1) What is the history of breakfast diners in Portland?
a. Using the Oregon Historical Society as my main resource (I tried to go today but the research lib was closed), I hope to find out about the first diners in Portland and hopefully dig up some archived photos to check out the aesthetics but also the culture of the earliest joints and they’re subsequent evolution
2) Where does the food come from?
a. Together with Kim we picked out three different restaurants that we felt would have a diverse “philosophy” regarding food sourcing. As of now, I’m focusing on Navarre (which uses a CSA called 47th st. farms year round), Slappy Cakes (a new restaurant on Belmont st), and the 24-hour Hot Cake House on Powell (which has been around for half a century and serves up “classic” greasy diner products…Franz bread, etc.)
b. Focusing in on these three establishments, I’m making contact with the managers/owners with the aim of interviewing them about where there food comes from and how that aspect (food source) has or hasn’t become more of a concern with the recent local craze
c. This is a great tie-in to my work last week on the organic CSA, which provides to many SE Portland chefs. With that background experience in producing food my interest in where restaurants are choosing to get their food from is much deeper.
3) What’s the deal with food blogging?
a. Food blogging is a recent phenomenon. I’m having trouble finding an official “genesis” date, but my guess is that before the turn of the millennium, blogging about what we eat was a pretty foreign concept.
b. Another goal of my project will be to investigate food blogging to get a better understanding of what it’s all about.
c. Kim told me that surprisingly, despite being a self-proclaimed “foodie” town, Portland has an astonishingly small number of food bloggers. That said, Kim sent me a hefty list of all of her favorite food bloggers. I’m going to explore these sights to see if I can draw conclusions about food blogging. Previously, I thought it was sort of a bourgeois thing to do, but as soon as I start blogging about my visits to some of these places I’ll be one of them. Kim also has a connection to a local blogger if I decide I’d like to speak to someone about how to write about food.
4) Personally experience the diner scene in SE Portland.
a. I chose to stick to SE to give that additional focus to my project. My hope is to visit primarily old-style ones (Sanborn’s, Fat Albert’s, Bertie Lou’s, Zell’s, 24-Hour Hot Cake House), but also at the end look into the ‘new wave’ of breakfast places in SE. I want to know the role of these restaurants as they relate to the neighborhood now, and in the past.
5) Investigating the “24-hour” restaurant phenomenon.
a. What was the impetus behind some restaurant’s decision to feed people at every hour of the day?
b. After background research, this portion will culminate in a four hour “vigil” with the good man Eddie Friedman at the 24 Hour Hot Cake House during the wee hours of Saturday night to see what goes on and exactly who’s seeking cakes in the middle of the night.
6) A huge perk of my project is that throughout my research, I get to eat breakfast a few times a week. I know Oregon has a staggering hunger rate, so I decided to help out those who can’t have the luxury of choosing where to get their breakfast, because getting any breakfast at all is the concern. For that reason I’m working once a week at the Blanchett House serving breakfast to the homeless.
7) One culminating product of my project will be an interactive map of the SE neighborhood outlining where I visited, what the history of each establishment is, and where the food is coming from.
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