[gyardley]

While good advice in general, I'm not sure this applies in the Portland restaurant market. Renard was pretty boring - good French food, but the same food you've eaten at a dozen other French restaurants - and that, for me, was its problem. So many more interesting places to go!

The cautious thing to do in the Portland restaurant market, as far as I can tell, is to do periodic pop-ups or a food cart and try to build up your repeat clientele to the point where you can justify a brick and mortar location of your own.