In the heart of Portland, Oregon, where the culinary scene is as eclectic as the city itself, Gregory Gourdet interweaves centuries of history with his own memories. For Family Style No. 1, the James Beard Award-winning chef has imagined a unique three-course menu that is as powerful as it is personal.
Hours before dinner service one gloomy Pacific Northwest day, I am immediately struck by Gregory Gourdet’s calm aura and welcoming ease. I’d already tasted the chef’s food the night before; each bite prompted me to eat faster yet savor more slowly in order not to miss a thing. I am still processing it now as I sit before him, still tasting dishes like his soup joumou, an immediate favorite. Equally powerful in flavor and story of deliverance, it was originally a colonial delicacy that enslaved Haitians were forced to prepare and forbidden to consume during the over-century that the island was under France’s control. When Haiti finally declared independence in 1804, Gourdet tells me, it was decreed that soup joumou—or Haitian freedom soup, as it’s now called—be consumed by Haitians until the end of time. One bite of Gourdet’s version, and you’re sure to feel more alive. Dishes like this exemplify his dedication to honoring his culture within the complexities of the African diaspora.
It brings me back to this past summer when Kann, Gourdet’s restaurant that we are currently at, won the coveted Best New Restaurant title at the 2023 James Beard Foundation Awards. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when the chef embraced his team on stage before addressing us, the cheering crowd, with a Haitian Creole greeting. “Today I stand a son of Haitian immigrants, a son of my ancestors, and a member of a team 45 people deep,” Gourdet emphasized, “who are committed to telling the story of Haiti and its contributions to the culinary arts and to global culture.” I was moved by how he recognized the team that makes his restaurant possible. “From the beginning, we always wanted to do things extremely differently,” he continued.“We hope to stand as an example that paying people fairly and having diverse and mixed gender teams is not just equitable, but effective.” People often speak about creating spaces exactly like this but rarely are able to follow through, especially in the restaurant industry. At Kann, Gourdet has done it, and so much more.
But his path to get here wasn’t always linear. Born to Haitian immigrants in Brooklyn, Gourdet, 48, spent his formative years surrounded by the many multicultural communities of Queens, where he was raised, and his extended family in Haiti through frequent trips back to the island. After four years of boarding school at St. Andrew’s in Delaware, he attended New York University for a year on the pre-med track to please his parents, but it wasn’t long before his desire to be in nature overpowered his familial pressures. He found his way to the University of Montana, where he studied wildlife biology before eventually shifting to French. Those years of discovery proved to be foundational. “I started cooking for myself,” he tells me, “and continued to learn how to cook at a few local spots in town.” After graduation, Gourdet headed home to New York for two more years of education. But rather than sitting inside another lecture hall, he enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America. “It was the first time I truly loved school,” he smiles. “I got straight A’s, and I finally felt like I was on the right path.” In 1999, Gourdet began working for Jean-Georges Vongerichten as a culinary school extern before joining him full-time the following year.
For the next near-seven years, Gourdet worked under Vongerichten at three of the iconic chef’s restaurants and eventually became one of his chefs de cuisine. This set the stage for Gourdet to rise to chef-lebrity in his own right, but the highs didn’t come without their fair share of late nights and deep, personal lows, most notably his battle with substance abuse. “I don’t know a lot of other professions that celebrate you doing your job with alcohol,” admits the chef, who had to confront his addiction when it cost him his job and nearly his life. It’s a journey he’s been vocal about since choosing to get sober in 2009. His openness about his addiction and the wider topic of drug and alcohol abuse in the culinary industry has become a powerful tool of activism that challenges our industry’s prevailing narrative of perfection. Now 15 years sober, Gourdet prides himself on being a leader who can share his path to recovery with other chefs in the industry and offer resources to those who are seeking sobriety.
In 2010, Gourdet became executive chef of Portland’s Departure, and five years later, he placed runner-up on Season 12 of Top Chef. He continued looking for inspiration in the world around him—and the world that raised him—and wrote Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, which earned him the James Beard Book Award in 2022. Then, less than two months after the literary win, the chef opened the doors to Kann. His Haitian restaurant made quite a splash with its inventive menu featuring creative, gluten- and dairy-free offerings with a kick. Underneath, guests gather at Sousòl, an atmospheric, subterranean pan-Caribbean cock-tail bar that opened its doors the same year. The dual debut marked the culmination of the chef’s philosophy of cuisine, framed by his dedication to sustainability, his cultural heritage, and his desire for a healthy work environment.
I am awed by the chef who has spent so much of his life as a nomad, whose practice involves so many different interpretations of origins and ancestry. Curiously, I ask him if he has ever considered a“forever home”—a place for when he is finally ready to root himself. “It’s Portland, absolutely,” Gourdet responds without hesitation, standing up to head into his kitchen. “The Columbia River Gorge is one of my favorite places in the world. Being able to wake up and run for miles and miles: I just love it. No matter where my travels take me, this place is my home.”