10 days that defined a year of upheaval for Portland restaurants

Over the 15 years prior to the pandemic, Portland grew from a culinary backwater to arguably the best pound-for-pound food city in America, a rise fueled by funky food carts, intimate bistros and bustling restaurants serving cuisines from around the world.

Those food carts aside, few American cities had restaurant scenes more poorly positioned to survive COVID-19 than Portland. Intimate bistros have little room to create space between tables. Carefully crafted menus don’t translate well to takeout. And some of our busiest restaurants, Toro Bravo and Pok Pok among them, closed before the year was out, taking hundreds of jobs with them. Meanwhile, most local diners closely follow COVID-19 news, and have been relatively cautious about returning to dining indoors.

What will the pandemic’s long-term impact be on local restaurants and bars? It’s too early to tell, though some data suggest the early calamity predicted by restaurant advocates might not have come to pass. Statewide, just 5% of restaurants and bars surrendered their Oregon liquor licenses in 2020. In Portland, that number could be higher — by our count, more than 100 local food and drink businesses have closed since last March.

Here are 10 days that defined a year of upheaval for Portland restaurants.

March 17, 2020

The day Portland dining stood still.

In the weeks leading up to this date, when Gov. Kate Brown limited Oregon restaurants and bars to takeout only, concerns had been focused on Seattle, where the novel coronavirus first landed and where restaurants were already closing. In the days after Oregon confirmed its first coronavirus case on Feb. 28, businesses began adding hand sanitizer, deep cleaning tables between customers and even instituting their own 14-day exclusion policies for customers who recently traveled to pandemic hotspots. In Portland, a handful of restaurants began closing their doors voluntarily, starting with an unlikely duo — steakhouse chain El Gaucho and high-end vegan restaurant Farm Spirit.

Sunday, March 15, brought a major announcement: Prominent Portland restaurant group ChefStable announced that its 20 restaurants and bars, including well-known restaurants St. Jack, Ox, XLB and Lardo, would close for “at least four weeks” in an attempt to slow the virus’ spread. About 90% of the group’s 800 employees were furloughed just as Oregon’s creaky unemployment system began to groan under the weight of tens of thousands of new applications, many from the hospitality industry. Dozens of other restaurants would follow.

That same day, more than 100 chefs, bartenders, bakers, winemakers, public relations professionals and culinary event organizers signed an open letter urging Gov. Brown to close all Oregon restaurants and bars, noting that “the very act of serving food to a diner requires that we violate social distancing protocols.” Some business owners hoped a government action would trigger their loss of business insurance. But that magic bullet turned out to be a dud: Provisions inserted after the SARS outbreak in 2002 specifically excluded payouts for losses caused by viral infections.

March 27, 2020

Moving with uncharacteristic speed, the United States government was able to pull together a $2 trillion economic stimulus bill, the CARES Act, which was signed by former President Trump this day. In addition to one-time payments of $1200 for most single adults, the bill included two significant provisions for the American restaurant industry: The creation of the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided forgivable loans to businesses, and an extension of unemployment benefits, including an additional $600 a week to laid off workers.

Restaurant owners, meanwhile, found themselves racing against the spoilage clock, giving away food to the public, sending staff home with perishable goods or hosting last-hurrah parties to clean out depleted stores. Restaurant-focused food distributors suddenly had to figure out what to do with thousands of pounds of meat, veggies and eggs. Many restaurants brought truckloads of produce down to Oregon’s various soup kitchens and food banks. Others, including the Pearl District’s Irving Street Kitchen, made a quick decision that their closures would be permanent.

Almost immediately, restaurants started getting creative. Well-known chefs hosted free online cooking tutorials on Instagram and cooked meals for those in need. Pix Patisserie opened a 24-hour vending machine. Kachka and others built E-commerce sites, selling everything from takeout food to toilet paper. A parking lot steak sale at Ringside Steakhouse clogged traffic for hours on West Burnside Street. At home, quarantine baking became a go-to hobby, leading a Portland baker’s 8-year-old cookbook to rise to the top of Amazon’s best seller charts.

June 19, 2020

One week after Brown placed an unanticipated “yellow light” on Multnomah County’s reopening plans — costing restaurants thousands of dollars in the process — on-site dining officially resumed in Portland on this date, with plenty of restrictions in place. For the most part, restaurants took “baby steps” toward reopening, limiting customers to outdoor seats on patios both old and just built. The OLCC had given restaurants an early boost in spring, fast-tracking applications to sell beer and wine to-go and expand alcohol sales to sidewalks, streets and nearby parking lots. But bar owners lamented that Oregon was dragging its feet in joining the majority of American states to allow cocktails to-go.

That slow restaurant reopening happened to fall on Juneteenth amid a time of historic upheaval after the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by police in Minneapolis. Protesters marching in opposition to police violence were soon passing diners eating and drinking at food cart pods and hipster honky tonks in Southeast Portland. Meanwhile, restaurants struggled to impose their own mask orders months before Oregon’s went into effect, and laid-off service industry workers used social media to advocate for permanent change in the industry, including greater equity for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ staff.

July 1, 2020

By summer, restaurant closures had grown from a trickle to a flood. Intimate brunch spots including Helser’s, Arleta Library Cafe and Trinket were among the first to go. Buffets were particularly hard hit by coronavirus restrictions — in May, the Sweet Tomatoes chain announced it would close nearly 100 locations, including four in Oregon. Late-night favorites Revelry and Noraneko called it quits. Jade District dim sum palace Wong’s King Seafood filed for bankruptcy. Chef Andy Ricker announced that most of his Pok Pok restaurants would not reopen, while the original Southeast Division Street location was rumored to be for sale.

But the first day in July brought a bombshell. Toro Bravo Inc., a restaurant group that once included hundreds of employees across nearly a dozen restaurants, was being dissolved in the wake of Facebook threats that chef John Gorham had directed at a trans woman of color. Three days earlier, The Oregonian/OregonLive.com, which exclusively reported the closure news, had detailed the events leading to Gorham’s social media outburst and the ensuing fallout for what had been one of Portland’s most popular chefs. Gorham has since moved to Bend.

That same day, Maya Lovelace, the chef and owner at two southern restaurants in Northeast Portland, started soliciting anonymous accusations of abuse and mismanagement at some of the city’s best-known restaurants, which she then posted to her Instagram account. The fallout was swift, with major Portland restaurant groups including Olympia Provisions and Ava Gene’s posting apologies for previous bad behavior.

But by the end of the week, the reckoning started by Lovelace had come for her: Gregory Gourdet, one of Portland’s few prominent Black chefs, had accused Lovelace of taking on a “new savior” role, acting as “judge, jury, executioner and apology acceptor” for the Portland restaurant industry. Eventually, Lovelace herself came under fire for her alleged treatment of staff, including sharp criticism from her sole Black employee.

Sept. 9, 2020

By September, local restaurants had figured out their outdoor dining setups, with some utilizing a new city initiative that offered restaurants a no-fee application process to expand their seating into the street. Portland restaurants and bars took every available opportunity to head outdoors, utilizing nearby alleys, parking lots and even rooftops. Those with ample patios reported sales approaching or eclipsing their previous summertime highs. Some with more limited outdoor space turned to food carts to survive.

But this date marked another major hurdle, the start of more than a week of wildfire smoke that blanketed the entire West Coast with poisonous air, making outdoor dining not just difficult, but downright dangerous. And even as that smoke began to recede, local restaurants began to fear the coming winter.

Nov. 18, 2020

Eight months after the first shutdown, and five months after Portland restaurants were slowly allowed to reopen, Brown placed a new “freeze” on dining, effective this date, in efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, which was suddenly surging in Oregon. Though the initial order banning outdoor as well as indoor dining was short-lived, this second dining room closure would eventually stretch for months, and came just as some downtown restaurants were preparing for what would normally have been their busiest day of the year.

Not every Portland restaurant was impacted by the closure order. Some, including Pok Pok, Holdfast Dining and Beast, had recently announced permanent closures. Others, including Ox, Jacqueline, Magna, Ataula and Reel M Inn, had gone into hibernation, hoping to reopen in 2021 when better weather, a diminished virus, a widely distributed vaccine or some combination of the three would make dining out safe again.

Dec. 21, 2020

The holidays brought a rare piece of good news: After months of delays, Oregon passed a bill allowing restaurants and bars to sell cocktails to-go, sending a lifeline to small businesses during what proved to be a long winter. Local bars were ready for the opportunity, rolling out takeout margaritas and other mixed drinks just in time for New Year’s Eve.

At the same time, some restaurants were using the winter downtime to open “ghost kitchens” or even “virtual food halls,” restaurants only available through third-party delivery apps. That led to the revival of Ping, a once-beloved Chinatown restaurant that joined a growing list of gone-but-not-forgotten restaurants to reappear during the pandemic. But local businesses also cried foul after national chains such as Red Robin “flooded the market” by offering their same menu under several different brands online.

Feb. 12, 2021

After weeks of falling COVID-19 cases throughout Oregon, Multnomah County finally passed the threshold to reopen indoor dining at 25% capacity on this date. One month later, Brown allowed Portland-area restaurants and bars to expand to 50% capacity, where they will likely remain for the foreseeable future.

But even as local restaurants were ramping up to reopen last month, nature had other plans. That night, snow started falling throughout the metro area, followed by a severe ice storm that collapsed outdoor canopies and and other outdoor setups, some beyond repair. It was another blow for restaurants and bars buffeted by nearly a year’s worth of cascading disasters, and it came just before another typically busy time for sales: Valentine’s Day.

March 11, 2021

After a year and more than 500,000 dead Americans, President Joe Biden signed a new coronavirus relief bill into law on this date, pumping $1.9 trillion into the economy just as the nation prepared to administer its 100 millionth dose of vaccine. In addition to personal stimulus checks and an expanded $300 unemployment supplement, the bill included $28.6 billion in grants reserved for independent restaurants, a scaled-back version of the original Restaurants Act that Oregon congressman Earl Blumenauer introduced last May.

May 1, 2021

Even as some Portland restaurants and bars have already reopened their dining rooms, others are committed to outdoor service on their patios — or private greenhouses, bubbles, or yurts — until restaurant workers have access to the vaccine, currently scheduled for this date, though that could be in flux. After a year of waiting, what’s another few weeks?

— Michael Russell, [email protected], @tdmrussell