Sweet Lorraine’s, One of Portland’s Few Remaining Jewish Delis, Has Closed | Eater Portland

"After starting as a food cart in 2021 selling latkes, kugel, rugelach, and black-and-white cookies, Sweet Lorraine’s closed permanently on Sunday, May 26, with owners Aaron Tomasko and Rachel Brashear announcing the shutdown in an Instagram post. They say the cost of doing business has 'ballooned so fast' that they can no longer cover minimum restaurant rent selling latkes and knishes without going into massive debt; additional pressures included their pod landlord selling the property (prompting a move to the Eats at Albina pod), new wastewater regulations that threatened food carts, extreme weather events like heatwaves and ice storms, and the loss of a successful residency at Labyrinth Forge Brewing when the brewery closed in April 2024. Most recently they ran the menu at Lefty’s (the cafe at the Oregon Jewish Museum), serving visitors dishes such as a vegetarian matzo ball soup and smoked whitefish sandwiches, but losing access to a full kitchen and dining room made that satellite operation unsustainable. Tomasko and Brashear plan to pivot back to careers as musicians and reflected on the community they built—feeding Reed College students challah every Friday, helping East Coast families send food to relatives sitting shiva, sharing tears as people remembered their bubbe, and watching videos of babies tasting their first sufganiyot at Hanukkah." - Janey Wong