Portland Business: Restaurant Whose Name Drew Protests Changes Name

Sally Krantz's restaurant on North Williams had problems even before it opened.

It was going to be called Saffron Colonial and focus on food from around the world that had been inspired by the British Empire.

The problem was she was going to open it in the middle of a neighborhood that has fought and lost many gentrification battles.

People thought using colonial in the name was tone deaf and were not shy about letting the place now.

The controversy was quickly picked up, first being reported in Willamette Week.

Some local vendors sought to disassociate themselves from the restaurant including its tea distributor and coffee roaster,

On Friday, Krantz took a move to hopefully put the controversy behind her. She changed the name of the restaurant to BORC for British Overseas Restaurant Corporation, a play on the British Overseas Airways Corporation (which became British Airways).

In an email to Eater PDX, Krantz wrote:

"My mission in opening this restaurant is to celebrate the wonderful multi-cultural aspects of food in a beautiful and multi-cultural part of Portland: my hometown, and a city that I love."

Krantz said that the idea for the restaurant comes from the 20 years she lived in Asia among a large population of expatriates.

"I love history and historic recipes, how food has developed and changed over time, and have developed many of these recipes in conjunction with the people I worked with from all over Asia and England to get them exactly right," she wrote.