The landlord may or may not be a dick. I'd like to see some more on that chain story (because I'm really curious about the specifics physically) and the general statement about unpermitted work.
The hype machine thing you mentioned might be the real deal. As far as I can tell chef's food wasn't remarkable for Portland. His highlight pic was a french onion soup and a steak tartar, not even plated well. The rest of the atmos looked like snippets from "How to be Portland" magazine. They said "Keep Portland Weird" but that brand has been bought and sold and done with since Death Cab for Cutie had that song about answering machines.
It might be good food, it might be expensive, but man... Portland basically invented what we think of as the modern 'foodie' dickweed.
I'm not sure that any place that doesn't have extremely deep pockets isn't dealing with a landlord that wouldn't try some chain foundation voodoo, or even like real deal fraud, and chef still gotta survive plus overdeliver world class dining experience if he wants to be heard.
I have to agree, that was a very pedestrian food shot. There's nothing wrong with straight bistro fare but not at premium prices. I think the problem here was they went premium with the location and environment and preparations, but it didn't translate into an exciting experience.
Also the author sounds quick to blame external forces and the general malaise of the industry, which perhaps can cloud one's focus on identifying and fixing your own weaknesses.
Nothing that guy said was a fact, I am specifically questioning the facts as stated. Wrapping a chain around the neighboring building sounds crazy but if it happened at all there is definitely a story that involves more than a few sentences of detail. Like ... seriously, that is wild. He might have had an agreement with someone about using chain and a come-along to fix his foundation and it went sour. It might have been all legit and a neighbor just talked shit about something they didn't understand. There is no proof. You don't just freestyle chain moving of a building to sit on a foundation and expect it to work. If you did and it physically helped, like in a way that made your building uncondemned or something, you are either extremely lucky or a god damned wizard or probably fucking both.
I've had landlords that I sort of liked do unpermitted shitty work to fix electrical in my house that I had to argue with them about and get resolved, but it's not a reason to crucify them. Some cities and I think Portland is in this group only have like 3 inspection officers sometimes less for commercial and the wait list can
be astronomical and unavoidable. People still need stuff, sometimes with hard deadlines to make the property generate income. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it happens... constantly, in almost every building you go in. Sometimes the work is completely up to code or better, sometimes it's all a gnarly fire hazards. If homie up here is gonna call shit out and smear a man, he really should be more specific. If he can't be, then it's really rude to just call the guy an asshole because he failed to pull a sticker for having posts put in for a deck.
He also might be Dick Dastardly roping up his own fiefdom with a network of chains to all surrounding office parks while building a tesla coil out of garbage in the attic next to a putrid leaking grey water line that dumps into the women's restroom sink sending random heart stopping voltage through a soap dispenser.
I'm still not sure he is UNIQUELY that dick so much so that it cost chef his golden ticket. I'm pretty sure chef's uninspired menu, inexperience, and refusal to adapt from his vision to appropriately match the costs he was not measuring vaporized the dream many months before chef woke up. If the landlord hung him so bad, then he really should have negotiated harder for an improvements clause that made sense for his budget and found middle ground to grow. Either that or open up somewhere that... you know... he can afford?
You can't just offhandedly condemn the other business party because some other dude you don't know says he saw him using a chain in his neighborhood once. Dude is basically already doxxed it's all so specific. Maybe landlord was trying to save the next house from a landslide or pull out a tree stump with a chevy nova you couldn't see. All I'm saying is I really want to see pictures of this chain operation.
The hype machine thing you mentioned might be the real deal. As far as I can tell chef's food wasn't remarkable for Portland. His highlight pic was a french onion soup and a steak tartar, not even plated well. The rest of the atmos looked like snippets from "How to be Portland" magazine. They said "Keep Portland Weird" but that brand has been bought and sold and done with since Death Cab for Cutie had that song about answering machines.
It might be good food, it might be expensive, but man... Portland basically invented what we think of as the modern 'foodie' dickweed.
I'm not sure that any place that doesn't have extremely deep pockets isn't dealing with a landlord that wouldn't try some chain foundation voodoo, or even like real deal fraud, and chef still gotta survive plus overdeliver world class dining experience if he wants to be heard.