Inside the Otherworldly New Restaurant Malka, Now Open on SE Division – Eater Portland

There was a time when Jessie Aron, the chef and co-owner of the newly opened Malka, thought her restaurant would never open.

Aron, known for her now-shuttered food cart Carte Blanche, had been working on her restaurant for years. She and her business partner Colin McArthur have been “just a few months away” since 2018, slowly but surely turning a small house on Division into a restaurant. Aron dove into decor, collecting chairs and art and a water dispenser from the late 1700s. “I put all this energy into decorating this space,” she says. “But when I switched into cooking, I went, ‘Oh my god, what if I forgot how to cook?’”

The space looks like it’s collected knickknacks and art pieces for years: Mismatched water glasses sit stacked in rows over the water dispenser, various sculptures stand on the mantle of a living-room-turned-dining room, rambutan cans hold silverware and napkins on each table, and plants hang from unexpected places — not the usual minimalist succulent sitting on a unadorned white shelf; rather, plants seem to climb and dangle wildly from different corners of the space. There’s nothing minimalist about Malka at all — it’s a practice in maximalism.

Malka’s food is similarly elaborate. Take, for example, the “Important Helmet for Outer Space,” a coconut rice bowl. It comes with slow-roasted pork shoulder in apricot curry barbecue sauce, stir-fried vegetables, pan-roasted mushrooms, pineapple-tamarind slaw, crispy shallots, peanuts, avocado, herbs, pickled peppers and ginger, sesame, and lime. It arrives like a ‘70s psychedelic tapestry, swirling with pinks and bright greens and yellows and oranges. The restaurant’s baby back ribs are similarly involved — they go through an excruciatingly long process that involves palm sugar, Golden Mountain, coconut cream, and tamarind. The ribs, arriving melty, fragrant, and sweet, come with nam prik pao, pickles, Hawaiian rolls, and a cucumber-citrus salad, so visitors can create small sandwiches with the fall-apart meat.

These dishes were first served in the restaurant on January 15, a week ago. Exhausted, excited, and low on funds, the Malka team decided to open a small number of reservations to Kickstarter backers and followers, to test out recipes. “We decided that, to ease ourselves in, having as much control over the situation was a good idea,” Aron says. “We didn’t have enough money to train and pay for training and pay for the food without actually selling it.”

The reservations sold out quickly, and Aron was moved by how many cart regulars started rolling in. The menu was small — two rice bowls, the ribs, and two of McArthur’s desserts — with a handful of beers and wines available. Customers ordered from the counter and found a seat in one of Malka’s teal or maroon rooms, on an old church pew or a chair grabbed from her mother’s house. Each room of the house involves some new wallpaper or color scheme, one wallpaper pattern hand-traced from a wood block unused since the ‘20s. This week, Aron and McArthur add a matzo ball khao soi gai to the menu, plus the cart’s eggplant and zucchini fries, also available via a small list of reservations. By next week, Aron says the restaurant will be open for walk-ins, adding an out-there sandwich with fried chicken or eggplant, whipped Israeli feta, pickled peppers, avocado, Thai basil cashew pesto, plus a laundry list of other little pickled things and creative sauces. It turns out, Aron didn’t forget how to cook.

“I think I was defeated for a while. Now, I’m not,” she says. “Now, I’m working my tuchus off. I’m cooking as much food as I possibly can.”

Malka is only open to reservations for now, at 4546 SE Division Street. It will open soon for walk-ins; follow Malka’s Instagram for more details.