Arleta Library Bakery & Cafe

Arleta Library Bakery & Cafe operated at the intersection of 72nd Avenue and Harold Street in the Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhood of southeast Portland.^[1] It had a narrow interior. The restaurant's slogan was "because good food is long overdue".^[2] According to Willamette Week, the family-owned business used local ingredients including Painted Hills beef as well as Pearl Bakery brioche in the pan dolce with whipped honey butter, maple syrup, and seasonal fruit.^[3]

The menu also included breakfast sandwiches, omelettes, pancakes, coconut macaroons, chocolate chip cookies, and coffee.^[2][4][5] The Portland's Best Biscuits-n-Gravy had two biscuits with sausage gravy and pork loin, and the Hawthorne scrambles had eggs and Tillamook cheddar.^[6][7] The Bullseye was a bun with scrambled eggs, cheddar and bacon. The restaurant also served sandwiches and a Caesar salad with croutons and salmon or roasted turkey.^[2] Among sandwiches were the Bat out of Hell and the Paul Rubens. The roasted turkey sandwich had avocado, bacon, and a honey mustard spread, and the cured ham sandwich came with sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing.^[2]

Arleta Library Bakery & Cafe opened in 2005.^[8] The business was co-owned by Sarah and Nick Iannarone until December 2018, and the couple divorced in 2019.^[9] Guy Fieri visited the restaurant for an episode of the Food Network series Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.^[10]

After operating for approximately fifteen years, Arleta closed in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The cafe's owners said the space was too small to operate with social distancing.^[9][11] In May 2020, Rosie Siefert of The Daily Meal wrote that the cafe closed because of the "financial strain" of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the staff opened a GoFundMe for customers to give "one last tip".^[12] The queer-owned counter service restauarant Shami Café began operating in the space in May 2025.^[13]

According to the Food Network, Fieri "appreciated the complexity" of the Sicilian hash with braciola and called the sweet potato biscuits with pork and rosemary sausage "dynamite".^[14] Andy Kryza included Arleta Library Bakery & Cafe in Thrillist's 2013 overview of places to take a mother for Mother's Day.^[15] Arleta was a runner-up in the Best Brunch category of Willamette Week's annual Best of Portland readers' poll in 2010.^[16] Jay Horton recommended Arleta in the newspaper's 2016 overview of the Mt. Scott-Arleta and Woodstock neighborhoods, and wrote:

While never much of a library, the Arleta Cafe earned a certain measure of cultural permanence when Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives's Guy Fieri stopped by to marvel at its trademark sweet potato biscuits with rosemary-sausage gravy. Following the Food Network imprimatur and owner Sarah Iannarone's ill-starred mayoral candidacy, a steady string of curious interlopers have joined die-hard regulars amid the morning crush.^[17]

In 2014 and 2016, the restaurant was a finalist in The Oregonian's People's Choice competition for Portland's best brunch.^[18][19][20] Michael Russell included the business in the newspaper's 2019 list of Portland's forty best brunches.^[21] Following Arleta's closure, Karen Brooks of Portland Monthly called the restaurant a "beloved neighborhood anchor".^[22]

• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the restaurant industry in the United States
• List of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives episodes