill want to thank all of you for your years of loyal patronage. Being able to hear about your lives and become your friends has meant a lot to them. You have been there in the best of times and in the worst of times, many of you have even watched their children grow from little ones coloring at the tables to teenagers and then young adults working behind the counter during school breaks. While Foti and Jill will miss the times they've shared at the deli, they are looking forward to retirement and finally going on a well-deserved trip to Greece. From the bottom of their hearts and mine (their daughter, Eva), thank you for being there. We will miss you all very much.

Why do I, Wm. Steven Humphrey, love Ore-Ida Pizza Bagel Bites? Because...

PIZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Ahem.

PIZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Well, Sonuvabitch. I've been waiting for the new Bamboo Sushi to open up in Northwest ever since Rose's stopped advertising its famous reuben. The original projections have passed, but now they're making me wait, according to the newsletter that went out today, until at least March.

I guess work lunches will remain at Dr. Sushi in the meantime...

One of the big perks when we moved our offices downtown was FOOD. We were all bored as hell with the options on our little strip of NE Sandy, and we were tantalized with images of ourselves gorging every day on massive plates of food cart food, just yuckin' it up and having a great old time. And... that kind of happened. But I also found myself getting into an even narrower version of the same rut I was in when I lived in the neighborhood (pre-cart explosion), without business-hours access to former staples like Tube's vegan ham and cheese, XV's ahi burger, and Shanghai Tunnel's drunken noodles. (This probably would not have happened if I were in the habit of carrying cash often, which I am not.)

And amazingly, I found myself actually missing something about the old office's dining options: Unfettered access to vegetarian pho. So I was intrigued to spy a "vegan pho" on the menu of Pho PDX at the back of that weird food court place on SW 2nd that as far as I know has no name, but there's a Koi Fusion there, plus Indian and Mexican food, and sandwiches. But before I even had a chance to check it out, it blossomed into Luc Lac Vietnamese Kitchen, directly next door at 835 SW 2nd, where they opened just before Thanksgiving.

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Here's a South Korean commercial for the Triple Whopper at Burger King, which features three awesome things:

1) A man slithering and unhinging his jaw like a snake.
2) The background song, "Eat Like Snake" which I'm going to illegally download ASAP.
And 3) the Triple Whopper itself, which inspires South Koreans to make awesome commercials like this.