Portland Tabletop Game-Themed Brewery TPK Brewing Opens This Weekend

Saturday, October 28th, a new brewery celebrating the world of tabletop gaming will open on Southeast Hawthorne. TPK Brewing — from brewer Jess Hardie, gamemaster and podcaster Dana Ebert, and CEO Elliot Kaplan — will open in the former Tabor Bread bakery. As New School Beer first reported, TPK will open with collaborative beers from Threshold Brewing, Montavilla Brew Works, Leikam Brewing, and Oregon City Brewing Company, while the brewery’s first batch of beers finishes up. TPK, which stands for “total party kill” (in reference to a tabletop gaming campaign), will offer beers inspired by tabletop games, as well as a library of gaming books and plenty of places to play. Additionally, the team has developed a Dungeons & Dragons variant specific to the brewery called The Leyfarer’s Chronicle, which visitors can play with the brewery’s onsite manual and gaming materials.

Originally, Hapa Barkada — a Hawaiian-Filipino collaboration from the folks behind food cart Hapa Howie’s and pop-up Barkada PDX — was slated to handle the food at the brewery, but TPK will instead open with food from En Vida PDX, the Northeast Portland South American restaurant. The brewery will open at 5051 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

Block 216 Rep to Commissioner Dan Ryan: Please No Food Carts Near the Development That Replaced A Bunch of Food Carts

Block 216, the large-scale downtown development that will house the Portland Ritz-Carlton, famously displaced the influential Alder Street food cart pod. To make up for the displaced carts, the building developers dedicated the ground floor to a food hall for several Portland-based chefs and food business owners. However, in a letter to commissioner Dan Ryan sent this summer, real estate executive Brian Owendoff — who is also the owner’s representative for the Block 216 building — requested that the city avoid offering space for more food carts at Darcelle XV Plaza, formerly O’Bryant Square. The request was a part of a letter detailing several ideas for the plaza, which the city is currently redesigning. In the letter, obtained by the Portland Business Journal, Owendoff noted Flock, as well as two other food cart pods, would “quadruple the number of food carts in the west end.” “Darcelle XV [Plaza] can provide seating to accommodate these food carts,” Owendoff writes. “Assuming there is enough demand to accommodate additional carts, re-visit potential of addition food card (sic) in or around park at a future date. Flooding the market with too many food venders will benefit no one.”

Jeju Gets a Gold Star From PoMo

Portland Monthly restaurant critic Karen Brooks just released her review of Jeju, the Korean barbecue restaurant from the Han Oak team, and it’s a rave. Particular favorites she notes: the restaurant’s rib-eye, the “oyster of the beef,” the house hot dog, the bone-in galbi, and the house bacon. “Barbecue like this takes patience to reduce raging flames into glowing embers, to stand vigil to the perfect quiet art of the char,” Brooks says. “Jeju’s crack kitchen crew does it nightly.”