Just a couple weeks ago, we wrote that ICE had detained Khao Niew Lao food cart owner “Nong” Thavatsay Phimmoungkhoun, known by many as a fixture of the PSU community. And this week, another ICE detention has hit another Portland family and the local food community hard.
Torta restaurant Güero posted on Instagram on May 10 about the detention of their cook, Jose “Poni” Gongora Poot, and linked to a GoFundMe raising money to support his family in the legal fight to bring him home. According to the GoFundMe, ICE agents forcibly took Poni from his car while he was traveling to work on Friday, May 8, and he has been detained in Tacoma since then. The GoFundMe has raised over $30,000 at the time of writing.
“If you don’t know Poni by name, you would recognize him as the cook singing in the kitchen loudly to all his favorite songs and saying goodbye to customers as they leave through the back door for the last decade. To his community, Poni is known above all as a loving father and husband, as well as a cherished friend and coworker – Truly an enormous and unexpendable presence in both his personal and professional environments,” the Instagram post reads. “As has happened to so many others, there is absolutely no reason or legal justification for Poni to be taken and held in chains. His warrantless abduction is unconscionable and we his community are committed to seeing him safely reunited with his wife and children.”
Once again, it feels silly to talk about restaurants opening and closing while people are being torn from their families and communities—let’s keep the fight going against this system of brutal immigration enforcement.
Recent Openings
Ring Ding Ding, a Thai-inspired cocktail bar, now open
A new bar from Nan Chaison, owner of Norah and Mestizo and former owner of dessert and cocktail bar Libre, debuted on May 8. Located in the same space as the former Libre on SE Clinton, the cocktails here draw from Chaison’s Thai background, featuring bright, punchy ingredients like coconut, lychee, pineapple, yuzu, and melon—we got to stop in for the soft opening and particularly enjoyed the Slippery When Wet, which combines silver rum, coconut rum, velvet falernum, coconut milk, watermelon, pineapple, and lime (bonus points for the bell-related music playing in the background, including Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell.”) The bar serves food from rotating guest chefs, and first up is chef Jahquari Green of Mad Man Pop-Up, who specializes in Trinidadian and Panamanian cuisine including doubles with chickpeas, mango chow, and Trini-Chinese style wings with gloriously spicy pepper sauce. 2601 SE Clinton, @ringdingdingpdx
Cliff’s has reopened on Alberta
Cliff’s, the bar that was located below the Wonder Ballroom for six years, has relocated to NE Alberta in the space formerly occupied by Assembly Brewing’s Northeast location. The food menu includes po’boys, BBQ boar sandwiches, smoked pork mac ‘n’ cheese, massive plates of nachos, and Friday-only fried fish with a potato pancake; the cocktail menu also has no shortage of options to choose from. 2934 NE Alberta, @cliffspdx
Upcoming Openings
Fremont Garage, a new food cart pod, opens May 22
This aptly-named food cart pod takes over the space once home to Barrett Automotive on NE Fremont and 44th. It’ll have indoor seating with a bar and a kids’ play area, plus eight food carts, including Que Bacano for Colombian food, Indian food from Royal Indian Cuisine (from the same owners as Namo Buddha Himalayan Cuisine at the Heist), Wolf’s Head for burgers and cheese curds, and Poblano Pepper for Mexican fare.
James Beard finalist chef Kari Shaughnessy has a new Carlton project
Chef Shaughnessy’s veggie-forward Pacific Northwest cuisine restaurant Hayward, earned James Beard noms in 2024 and 2025 and moved from McMinnville’s Mac Market to the much quieter town of Carlton in July 2025. But now, it seems Shaughnessy is going all in on Carlton. On July 13, she and her husband Jimmy Serlin of Revel Meat Co. will open Lucky Duck, an all-in-one café and guest house in a historic corner brick building with a food cart in the backyard. The café will serve coffee, light fare, and prepared foods, including bread and pastries from Hayward. The food cart, entitled the Snack Shack, will serve as a space for chef residencies—first up is Portland’s Astral, serving Mexican meets Pacific Northwest cuisine. The guest house upstairs has two bedrooms, there’s a private hot tub in the yard, and guests can even order meals from Shaughnessy for their stay.
Babcia Bread will open a brick and mortar in Milwaukie
Bread and pastry pop-up Babcia Bread held its last pop-up this weekend as they prepare to open a brick-and-mortar in downtown Milwaukie. No opening date has been announced yet. Yours truly has been a Babcia customer for a few years now, and the bakery truly excels in laminated pastries, from pastrami and Swiss croissants with nigella seeds to strawberry-cream danishes to double-baked chocolate almond croissants.
Jose “Lalo” Camarena named chef at upcoming steakhouse The Malarkey
Restaurateur Brian Malarkey, who has appeared on the Food Network’s Top Chef, Guy’s Grocery Games, and Tournament of Champions, is planning to open a steakhouse this July complete with a motorcycle on the wall and stripper poles in the bathroom. It all sounds a little showy and not so food-focused, but with Camarena at the helm in the kitchen, the food here should be seriously good. Camarena is a former chef at acclaimed Mexican tasting restaurant República, and in recent months, he’s been focusing on Metlapíl, his seafood-focused Mexican pop-up. The Malarkey menu will include oysters, geoduck fritters, wood-fired tomahawk steaks, and twists on Caesar salads and baked potatoes. Oh, yeah, did we mention the beef here is apparently hemp-fed?
Closures
Alpenrausch will close May 30
You’ve got a couple weeks left to get your last fondues, venison frites, and paprika schnitzels in before Alpenrausch closes for good at the end of this month. The Alpine-inspired restaurant from Olympia Provisions opened in November 2023 and was named one of Bon Appetit’s Best New Restaurants of 2024. Prior to Alpenrausch’s opening, the space was home to Olympia Provisions Public House. This marks the second Olympia Provisions closure in recent months; Bar Casa Vale, the group’s tapas bar, closed at the end of April. 3384 SE Division, alpenrauschpdx.com