Portland, Ore. chef Naomi Pomeroy died tragically final week. Because the information reverberated that the town had misplaced considered one of its most consequential, trail-blazing cooks, everybody whose life had been touched by her friendship and her cooking expressed their anguish. She was solely 49.
“She was a rare particular person. The entire metropolis is grieving,” mentioned Karen Brooks, the meals editor of Portland Month-to-month, who broke the information about Naomi. She drowned whereas tubing on the Willamette River along with her husband.
The self-taught chef, who’s frequently credited with turning Portland right into a eating vacation spot, was additionally a grasp of reinvention. After her first marriage and restaurant empire imploded, Naomi opened a fine-dining restaurant, Beast, the place she earned a James Beard Award for Finest Chef: Northwest and Pacific in 2014. In 2020, Naomi rechristened Beast as a market and bistro known as Ripe Cooperative, a nod to her former supper membership and restaurant group. She had since opened an ice cream store, Cornet Custard, with a longtime collaborator, Mike Paredes, and was within the means of bringing a brand new French restaurant into being.
Picture by Alicia J. Rose
My buddy Camas Davis was Portland Month-to-month’s meals editor when Beast first opened, and in her information to the metropolis’s greatest eating places in 2008, Beast was on the high of the checklist, together with a brief interview with Naomi. Camas introduced up the now-iconic picture of Naomi holding a pig carcass to her chest photographed by by Alicia J. Rose as a part of an advert marketing campaign for Beast. The nose-to-tail motion was in its infancy, and Naomi had embraced it, fairly actually.
Camas requested Naomi how folks had been responding to the controversial advert.
“Some folks write or name and say it’s lovely,” mentioned Naomi. “Others have known as us murderous jerks. I had one particular person write saying he was the most important pork fan however the image was disgusting. I perceive how, if you find yourself a vegetarian, it may be laborious to be bombarded with photographs like that. I used to be a vegetarian for seven years, so I do know. However, on the identical time, it’s like, Hey, folks, meet your meals. Each animal product you eat was as soon as alive. Should you’re uncomfortable with that, I respect that, however you shouldn’t be consuming it.”
Camas, too, was as soon as a vegetarian who switched sides, left meals media, and have become a butcher. She began the Portland Meat Collective and a nonprofit known as the Good Meat Undertaking and wrote a memoir about her journey, known as Killing It. “She had such an affect on me with out even understanding it,” Camas mentioned once I first texted her about Naomi’s passing. As she mirrored additional by e-mail, she couldn’t but think about her prior to now tense: “She is one of some cooks on the town whose meals looks like house to me. Whereas we by no means turned mates within the conventional sense of the phrase, we obtained to know one another over these plates of pasta and oysters she’d put down on my desk. Our three minute conversations at her eating places at all times went deep quick, about reinventing oneself, about being a feminine chef or butcher in a male-dominated world, about dropping folks we love, about legacies, about working your individual enterprise and barely making it, about parenting, about not understanding what the hell you had been doing in life and trusting the method.”
Three thousand miles away, I additionally felt the depth of Naomi’s loss as members of our cookbook membership started reminiscing about her recipes from her cookbook, Style & Approach, which was a finalist in Food52’s (then) annual match of cookbooks, The Piglet. Members of our membership cooked by means of it collectively final 12 months and commenced revisiting her dishes final week in her reminiscence.
“I frequently flip again to Style & Approach for all or a part of a recipe,” mentioned member Sheila Scully. “I beloved that she included seasonal pairing choices for the protein dishes—altering them up and making the dishes contemporary and generally stunning.”
Patty Leman admitted that Naomi’s e-book was intimidating at first given the variety of “sub recipes,” or recipes inside recipes. “I had bought it earlier than we coated it within the membership and wasn’t as robust of a prepare dinner. After we coated it, I realized the fantastic thing about her substances and their versatility. She taught me loads.”
We’ve excerpted her Sole Picatta with Lemon Confit and Fried Caper Relish, the recipe the membership beloved most from her e-book. Prepare dinner together with us if you happen to can. Following Naomi’s exact steps, reminiscent of conserving the lemon confit on a delicate simmer with “tiny bubbles no larger than these in Champagne” looks like the proper solution to spend time with a pioneering chef who taught us a lot concerning the labor and love concerned in making nice meals.
