Walk into the new Market of Choice on Capitol Highway this month and the shelves still have that just-stocked look, the butcher case a little too neatly arranged, the cheese counter still finding its footing. It's the kind of full-service grocery format built around a butcher, a fishmonger, and a real cheese selection rather than a quick milk-and-eggs stop. A few blocks down the same stretch, Please Louise has been doing a version of the same thing since 2023, no longer new, no longer a question mark, just a restaurant that's become part of the neighborhood's routine.
Put those two facts next to each other and a pattern shows up that's easy to miss if you only notice one opening at a time. Hillsdale has spent the last three years quietly testing whether people from outside a five-minute walk will show up on purpose. The grocery store is the second data point, not the first.
The Bet Please Louise Made Three Years Ago
When Please Louise took over the space at 6369 SW Capitol Highway, the space had just been vacated by Oak & Olive, whose owner, Maria Rosengreen, closed it after her husband and two children relocated to Canada so her son could pursue hockey. She kept running Masu Sushi on SW 13th Ave and let the Hillsdale space go. It didn't sit empty long before Please Louise moved in.
Owner Brian Carrick had already built a following at the original Please Louise in Northwest Portland's Slabtown neighborhood, open since 2016. He didn't describe the Hillsdale expansion as chasing a trend. He described a gap:
"This a great space in a great location that is under-served as far as restaurants compared to other parts of town."
The menu backed up the read. Rather than repeat the pizza-forward approach from Slabtown, the Hillsdale kitchen, led by chef Brian Lamback, a veteran of the now-closed Wildwood and Tasty n Alder, leans harder into starters, small plates, and pastas, with the pizza oven still running but no longer the headline. Sunday hours are shorter than the rest of the week, but they come paired with an all-day happy hour, the kind of detail that only matters to someone who already plans on being a regular.
Three years in, the bet looks like it worked. The restaurant is still open on the same schedule, still pulling in families and date-night couples, and Carrick's original read on the neighborhood, that it could support something more ambitious than convenience dining, has had time to prove itself instead of just being an opening-week guess.
The Neighborhood That Never Needed Convincing
None of this required the rest of Capitol Highway to change. Walk the same stretch and you'll still find businesses that never asked whether they could pull people from outside the neighborhood, because they never needed to:
- McMenamins Hillsdale Brewery, open since 1985 and generally credited as Oregon's first brewpub
- Baker & Spice, turning out bread and pastry since 1998, with a sister shop called SweetWares next door for home bakers
- Paloma Clothing, in the same spot for more than 30 years
- Sasquatch Brewpub, family-owned and built around local, sustainable ingredients
The Hillsdale Shopping Center itself, the retail hub the whole strip organizes around, sits on land that used to be a dairy farm and is still family-owned. These businesses built their customer base one walk-in at a time, over decades, without needing to be a destination for anyone outside the neighborhood. That's the baseline Hillsdale ran on long before Please Louise showed up asking a different question.
Three Years Later, a Grocery Store Doubles Down
The new Market of Choice on Capitol Highway is making the same bet Please Louise made in 2023, just in grocery form. A butcher counter and fishmonger aren't features you add for people grabbing a gallon of milk on the way home. They're features you add for people willing to plan a stop, the same audience Carrick was betting on when he called the neighborhood under-served.
Two additions to the same four-block stretch, three years apart, both aimed past the immediate walking radius, is a stronger signal than either one alone. Please Louise answered the question of whether Hillsdale could support a destination restaurant. Market of Choice is now asking whether the same logic holds for groceries.
What Hasn't Moved
For everything shifting on the commercial side of the strip, the parts of Hillsdale life that don't run through a storefront lease are steady. The Hillsdale Farmers Market runs Sundays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through November 22 this year, which leaves about eleven more market Sundays before the winter every-other-week schedule takes over. George Himes Park still offers the same wooded trails and a picnic area with a clear view of Mt. Hood on a good day, no reservation required.
The Hillsdale Library, open since 1957, remains the kind of anchor that doesn't need a reopening to matter. It's simply been there, the way McMenamins has been there since 1985 and Baker & Spice since 1998, doing the quiet work that has nothing to do with whether a grocery chain thinks the neighborhood can support a fishmonger.
The Actual Shift
Here's the claim worth taking from all of this: Hillsdale isn't becoming a different neighborhood overnight. It's running two versions of itself at the same time, and has been for three years now. One version is the strip that never needed outside validation, the brewpub from 1985, the bakery from 1998, the clothing store that's outlasted three decades of turnover elsewhere in the city. The other version started with a pizza oven in 2023 and just picked up a butcher counter in 2026, betting that people beyond the immediate neighborhood will drive here on purpose.
Both versions are true right now, on the same stretch of Capitol Highway. The interesting question isn't whether Please Louise made a good call in 2023. It already has three years of evidence behind it. The interesting question is whether Market of Choice's bet plays out the same way, and whether Hillsdale sees a third addition to that list before too long.
If you're watching Hillsdale for reasons that go beyond dinner plans and grocery runs, whether you already live here and are curious what these changes mean for the neighborhood long-term, or you're weighing what a home nearby might be worth given how the area is evolving, Carrie Welch knows this stretch of Southwest Portland well enough to talk through it. A free home valuation is a low-pressure way to start that conversation whenever you're ready.
