This Portland Restaurateur Wants Every Meal To Be A Party

John Gorham is one of Portland's most ubiquitous and celebrated restaurateurs. His and his wife's, Renee, restaurants are well known for their American-European and Middle Eastern flair, as well as their party-like atmosphere. The Daily Meal sat down with Gorham to talk with him about Portland's food scene, Feast PDX, and how to throw a party with every dinner.

 

The Daily Meal: How did you get started?
John Gorham: I grew up in Southern food households and started working at resorts right out of culinary school and ended up on the West Coast. I also opened some casinos, a nightclub, and restaurants in Ghana, West Africa. There, something clicked in my head: I saw the comparisons between Ghanaian cooking and Southern food, and it made me want to explore more of my roots—the food I grew up with was a combination of French, Spanish, and African, and all this led to the path of opening Toro Bravo and Tasty & Sons.
During my apprenticeships, I was working at white-tablecloth restaurants, ones I could never afford to eat at. It was a lightbulb moment, I realized I didn't want to be a chef at restaurants that I didn't want to eat at and where my friends couldn't afford to eat. I wanted to be a chef for the people. I wanted to create restaurants where everyone can eat and to push the experience of the foods that I love, but not stuff so esoteric that you have to educate yourself before you come in. Our mission statement is that we always want to throw a party.

How many restaurants do you have in Portland now? How do you maintain a level of quality food and great hospitality?
Seven restaurants. First, I have to give a lot of credit to my wife, Renee, she runs the floor manager crews. Renee is the ultimate host, and I grew up in the South and my core beliefs are based in Southern hospitality. With that said, we go to all of our restaurants almost every day, and we have extensive training courses. We have a core of people who have been with us and grown with us, so we have a unified idea of hospitality. By growing together we get to keep our core beliefs.
Not to say it's always easy: As our business gets bigger it gets easier to slip sometimes, but we stay on top of it and preach our core beliefs. We're also very hands on about hiring and the new people who come in. With that happening we're able to instill those beliefs in those people.

How have your family and your traveling influenced your food?
I'll start with the family. When you're a chef and you have kids, there's a level of patience you develop and learn. And maybe more empathy. It's helped me as a chef to educate and train people, to slow down and realize that not everyone is going to know everything.
Traveling as a chef and restaurateur is the greatest education you can give yourself. There are so many great ideas and so many people doing amazing things out there. Taking those ideas and turning them into your own and presenting it keeps you relevant.

How do you think Portland's food scene has changed since Toro landed?
Toro Bravo just had its 10-year anniversary. I was in the Bay Area in 1998 to 2001, and a lot of chefs like me and [Gabriel] Rucker (Le Pigeon, Little Bird) were discussing the potential that Portland had. It had cheap property and farmers right nearby. You could buy a house and take a home equity loan out the next day to open a restaurant. So we took those high risks and it paid off.
We didn't have to answer to people. In the Bay Area, liquor licenses and property were so expensive, you needed investors and you couldn't put your whole vision out. In Portland, we had complete freedom; we could get property for nothing, get artisans to help build our restaurants practically on a trade. We could open our restaurants as we wanted to and it completely changed Portland. That's never going to happen again. That was a golden time, but property is much more expensive, and we're saturated with great chefs.

So are you worried at all about the future of Portland's food?
Any restaurant owner who isn't worried about the future isn't doing their job. Once you get complacent is when you fail. As far as having a captive audience though, look at all the cranes in the sky, I'm not worried about that. But I am worried about whether Portland keeps it soul.

What can we do to maintain that soul?
You keep going out. You support the places that believe in that soul. There are a lot of places that go to the dust and people complain about it, but you should've gone in before then! Remember the people you love and keep supporting them.

How much have you been involved with Feast Portland in the past? Do you think it's had an effect on Portland's food scene?
They invited me the first three years and I was in Spain each time. I only got in on the fourth year. I think Feast does a great job, [Mike] Thelin is one of Portland's greatest cheerleaders. He sees the good in so many people and that's what Feast pulls out.

What are you most excited for with Feast 2017?
I think the dinner we're doing Thursday, working with Michael Sullivan, doing Mediterranean Exploration Company food. We've studied his work, seen his documentary, and we're super excited to work with him and see what he's doing.
For Smoked, we built a wooden oven to do pitas on the go, so we're going to be doing a Jerusalem grill. We've give our wooden oven to Sarah Minnick (Lovely's Fifty Fifty) to continue making her pizzas in a wood over. We're doing the burgers; she's doing the pizza.

When you're not working, what's your favorite place to eat in Portland?
One of the best meals I've ever had in the city, if not in my life, was at Farm Spirit. Aaron [Adams] is freaking blowing it away right now. We ate at several Michelin-star restaurants in Spain, and what he's doing there makes it one of the only places in Portland worthy of a Michelin Star.