Naomi Pomeroy, the award-winning Portland chef and cookbook author who died Saturday in a tragic river accident, was remembered by friends and colleagues as a “titan of Portland food,” a disruptive figure and culinary “rock star” who changed the face of American dining, in memorial posts flooding social media Monday and Tuesday.
A self-taught cook, Pomeroy rose to prominence through an early pop-up series, Family Supper, held inside her own home. From those humble beginnings, she and then-partner Michael Hebb would go on to open a series of prominent restaurants including Gotham Building Tavern, Ripe Supper Club and Clarklewis, landing the duo spreads in glossy magazines and food TV opportunities.
When those ventures fell apart, Pomeroy rebuilt her career, eventually opening Beast, a new restaurant that helped define the scrappy ethos of late-aughts dining. Beast was named The Oregonian’s co-Restaurant of the Year (with Le Pigeon) in 2008, Pomeroy was named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs the following year and, in 2014, took home the James Beard Award as the Pacific Northwest’s best chef.
In 2011, Pomeroy competed on “Top Chef Masters” and two years later opened Expatriate, a dark and stylish cocktail bar directly across the street from Beast. In 2016, she would publish a cookbook, “Taste & Technique: Recipes to Elevate Your Home Cooking.”
Pomeroy is survived by husband Webster and daughter August. Dive teams had yet to recover Pomeroy’s body. No memorial services have been announced.
Beast closed in 2020. The next year, Pomeroy reopened as Ripe Cooperative, a restaurant and market hybrid tailored for a post-pandemic world. It was there that she and former Beast sous chef Mika Paredes first started tinkering with their Cornet Custard. Ripe Cooperative closed in 2022. Two months ago, Pomeroy and Paredes opened a standalone shop for Cornet on Southeast Division Street, right next to the planned home of Pomeroy’s upcoming bistro.
Below, find a snapshot of some of the remembrances pouring in from friends, colleagues and politicians about Pomeroy’s food world legacy:
- “(In) 2001, Naomi and her then partner Michael (Hebb) re-invented the Portland restaurant scene and launched a movement whose reverberations were felt around the world,” former Pok Pok chef Andy Ricker wrote on social media. “From that first supper club to the present, she repped PDX. It got messy, it broke norms, it raised bars, it opened doors for all of us. Rest easy legend, your place in history and in hearts is eternal.”
- “Naomi was not just a fabulous chef and entrepreneur, but an amazing human being,” U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer wrote in a statement Monday. “Her impact went far beyond Portland, helping establish our leadership and reputation for food excellence. She will be greatly missed.”
- “Pomeroy started out as an unschooled chef who made her first recipe at age 4, then helped redefine the modern Portland restaurant at Beast, her groundbreaking fine-dining destination,” wrote Portland Monthly critic Karen Brooks. “The essence of Portland thrummed in this room: scrappy but chic, full of wit and ironic humor and backed by a local ethos and extravagant comfort.”
- “I thought (Family Supper) was just so disruptive and relevant,” longtime friend and investor David Howitt said in a phone interview. “She had a mind not only for the artistry of food, but a strong sense of community…She was always in my very small camp of friends who I could count on for the truth. And I will miss that greatly.”
- “I can’t believe…you are gone…heartbroken my friend,” San Francisco chef Dominique Crenn wrote on social media. “My condolences to your family and all the people that love you…I have no words.”
- “(Pomeroy) helped define the Portland culinary scene that so captured the national imagination in the early aughts,” wrote Eater Executive Editor Erin DeJesus. “Each of Pomeroy’s moves felt on the pulse, even a portent for what was to come next: freewheeling dinner parties predated the pop-up boom; early concepts flaunted the potential of whole hog cooking; prix fixe, ‘no substitutions please’ menus embodied the spirit of the now-bygone era of the ‘rock star’ chef.”
- “Aside from being shockingly good at her craft, Naomi was also so supportive and encouraging, even to a young chef who didn’t know (what) he was doing like I was when we first met,” Portland chef Ricky Bella wrote on social media. “Terrible loss for our culture.”
- “The first time I went to Portland was to see Naomi Pomeroy in action on a (Food & Wine magazine) Best New Chef scouting trip,” wrote Bloomberg Pursuits editor Kat Krader. “It’s impossible to think that someone like Naomi, such a dynamic, terrific force of nature in the food world and way beyond it, is gone now.”
- “She was a pioneer, an icon, and one of the most important figures in PDX culinary history,” wrote Gary “The Foodie” Okazaki. “I’ve been to all her restaurants through the years but my lasting memory will be Naomi working in the open kitchen at Beast.”
- “I feel so lucky to have had a friend like Naomi Pomeroy,” wrote Santa Monica chef Jeremy Fox. “Rest easy, Chef.”
- “I am utterly devastated by the news of the death of Naomi Pomeroy,” wrote Portland photographer Dina Avila. “She was a dear friend, an amazing cook, a wonderful human being...She was not done.”
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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