Last Sunday morning, the opening cook at chef Anh Luu’s Tapalaya, the brunchy dinner New Orleans-Vietnamese restaurant on NE 28th, noticed that something wasn’t right. That person’s intuition was correct, as Tapalaya had been burgled sometime between its Saturday night closure and its Sunday morning opening.

Luu says that the thief/thieves didn’t do much property damage, so she was, in fact, able to open Sunday morning for brunch services.

Luu says she has no way of identifying the thief (or thieves), but she adds that whomever it was found the liquor room and made off with $400 worth of booze, $800 in cash, and a couple of tablets that her staff uses for third-party online deliveries.

While the losses could be much worse, she says Portlanders can help her make up for it by swinging by for brunch, dinner, or drinks.

“The best thing our community can do for small businesses is to frequent them!” she says. With Mardi Gras— which Luu and her staff religiously celebrate with food, drink, and lots of Delta music—right around the corner, we should probably do just that.

Tapalaya, 28 NE 28th, tapalaya.com