Bollywood Theater

Chai, paratha, and the owner at the pass

Masala Chai carries the restaurant name beyond the counter, spiced and repeatable. Troy MacLarty , owner and executive chef at Bollywood Theater in Portland, keeps that same clarity on the pass at the Northeast Alberta Street restaurant. His station is built around Indian street food, but the work is less about imitation than about structure: a roll that eats cleanly, a curry that holds coconut against asparagus, a vindaloo that carries heat slowly enough to stay useful through the whole plate. MacLarty trained at the Culinary Institute of America before returning to Portland kitchens. He worked as chef at Family Supper until 2005, then at Simpatica and Saucebox, and from 2006 at Lovely Hula Hands. Since 2012, he has held Bollywood Theater as chef and owner, which means the method has to survive service, staff change, and repetition.

A street-food grammar held in place

The kitchen works in small plates and à la carte forms, with thalis, kathi rolls, vada pav, curry, and vindaloo doing different jobs in the same program. The kathi roll follows the Calcutta street-food shape, with marinated meat or paneer wrapped in paratha with pickled onions, spicy tomato sauce, and green chutney. Vada pav brings potato, bread, tamarind, garlic chutney, and fried chillies into a handheld register. Pork Vindaloo anchors the deeper side of the menu, its heat built for return bites rather than a single impression. MacLarty’s practice also reaches into the supporting pantry. At the former Southeast Division location, the team made paneer, ghee, cheewra, and sev in house when the available supply did not meet the kitchen’s needs. That habit matters at Alberta too, because Indian street food depends on small components arriving with force and proportion. The craft is in keeping each piece legible.

The room keeps the films moving

The room on Northeast Alberta has the loose, crowded patience of a counter-service restaurant that knows its own pace. Steel water glasses, mismatched tables, eclectic knickknacks, high ceilings, and Bollywood films projected on the walls give the place its visual weather without asking the food to become decoration. The counter does the organizing. Guests move through the room with trays, the pass keeps sending out rolls and thalis, and the kitchen works in a casual format that still asks for discipline at each station. The sound stays conversational, even when the room feels lively. That is part of the appeal: the restaurant can be playful without making the cooking vague.

The Alberta address after Division

The Southeast Division restaurant opened in February 2014 and closed on April 19, 2025, after 11 years. The Northeast Alberta original continues as the remaining Bollywood Theater address, which gives the work a narrower and more exact focus. MacLarty’s next move here is not announced as a new format; it is the continued care of the dishes that made the place hold. The close attention is still in the Pork Vindaloo.