Luke Dirks last saw Naomi Pomeroy late Friday night. The duo were wrapping up one of the first iterations of their Garden Party, a dinner series launched in a secluded Southeast Portland garden near the neighborhood bistro they planned to open this fall.
“We closed this place up together around 1:30 a.m.,” Dirks said. “We were both going to try to take a weekend to be with our families and decompress. We had talked loosely about what we were going to do on the weekend. Both of us had plans to be out in nature. We gave each other a hug and said, ‘See you on Monday.’”
Pomeroy, 49, died tragically after her inner tube flotilla hit a snag on the Willamette River near Corvallis on Saturday, authorities said. Rescue crews had yet to recover Pomeroy’s body on Tuesday. Her husband, Kyle Linden Webster, survived the incident.
“I’m just still in a state of shock,” Dirks said. “It doesn’t feel real.”
Dirks first met Pomeroy at a Feast Portland food festival kickoff party in New York City, back when he was the East Coast wholesale director for Stumptown Coffee. He recalls her presence — full of light and energy.
Dirks returned to Portland in 2015, where he co-founded Submarine Hospitality (Ava Gene’s, Tusk). Soon, the two began meeting up at Prince Coffee on Northeast Fremont Avenue to discuss tipping and other thorny restaurant issues.
When the pandemic hit, a text thread between Dirks, Pomeroy, Peter Cho and others led to a packed industry meeting at Fora, the events space behind Ava Gene’s. That early town hall led directly to the formation of the Independent Restaurant Alliance of Oregon.
“(Naomi) went on to become not just a Portland connector but a national connector through her work with the Independent Restaurant Coalition,” Dirks said.
After Pomeroy converted her Beast restaurant into Ripe Cooperative, a restaurant/market hybrid, Dirks would often drop by to grab some ice cream with his kids. But it wasn’t until Pomeroy and her husband Kyle Linden Webster decided not to pursue plans to open a restaurant in the Ace Hotel Kyoto that she and Dirks decided to work together.
That work kicked into high gear in spring, when Dirks and Pomeroy toured the former Woodsman Tavern space, a building co-owned by early Submarine investor Arrow Cruz. Their plans were to open a 70-seat bistro at 4537 S.E. Division St., a place where you could make a reservation, but you didn’t necessarily have to.
“We were excited about melding our two backgrounds,” Dirks said. “The world hasn’t really experienced a drop-in, a la carte Naomi Pomeroy restaurant, and we were excited to do that together.”
Faced with delays, Pomeroy and Dirks decided to introduce themselves to the neighborhood through Garden Party, a twice-weekly dinner series in a patio area tucked behind the original Stumptown Cafe with a $95 set menu harkening back to the early days of Beast.
Meanwhile, Pomeroy and former Beast sous chef Mika Paredes opened Cornet Custard, a small shop next door highlighting the frozen custard Dirks had enjoyed at Ripe.
On Tuesday, a makeshift memorial of flowers sat in the doorway of Cornet Custard, which remained closed.
Over the past few months, Pomeroy and Dirks built a small restaurant team that included chef Matt Mayer (Ripe Cooperative, Heavenly Creatures) and wine director Michael Garofola (Beast, Cutter Cascadia Wine). They had planned to keep the Garden Party series going through the fall.
According to Dirks, any big decisions about the future of the restaurant will be made in conjunction with their team and Pomeroy’s family. But he isn’t talking about the bistro in the past tense.
“Right now, we’re just processing grief,” Dirks said. “And there’s no plan. It’s a question we’ll get to when everyone is ready to talk.”
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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