According to a recent permit filing, Bialy Bird aims to open a brick-and-mortar space in St Johns at 7425 N Leavitt Avenue.
Currently, Bialy Bird operates out of the Lil Dame space on NE 30th. Behind Bialy Bird is Adam Thompson, where the concept is described to be “softly tossing naturally leavened bialys, sandos, and schmear.”
According to a 2022 article from PDX Monthly, “Unless you’ve lived in New York City or know a bialy maker like Adam Thompson, chances are that most of your experience with bialys have been limited to sad, dry grocery store numbers with a half-hearted dot of onion and poppyseed in the middle, and that’s if you can find them at all.”
“Too often, bialys are a baked, yeasty afterthought sold alongside the main draw of bagels, their traditionally boiled cousins. Now, another bialy has entered the Portland fray with Bialy Bird, a pop-up that baker Adam Thompson started in April 2022.”
“After years working in the restaurant industry, mostly in Italian restaurants, and then nearly twenty years as the bassist in the band Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, he’s now the manager at Bernstein’s Bagels (816 N Russell St). After several requests at the shop for bialys, Thompson decided to take matters into his own hands with a pop-up at Bernstein’s, along with help from fellow Bernstein’s employee Keith Dickerson.”
“Instead of the standard onion and poppyseed filling, you’ll find year-round staples such as miso-onion, black tahini with chile crisp, and cacio e pepe. But these bialys are also highly seasonal, with much of the produce either grown locally or in Thompson’s own backyard.”
“I tried the huckleberry potato, which is not, in fact, a combination of berries and potatoes, but a type of purple-skinned potato with a sweeter flavor and tender interior. The potato edges crisped up beautifully in the oven with a generous glaze of olive oil, while the inside was soft like a baked potato.”
“On top was a generous garnish of what Thompson calls “allium mix,” including green onions and their flowers. If you’ve never tasted a green onion flower before, you’re missing out—they’re slightly sweet, with a hint of sharp onion flavor. Both the potatoes and the green onions came straight from Thompson’s garden.”
“The basis for all these, of course, is the dough. Not just any dough, but a sourdough, which also just happens to be vegan. “It’s something I’ve been passionate about forever,” says Thompson. He’s recently switched from flour from Bob’s Red Mill to flour from Cairnspring Mills, located in Washington’s Skagit Valley.”
“Ultimately what we get is a higher percentage of the whole grain in the flour without sacrificing any of the extensibility,” says Thompson in the article. “Extensibility refers to the stretchiness of the dough that all-purpose flour typically provides; Cairnspring’s flour has that quality, while providing the nutrition and flavor found in whole wheat flour.”
