Last night Salt & Straw hosted an opening party in their new Division Street scoop shop. Today's their first official day open for business, and they'll be open 11 am to 11 pm starting now—and yes, they'll be open this Thursday for the Fourth of July. Go today, though, as a portion of the opening day proceeds will go to benefit the PTA for the neighborhood's Abernathy School.

The Division store is in a new building that's still under construction, so you'll have to make your way around the chain link fence to get into the door. Once inside, however, the store is much more spacious and modern feeling than their other two outposts. Salt & Straw owner Kim Malek says that she was always going for a mercantile feeling with their stores—meant to evoke the community hangout spaces from earlier eras—and with this one, they've updated the mercantile feel to modern day. Fittingly, many of the starring ingredients that Salt & Straw uses in their flavors are available for sale separately in the store, including Arbequina Olive Oil, Woodblock Chocolate, and the Meadows' Fleur de Sel.

Salt & Straw's permanent Southeast storefront makes a welcome followup to last summer, when they had a small cart temporarily open across the street. (The cart's spending this summer in Lake Oswego.) It's perfectly positioned on Division's Restaurant Row, sandwiched between the soon-to-open Roman Candle on one side and St. Honoré on the other. As an unabashed lover of S&S who lives in the neighborhood, this is the very best kind of news; I sampled the Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero last night and it was incredible. While the building is still being completed, it shouldn't be too hard to find the shop—all you'll have to do is look for the line stretching out the door.

Salt & Straw, 3345 SE Division, 11 am-11 pm daily