Tommy Habetz (front) with one of his Bunk Sandwich partners, Nick Wood.
Interview by Megan Cole
You don’t know how good a sandwich can be until you’ve gone to Bunk Sandwiches in Portland, Oregon. These guys make you forget everything you knew about sandwiches, with menu items like their renowned Cubano. But in addition to being serious about food, Tommy Habetz, as well as the other two owners of Bunk, Matt Brown and Nick Wood, are serious about music and routinely have live music at their Bunk Bar location. We caught up with Habetz to talk sandwiches, Portland and a love of North Carolina that he can’t seem to escape.
I heard you owned a record label at one point?
That wasn’t me, actually. My partner, Matt, in Bunk, he had a record label called Blazing County Records, and among some of the bands on his label, probably the biggest band, was The Love Language, and they are on Merge Records now. He had a band called Ashley Stove when he was in North Carolina, and they were on Merge in the earlier days of Merge. He really is the person behind the music at Bunk Bar.
Did you ever play in any bands or anything?
Yeah, I did too. We both did. Matt is still playing in a band actually, called The Phantom Ships, with Steve Turner from Mudhoney, who is a friend of ours. I’m not playing at the moment. I would really like to, but I have all these businesses, along with with a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. I keep trying to find time to do it, and I’m still going to try. I had a band in college called American Pragmatists, which is very college-y, named after a philosophical movement. It doesn’t get much more college rock than that, I guess.
What did you play in the band?
I played guitar and sang, and did the majority of the songwriting.
Was it music or food that brought you and your business partners at Bunk together? A bit of both?
That’s a good question. Yeah, I would say a bit of both, for sure. Nick and I are definitely more focused around food. Nick was my sous-chef at a restaurant I was working at in Northwest Portland, and then Matt was actually the bar manager there. But I had met Matt originally through some friends of ours who have a business called Pine State Biscuits here, and North Carolina is the Pine State; bringing it around to North Carolina, even though I’m not from North Carolina. I’m from Connecticut originally. I would say we were definitely brought together over music though, specifically our love of the band Archers of Loaf, a North Carolina band. We were talking about Eric Bachmann, who at the time was recording under the name Crooked Fingers. I hadn’t heard anything, and Matt was saying I had to hear it, especially the record To the Races, which is just an Eric Bachmann solo record. I don’t know if you’ve heard that record, but it is just a great, great, brilliant record. We definitely bonded over that. Then, coincidentally enough, we’ve had Eric Bachmann and Crooked Fingers play at Bunk Bar, which is pretty awesome.
How did you end up in Portland? How did you stumble upon Portland, Oregon?
I did undergraduate college in Connecticut and graduate in 1994, and I came out to Portland because I came out to do Habitat for Humanity, something not food or music-related. I figured it was something good to do and got me out of the Northeast to the Northwest, and I really love Portland. That year was a great time to be in Portland. A lot of great music was here at the time, and it really opened my eyes to Portland as a city, and how cool and interesting of a city it is. I was very much attracted the Portland of Elliott Smith, Pete Miser, and Gus Van Sant, which is different now, but it always has that at its heart. People like to slag on how much Portland has changed, but at its heart it’s still what it is.
How has it changed? Is it because of all the press that it has gotten and the Portlandia thing?
I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think you can pinpoint one thing, but definitely I have to give a plug for the Portland restaurant and brewery scene; I think they have had a big part in bringing people to town and getting people interested in Portland. But I mean there is so much that’s already here. It’s such a great place to live. There are really great people and add to that the natural beauty, and the area around Portland just can’t be beat. It’s just amazing. Then add on to that world-class wines and beers, and spirits now, and it’s just getting to be a point where it’s an embarrassment of riches, and we’re getting a bit spoiled, I think.
You never need to leave, in a sense.
It’s true. It’s kind of funny; that’s kind of how Bunk came to be. There wasn’t that kind of sandwich shop that I really wanted to go to, and that’s why we did that in the first place, and I think that other chefs and restauranteurs have kind of approached it in the same way, and I think [Bon Appetit‘s] Andrew Knowlton said something about this recently when he was interviewed about Portland; rather than think of it like I have this really great concept for a restaurant, it’s kinda like, “I really have to make this fried-chicken shack, that’s what I’ve really got to do, and if people like it that’s cool, but if not, oh well.”
We’ve talked to people from Portland like Chad Draizin at 50 Licks Ice Cream and Nong’s Khao Man Gai about the food they make, and we watch from a distance and think people can go to Portland and just pick one thing and make a career out of it, like it’s this Eden of food and drink. At least that’s how we see it from the outside…
It’s always funny when you’ve got your head down, because you don’t know the perspective on the outside. Nong, especially, is pretty amazing because she’s taken chicken and rice, and made it into something completely ethereal. She’s amazing, and that chicken and rice is so good. Yeah, that’s funny to me.
It’s funny too, because the last time I was in Portland, I think every cab driver I had was also a musician and handing me a business card, saying. “I’ll send you my demo tape.” Which I’ve never had in any other city.
If you ask people in Portland they’ll say different things should be a Portlandia episode, like what you just described. The funny thing about it is with Portlandia it seems like they didn’t have to go too far to find some great material; we’ve got some pretty serious stereotypes here.
Do you think that because there is this idea of what Portland is now, that people really don’t know what the city is about and we just have an idea that is created by Bon Appetit articles and Portlandia episodes?
I do, yes. I do feel like that only certainly captures a small part of Portland, for sure. One of the things that I’m trying to work on, but I haven’t been very successful at because I don’t know anything about it, I have been wanting to start a magazine or blog, or some kind of media outlet, just some way of having a voice from Portland to the outside world. I don’t think we have that much; we have a few critics that have been outspoken about Portland and the Portland restaurant scene, like Karen Brooks at Portland Monthly, but there is no voice coming from Portland. I think that whatever you’re going to get is always going to be skewed through that lens of Bon Appetit or New York Times. But I’m not saying positive versus negative, it’s just one voice versus another.
Bunk Sandwiches has seven locations in Portland, Oregon including a food truck.
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