Good evening, friends and neighbors.
Tonight I’m writing from a corner seat of The Nerd Out, which is- oddly- the right mix of quiet and busy.
My feeling has always been that if you are going to write about life, you should surround yourself with life. It’s why I do my best work in cafes and bars.
Tonight, though, it’s because I can’t get myself to relax and focus enough to write at home.
Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!
Between my day job at the bakery, trying to keep up with this blog, and the release of the book (IN 3 DAYS!!,) I’ve actually managed to run a little low on energy for other parts of my life.
Which is why, last night, I decided I was going to give myself a weird form of self-care and fix myself a slightly advanced version of Matt’s Nights In In College.
Don’t make that face. This doesn’t come from nowhere. Nothing we eat does.
Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!
It’s been a minute (and two jobs) since I wrote one of these entries, and it’s something a lot of folks ask me about:
“What’s it like being the morning baker/ ovenmaster in a French bakery?”
Well here we go.
Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!
My regular blog posts will resume tomorrow, because for right now I have something BIG to announce:
Here’s the deal…
Where: 4601 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Portland OR, 97215
When you notice a small corner bar on a normally bustling strip of the city open for a few weeks, but then closed on Friday nights and Saturdays, one of the first things you start to wonder is “…who’s idea was that place?”
The small, narrow corner space- sharing its block with Zach’s Hot Dog Shack, the locally-famous Por Que No?, and a nondescript Tibetan tchotchke shop- had for a short time been the “Hawthorne Public House.” I’d looked in a few times in passing, and that’s precisely what I did. I passed. A whistle-clean bar on the inside, with big TV screens… that was closed at 4pm every Friday.
Passing by, regardless of day or hour, the joint was always empty or closed, and nothing ever compelled me to walk in.
One day, the windows were papered, the sign was down, and another Portland bar vanished like a fart in a Jacuzzi.
A couple months later, my friend Pete caught up with me at the beer cart next to the cafe. He’s a writer for Willamette Weekly, and besides just casually talking to folks about where they like to go for the best ___, he’s one of my go-to sources for new places to try.
“Hey Matt, you like pork, right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Ok, you need to go to this place. It’s like an old rocker, punk bar. You know where Por Que No is?”
“Oh, yeah that’s… oh wait, yeah! Someone finally did something with that space? I wondered what happened to it after the Public House went out.”
“… There was something there? Anyway, it’s called The Cavern. Go there sometime- one of the best places for meat in the city. Get the pork belly skewers, and spring for the mousse dip. It’s so raunchy and weird.”
If you want to be noticed, you’ve got to make a little noise- having a whiskey list and a knack for the carnivorous helps too.
“Hey ho, let’s go”
The Black Hat Baker 