I’VE LIVED IN Portland for almost 30 years now, and I’ve watched it transform from a sleepy, second-tier American city to a mecca for food and beverage. I’ve had a front-row seat for this transformation since I started cooking professionally in the late ’90s with a catering company I ran out of my basement. In those years, Portland had a fiercely DIY ethos, something I very much shared with the city, so it didn’t seem that strange to be defrosting shrimp in a bathtub for a 250-person event.

I opened three restaurants in the early 2000s and eventually lost them all, but reemerged in 2007 with an intimate tasting menu restaurant called Beast. In 2014, I was named the Best Chef in the Pacific Northwest by the James Beard Foundation, something that I’d never set out to be, but it surprised and delighted me. I had spent 80-plus hours a week toiling away over two electric induction burners with only four employees, and the hustle paid off. In 2013, my husband Kyle Linden Webster and I opened a sultry cocktail bar, Expatriate, across the street from Beast. Even though I closed my 13-year-old fine-dining gem during the pandemic, I remain impressed by Portland's range of offerings for visitors and locals alike, and I’m hopeful that we’ll continue the upward trajectory that has marked my time here in this lush, beautiful city.

This list endeavors to create a good mix of the new and what longtime residents would call “Old Portland.” Think of that not as a distinct time or place, but as an emotional through line, connecting the past to the present. In capturing the spirit of Portland that pulses below the larger shifts noticeable over decades, some of our most recent restaurant or bar openings already feel as if they’ve been here forever.