At this celebrity chef’s new Biggie-loving Portland restaurant, steak sandwiches come with cheese eggs and Welch’s grape

Notorious B.I.G., the late Brooklyn rapper, liked high-low juxtapositions just as much as a hip Portland chef. Take “Big Poppa,” a song filled with boasts, sexual or otherwise, including mansions, fancy cars and a mid-rendezvous meal of “T-Bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch’s grape.”

That famous line, delivered in signature Biggie Smalls style, is the inspiration for a sandwich at Big E (get it?), a new micro restaurant from Twin Cities chef Justin Sutherland, found in the rec room-style lobby of downtown Portland’s new 197-room Moxy Hotel. Big E joins Fast Feathers, a new wing concept from Anthony and Stephanie Brown of Northeast Portland’s Nacheaux, and an as-yet unfilled third micro restaurant space at the hotel’s new “Food Cart Alley.”