Gossip Should Have No Friends

[July 5th, 2006] THE RAW AND THE COOKED The Pearl's chichi Henry Building is getting a tasty new tenant this October. Adam Berger and Michael Rypkema , the chef-owners behind small plate and pasta destination Tabla , will open 1001 , a 4,800-square-foot behemoth at 1001 NW Couch St., which will serve an expanded menu of Tabla-esque world fare made with local ingredients for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They're also planning on having a full raw bar as well as a walk-up bakery-deli window . Berger plans to play dueling restaurants as the executive chef of both Tabla and 1001, while former Seratto man Paul Duncan will take on the day-to-day chef de cuisine role at Tabla. And as if colonizing Northeast and Northwest Portland weren't enough, Scoop's also heard vague rumors about another Tabla spinoff in the works, in another quadrant of the city.

LIQUID REVOLUTION Portland, you marvelous lush! Following in the footsteps of the beer and wine industries, the new Oregon Distillers Guild (that's a working title) is currently congealing into a statewide entity that will include hometown heroes New Deal, House Spirits, Ransom Spirits, Indio Spirits, Clear Creek Distillery and Rogue. (Psst: House Spirits, Ransom and Clear Creek were also just profiled in a big, gorgeous article on Portland's and Seattle's red-hot distilling scenes in the July issue of GQ magazine.) "We want to brand Oregon as a distilling mecca," says House Spirits co-owner Christian Krogstad. The agenda: lobbying to reform Oregon's outdated, puritanical liquor laws and, eventually, planning for an Oregon Distillers Festival , which would potentially be the drunkest fest in Portland history.

GOODBYE PARTY Basic Rights Oregon pulled out all the stops for outgoing executive director Roey Thorpe 's going-away party last week, planning a big bash with gratis eats for its guests at Epicure . But when BRO revelers reached the stoop of the Northeast Broadway eatery last Tuesday evening, they found its doors locked tight and the restaurant's equipment seized. Epicure declared bankruptcy the same day as the party, a fact an Epicure rep kindly informed BRO of about six hours before the fete. That evening, a sign on the restaurant's door redirected BRO guests across the street to Aztec Willie's—where no free drinks were available to cheer Thorpe's reign.

GET REAL WW already knew that our resident computer wrangler, Brian Panganiban, was the master of all things technical, but the NATION shall witness his mastery of all things trivial on VH1's new World Series of Pop Culture, which premieres at 10 pm Monday, July 10. According to Smarty Pants Panganiban, his team, PDX 503 (which included his brother Paul and P-town native Wil Olandria), beat out "oh, a few thousand people" at the World Series tourney in New York City this past April to be featured on the show.

HOT OFF THE PRESS By the looks of the NW Women's Journal's new ad campaign, you'd think publisher Michele Larsen's mission was to expose entrepreneurial Northwest women rather than just promote them. The ads, which celebrate the Journal's first anniversary as well as the "unique beauty" of women of all shapes and sizes, feature buck-naked staffers with their naughty bits covered only by—what else?—strategically placed copies of the Journal. The tagline? "The Best in Women's Coverage." We thought the paper might have borrowed the sneak-a-peek approach—a favorite fundraiser of firefighters and English garden clubs—'cause it was desperately hurtin' for sales. But, according to Larsen, "subscribers have increased threefold within the year, and revenues have doubled."