Once Again, Stacked Sandwich Shop Is Closing — This Time, to Make Way for a Burger Shop

Less than a year into its tenure in Slabtown, Stacked Sandwich Shop — the deli from Top Chef alumnus Gabriel Pascuzzi — will close once again. Stacked originally opened in 2017, serving sandwiches like oxtail French dips and turkey Reubens in a Hosford-Abernethy space. In 2021, Pascuzzi closed Stacked to focus on his two other businesses, the bowl-centric spot Feel Good and the grilled chicken restaurant Mama Bird. He reopened Stacked across the street from Mama Bird in February 2023, attempting to streamline the menu and keep overhead costs lower than they were originally.

However, in a series of Instagram stories on the Stacked account yesterday, the chef explained that the sandwich shop didn’t have enough business to sustain itself. “Our sandwiches take labor and time to make,” he wrote. “Higher wages and cost of goods means [sic] we have to be hyper efficient with labor and costs.” Thus, Pascuzzi will replace the sandwich shop with Tip Top Burger Shop, a burger joint using Northwest-raised beef and Grand Central Bakery buns. It’s unclear when Stacked will close and when Tip Top will open, so those seeking a smoked turkey hero or an oxtail French dip should do so sooner rather than later.

Gregory Gourdet Will Publish Another Cookbook

In more Top Chef star news, Kann chef and owner Gregory Gourdet has nabbed another book deal. His first cookbook, Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, won a James Beard Award within the general cookbook category; in Everyone’s Table, Gourdet leans on his eclectic culinary palette for dairy-free, soy-free, and gluten-free dishes that don’t feel like a bummer. However, anyone who has cooked from Everyone’s Table knows that Gourdet kept his recipes intricate, incorporating recipes for dairy-free cheeses and creams to eliminate shortcuts that could compromise the integrity of the final dish. His next book, The Weekday Table, is meant to be simpler — recipes will stick to a single page, and dishes should take somewhere between one to three hours. The book should hit shelves in 2025.

The Restaurant Group Behind Ava Gene’s and Bamboo Sushi Is Allegedly Not Paying Its Bills

Back in September, we wrote a piece about the holding company that had bought up several high-profile Portland restaurants, including Bamboo Sushi, Sizzle Pie, and everything in the Submarine Hospitality portfolio (Ava Gene’s, Tusk). A handful of recent lawsuits indicate the company may be in trouble: A former contractor is suing the company for allegedly failing to pay for the Hillsboro Sizzle Pie buildout, while the Portland Business Journal reports that the company will lay off around 30 workers after the failed acquisition of Ace Group International, known for the Ace Hotel chain. “After the settlement agreement the AGI business experienced material changes including the loss of multiple hotel management contracts totaling over 20% of the portfolio, as well as the departure of a key employee,” a Sortis spokesperson told the Business Journal in a written statement. “These changes, coupled with the continued rise in interest rates since the execution of the original agreement, factored into our decision making.”