Bar Asha. | Bar Asha Bar Asha and XO Bar, two bars from the team behind the Sudra, will close this month A pair of Portland area bars operated by influential Portland restaurateur Sanjay Chandrasekaran have called it quits this week. XO Bar announced it would be closing on October 27 in an Instagram post, while Bar Asha announced its sudden and immediate closure on October 18 on Instagram. Eater Portland reached out to owner Sanjay Chandrasekaran for comment but hasn’t heard back. Chandrasekaran is best known as the owner of the Sudra, an essential vegan Indian restaurant that opened its first location in Northeast Portland in 2013, before expanding with locations in St. Johns, the Pearl, Beaverton, and Boise on Mississippi Avenue. In 2023, the Mississippi Avenue location flipped into XO Bar, a Southeast Asian plant-based bar, while the Northeast Portland location became Bar Asha in June 2024. In July, Chandrasekaran paused operations at Bar Asha to revamp the menu with help from Deepak Saxena (Desi PDX, Chaat Wallah Masala Lab) and Ben Preacher (Wilder, the Garrison), and added meat to the lineup for the first time. Naureen Huq (Expatriate, Kann/Sousoul) was tapped to head up the bar program. Bar Asha reopened in September with an all-new menu featuring pork belly skewers and burrata chaat, alongside vegan options like sambal cauliflower and red lentil vada. Chandrasekaran said the addition of non-vegan options was partially a response to growing vegan options at omnivore restaurants and an already wide variety of vegan restaurants in Portland. “It’s just getting harder and harder to exist as a solely vegan place,” he told Eater in September. By April 2024, Chandrasekaran had closed all locations of the Sudra. June, a bar Chandrasekaran opened in September 2023 in the former Beaverton Sudra space, remains open. The comment section under the XO Bar closure announcement has been ablaze with people mourning the loss of the restaurant, and asking what happened. The restaurant responded to one comment offering a reason: “Unfortunately, we’ve been treading water for a while and it’s only gotten worse to the point we can’t keep our doors open any longer.” Comments have been disabled on the Bar Asha post.