Rose VL
Rose VL Meg Nanna

Food news rolled slowly in this week, but the biggest story was the one that wasn’t: the panic and pandemonium of your local grocery market as you, me, and everyone we know lined up to stock our refrigerators with vegetables and proteins as we waited out a severe winter storm that never came. An equally unreported story might be how hard restaurants were hit last weekend when people who’d normally treat themselves to a weekend brunch, lunch, or dinner, stayed home, flush with food, to cook at home.

But there was actual news to report, too.

This week, the Mercury reported that the former pop-up, now brick-and-mortar nightclub No Vacancy Lounge is closing its doors in the old McCormick & Schmick’s spot downtown, alleging that its landlord lured them into a lease as a way to prove the viability of the space’s potential commercial potential to sell the building somewhere down the line, theorizing that its rent might drastically go up should such a sale go through. Its last dance party goes down on Tuesday, February 19. But it wasn't all sturm und drang, as our food critic listed her 14 favorite Asian soups which she encourages you to eat in just one week (“two soups a day for the best seven days of your life”), with stops at Rose VL on 82nd to Noodle Man way out in Happy Valley to Good Taste in Old Town-Chinatown. She has thrown her gauntlet down and it now up to you to pick it up.

Also Eater (as well as the Mercury and basically every news outlet) reported on the continuing “brewery bloodbath” by sharing the news that yet another one has bitten the dust, in this case, one of our oldest, Bridgeport Brewing. This follows the news of other sudden brewpub closures—Widmer Brothers and Portland Brewing closed their respective pub and restaurant (but they still brew beer), and comes just a week after Burnside Brewing locked its doors for good, apparently for not paying rent. The website also reported that Tacovore, the vegan taqueria from Eugene, has opened in the old Fire and Stone pizzeria on NE Fremont; it reported that you can now get curries and other Burmese delights from Top Burmese, the city's new “virtual” delivery-only restaurant; and it hipped us to the fact that Communion Bakehouse, a new bakery and restaurant with some Bar Tartine street cred, is now open in Sellwood.