Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Eater on Little Red Bike Cafe
As a breakfast joint, Little Red Bike Cafe, was well worth the foray into the heart of North Lombard/University Park in North Portland.
As a freelance assignment for The Oregonian, it was a complete bust.
Ali Jepson and Evan Dohrmann, locals and longtime friends, opened the 15-seat cafe August 30, 2007 in the site of a former coffee shop, NoPo Coffee, at 4823 N.Lombard. They did a fair amount of work, replaced fixtures (overhead fluorescents) with snazzy Schoolhouse Electric. They bought new furniture, from Portland's own Ikea, which collapsed. They bought more furniture.
The two had run a catering company with an outpost at the Thursday and Saturday farmers markets, Green & Green Salad Co., selling bread pudding (I think). The two had in mind a "quick-serve salad" concept, but couldn't find a decent space that would pencil out.
Then their buddy David, who owns the waffle stand Flavour, also on Lombard, tipped them off to the NoPo location. "If we could get here, we could make it work," Dohrmann said, when I spoke to him yesterday (Oct 16). It was a far cry from the 2,000 sq ft they had envisioned, but it would work.
The name came from Ali Jepson's sister's e-mail address, and evoked in their minds a mid-century simplicity that they sought to carry forward with their menu, with the requisite updates. The two also have an appreciation for biking, though Dohrmann says that they are Sunday-around-the-neighborhood bikers rather than the Lycra variety. (Little Red Bike is also a children's book.) And, their coffee roaster, Joel of Courier Coffee Roasters, just so happened to make deliveries by bike (see photo).
So the breakfast: I had the Paperboy Special: fried egg and cheese on ciabatta ($6), with bacon ($1), and choice of coffee, tea, or OJ. I went with coffee (note: refills are 50 cents extra). My wife went with The Messenger: freid egg, bacon, gorgonzola spread and homemade apple butter spread on ciabatta ($6). Our two-year-old had Honeyed Yogurt, which inexplicably topped all orders: honey yogurt, granola, cinnamon, and season fruit that included strawberries, bananas, apples, and maybe something else. We also sprang for a croissant.
Service is low-key: order at the counter, get your water (from a cooler by the door), get your highchair (by the bathroom), get your table (while you can). At around 9:30 a.m., business was steady with locals, moms and their kids, but virtually no University of Portland students, who Evan Dohrmann says have yet to discover this place.
Lunch also looked worth returning for, including the curious buttermilk milkshake. Weekends look like the best time for specials to augment the limited menu. And if you come by after 3 p.m. on bike, pedal up to the bike-thru window—one of several bike-friendly nods (you can also save 50 cents on beverages I think if you bike in). The bike repair gear that they carried in the bakery case during the early days were nowhere in sight, and probably just as well from an appetite standpoint.
There's more to this story, including some interesting notes on the proprietors' backgrounds, but I'm tired of typing, and perhaps just a little bitter: As the new "Storefronts" columnist for the inPortland section of The Oregonian, I found this place and decided to feature it in week two of the column. I drove out there. Bought breakfast. Took notes. Snapped pictures in the rain. And at 10:30 a.m. I got home to crank it out for a noon deadline.
And at 11:30 a.m., while checking the cafe's hours on the Web site, I happened across a link to The Oregonian, which I clicked out of curiosity to what they might be linking to. Turns out it was an article on the place, written by Tom Hallman, Jr., on September 27. A clever little piece, with plenty of witty observations.
Not only did that sink my story and blow the deadline (I had already been beaten out of another Storefronts feature on another new cafe that Laura Gunderson had gotten to first), it left me with no backup.
In the end, I found somewhere else (albeit less cool) to write about. And breakfast was still worth the price of entry.
As a freelance assignment for The Oregonian, it was a complete bust.
Ali Jepson and Evan Dohrmann, locals and longtime friends, opened the 15-seat cafe August 30, 2007 in the site of a former coffee shop, NoPo Coffee, at 4823 N.Lombard. They did a fair amount of work, replaced fixtures (overhead fluorescents) with snazzy Schoolhouse Electric. They bought new furniture, from Portland's own Ikea, which collapsed. They bought more furniture.
The two had run a catering company with an outpost at the Thursday and Saturday farmers markets, Green & Green Salad Co., selling bread pudding (I think). The two had in mind a "quick-serve salad" concept, but couldn't find a decent space that would pencil out.
Then their buddy David, who owns the waffle stand Flavour, also on Lombard, tipped them off to the NoPo location. "If we could get here, we could make it work," Dohrmann said, when I spoke to him yesterday (Oct 16). It was a far cry from the 2,000 sq ft they had envisioned, but it would work.
The name came from Ali Jepson's sister's e-mail address, and evoked in their minds a mid-century simplicity that they sought to carry forward with their menu, with the requisite updates. The two also have an appreciation for biking, though Dohrmann says that they are Sunday-around-the-neighborhood bikers rather than the Lycra variety. (Little Red Bike is also a children's book.) And, their coffee roaster, Joel of Courier Coffee Roasters, just so happened to make deliveries by bike (see photo).
So the breakfast: I had the Paperboy Special: fried egg and cheese on ciabatta ($6), with bacon ($1), and choice of coffee, tea, or OJ. I went with coffee (note: refills are 50 cents extra). My wife went with The Messenger: freid egg, bacon, gorgonzola spread and homemade apple butter spread on ciabatta ($6). Our two-year-old had Honeyed Yogurt, which inexplicably topped all orders: honey yogurt, granola, cinnamon, and season fruit that included strawberries, bananas, apples, and maybe something else. We also sprang for a croissant.
Service is low-key: order at the counter, get your water (from a cooler by the door), get your highchair (by the bathroom), get your table (while you can). At around 9:30 a.m., business was steady with locals, moms and their kids, but virtually no University of Portland students, who Evan Dohrmann says have yet to discover this place.
Lunch also looked worth returning for, including the curious buttermilk milkshake. Weekends look like the best time for specials to augment the limited menu. And if you come by after 3 p.m. on bike, pedal up to the bike-thru window—one of several bike-friendly nods (you can also save 50 cents on beverages I think if you bike in). The bike repair gear that they carried in the bakery case during the early days were nowhere in sight, and probably just as well from an appetite standpoint.
There's more to this story, including some interesting notes on the proprietors' backgrounds, but I'm tired of typing, and perhaps just a little bitter: As the new "Storefronts" columnist for the inPortland section of The Oregonian, I found this place and decided to feature it in week two of the column. I drove out there. Bought breakfast. Took notes. Snapped pictures in the rain. And at 10:30 a.m. I got home to crank it out for a noon deadline.And at 11:30 a.m., while checking the cafe's hours on the Web site, I happened across a link to The Oregonian, which I clicked out of curiosity to what they might be linking to. Turns out it was an article on the place, written by Tom Hallman, Jr., on September 27. A clever little piece, with plenty of witty observations.
Not only did that sink my story and blow the deadline (I had already been beaten out of another Storefronts feature on another new cafe that Laura Gunderson had gotten to first), it left me with no backup.
In the end, I found somewhere else (albeit less cool) to write about. And breakfast was still worth the price of entry.
Labels: bike, food, Little Red Bike Cafe, Portland, restaurants
