Elaine Alden and Thomas Takashi Cooke have leased 54 Washington Ave, the space next to Terlingua, where they plan to open Izakaya Minato (instagram). Minato is the Japanese word for “port”.
The couple moved to Portland late last year from San Francisco where Cooke had been the head chef at Tsunami, a sushi restaurant. They recently completed a 3-month stay in Japan where he staged at an Izakaya restaurant in Tokyo called Tsumamina.
Alden and Cooke are aiming to create “a fun, casual place to go gather with friends for drinks and food” for dinner, and may also serve lunch.
Izakaya Minato will be joining to a number of new restaurants and other food businesses on Washington Ave including that have opened in the last couple of year: Oxbow Brewing, Terlingua, Hardshore Distilling (under construction), Drifter’s Wife, Maine & Loire, Flying Fox Juice Bar (under construction), and Roustabout.
Their pop-up at Bao Bao was really good.
I’m looking forward to it. The pop up dinner was terrific