Portland Metro—The Birth of a Restaurant City

I had a food epiphany on Saturday, February 14, 1981. It was a Valentine's Day date that included a big band dance prefaced by dinner, in a nice restaurant. In those days, most nice restaurants had a few things in common: the lights were low, the vinyl was red, and the vegetables were sauced and overcooked. The lettuce was iceberg, and the food was secondary to paying a little more than for a normal night out in order to enjoy the appearance that something special was happening.

I wanted to impress a young woman I knew from classes at the University of Portland. So, flush with a few dollars from my work/study program, I set about to find the nicest of the city's nice restaurants. Through some sort of primeval Google-type search (I think it involved microfilm at the library), I somehow found a small French place on upper Burnside Street called L'Auberge. It had a few tables, one waiter/host and a set four-course menu. When we arrived, and I realized that we were at the mercy of the chef's whim, it was an aperitif of fear, panic and anticipation. What followed was nirvana.

The restaurant is no longer around, and I don’t remember the young woman's name, but I’ll never forget what happened when I took my first bite of the poached lemon cheesecake. That night, food changed for me.

A few years later, when George Orwell said we'd all be eating Big Brother's stew, the Portland metro area had a culinary awakening as well. 1984 was a watershed year for food in this city. That year saw the opening of The Heathman Hotel and its chic dining room. Atwater’s Restaurant & Bar (now Portland City Grill) brought small portions, high design and a stage for Oregon's growing wine industry. The Ponzi family, already an established Pinot noir pioneer, founded Bridgeport Brewing Company, creating the foundation for the microbrewing craze that followed.

Like the exploding number of wineries in the region, it's hard to keep up anymore with the city's restaurant scene and what’s new, hot, hip or already closed. The Pearl District, a former rail yard and warehouse district converted to condos, bistros and hipster boutiques, could just as easily have been called the Silverware District. The downtown boundaries that once defined where the best chefs would set up shop, are being pushed out to neighborhoods and surrounding communities.

Over the past 20 years of hanging around (through both my professional and volunteer lives) with a lot of the city's great chefs, I’ve watched the food scene in Portland grow up. At a restaurant I worked with in the early 90s, we thought our daily deliveries of greens, heirloom tomatoes and hand-picked herbs from local farmers was a cool story. It was, and with the help of chefs like Greg Higgins (then at the Heathman and now at Higgins), Cory Schreiber (of Wildwood) and other chefs, that approach has evolved into the mantra of fresh, sustainable, local food. Telling customers where you bought the pork on your menu is no longer about boasting that you use great products, it's because customers want to know.

I'm not sure if the trout I salivated over during that meal in 1981 was pulled from a local stream or not. All I remember is that it tasted like nothing I'd ever had before, something that happens often when you mix talented chefs, a willing audience, and great local ingredients.

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